Chapter 8: The Veiled Songstress

The streets of Evermere did not sleep.

Even as dusk drained the color from crumbling brick and shuttered glass, the city lingered in a restless half-light. Streetlamps guttered in defiance, their pale glow stuttering against the deepening dark. Shadows stretched long, clinging to the corners of abandoned stalls and broken cobblestones.

Ruvian walked the narrow path home. His echoed steps were swallowed by the hollow rhythm of the city’s weary heart.

Then, soft and fragile, almost unwilling… the first notes of a melody wandered along the empty alleys.

‘Hmm. Music? At this hour?’

Faint at first, almost beautiful, if one didn’t listen too closely.

It didn’t sound like the usual music that came from taverns. Instead, it was laced with a tune that made the back of his neck feel cold.

He couldn’t tell where it came from, only that it was near. And before he could ask himself why he was even paying attention to it, his legs were already moving.

The thought to turn back crossed his mind, but just once, then disappeared before he could grasp it. Everything else dulled. The footsteps of others around him, the distant chatter and the cold breeze brushing against his coat.

Even his own heartbeat felt quieter.

His head felt lighter.

A part of his mind had slipped away, watching from somewhere above, while the rest of him moved forward without command.

‘Why is this music so… enchanting?’

Strangely, he was aware, fully aware, but not in control.

‘Something… is wrong here.’

He was walking but without any clear destination.

When he finally stopped, he had already arrived. A different section of the plaza. A wide and an open place he hadn’t meant to go, but here he was.

The sun was nearly gone. Only a sliver of red clung to the far horizon, bleeding into the deepening sky. Streetlamps flickered awake one by one, throwing pale yellow circles onto the stones. Their weak light could not push back the darkness that gathered in every corner.

In the center of the plaza stood a fountain. Its stone was cracked, its basin long dry, stained with rust and time. It should have been the most lifeless thing here. But it wasn’t.

The crowd were.

They filled the plaza in uneven rows, standing shoulder to shoulder, all facing the fountain. Their stillness was not peace but paralysis, as if someone had drained the urgency from their veins and left them to wait.

Ruvian couldn’t even tell if they were breathing. No one spoke and no one shifted their feet or glanced around like people normally did when gathered in public.

They all stared forward, focused, but empty in a way that made it hard to tell if they were watching by choice or because something wouldn’t let them look away.

His gaze drifted toward the center, toward the dry fountain.

That's when he found out a woman was sitting alone there. She didn’t rise and didn't acknowledge the crowd’s presence. She simply played her instrument rested across her lap – a nyckelharpa.

She was blindfolded, a single strip of cloth tied firmly across her eyes. Her fingers didn’t hesitate. They moved with a clarity that unsettled him, like she had no need for vision.

Her hair was pale and long, strands of silver catching the glow of the dimmed streetlights.

The music spilled out of her without strain and it had slipped into him.

He narrowed his eyes slightly.

‘Strange. Why do I feel like I’m being pulled under?’

He took a slow breath, grounding himself.

Then, the final notes lingered and gradually slipped away.

And into that silence came the clapping. A few scattered slaps of flesh, slow, off-tempo, and dissonant.

But it grew quickly, spreading through the crowd in eerie synchronization, not joyous or spontaneous, but mechanical.

Ruvian’s body, without his permission, began to join them. The clapping movement made his skin crawl. He felt trapped inside his own body, a silent observer while his limbs obeyed something else entirely.

He clenched his jaw and tried to force a stop, but his muscles kept going, bound to a rhythm that did not belong to him.

‘Why the hell am I clapping with them?’

His thoughts became more alerted with calculation.

‘This is so wrong. Deeply, irreparably wrong.’

‘Who's this woman? Was there any important scene that happened in Evermere Plaza during the early stage of the story that I didn't know about? Damn it. I need to get out of here.’

The applause echoed around him like static, rising in waves from a crowd that didn’t feel human anymore. Their faces remained blank, their eyes glassy, their smiles too faint or too wide.

The blind songstress hadn’t moved much but when she finally turned to face them fully, it was with the quiet confidence of a god addressing ants.

She lifted her head, her expression somehow conveyed fondness and loathing at once.

‘I don't like one bit of where this is going…’

Ruvian’s stomach turned the moment he saw it. That woman's smile wasn’t warm. Ruvian can easily tell that was the smile of something that had been pretending to be human.

The blind songstress raised her chin slightly, inhaled the air and then she began to speak:

“Ahhh… Thank you for your support. Thank you~”

She turned slightly, blindfold still fixed over her eyes, and yet every movement carried an uncanny precision.

“By the way~ Do you want to know my little secret?” she asked, lowering her head, her tone light, playful, almost affectionate.

The crowd nodded in unison.

“Good~ I used to cry over death, you know. Isn’t that silly? I used to mourn and think it meant something. Hehe~ but then I realized… it’s all the same in the end. Whether they burn, or drown, or bleed out in their sleep, they all make the same sound when they go.”

She laughed again, a bit louder, and then, it hit harder, high pitched that cracked at the edges.

“It’s adorable, really, don't you think? The way you all cling to life like it loves you back. As if it won’t slit your throat the second you look away~”

The crowd nodded, a few giggled.

Some clapped again, unprompted, quick and eager, like pets that wanted to be praised for recognizing the joke.

‘What the actual fuck is wrong with them?’

“But don’t worry,” she said, and this time her voice was almost warm.

“I’m here now to show you the truth, to help you realise that you are nothing more than a human living on borrowed time~”

She tilted her head sharply and grinned even more than her face could handle.

“And when the clock strikes the final note… oh, you’ll be so beautiful~”

Another laugh escaped her and she didn’t even try to hold it back.

Ruvian stood defiantly, jaw locked, resisting the compulsion that threatened to drag him under, refusing to become another pair of hands in the chorus of the mindless.

‘Almost there, I need to run away from here—Immediately!’

It wasn’t easy. Whatever influence was in the music, it didn’t just coax obedience, but it dug, pressing against his mind.

But still, he held his ground and planted his awareness. His heart beat a little too fast, but now he managed to force his hands to stay still.

But, that's when she stopped laughing.

Her hysterical laughter stopped midway, and in the silence that followed, the sound of clapping also halted.

Ruvian froze.

The songstress’s head tilted slightly to the side, and though the blindfold covered her eyes, her smile curled in amusement as she spoke.

“…Oya ya~” she said, her voice slow.

“There's a rebellious one among us.”

Her tone wasn’t angry.

It was delighted and amused.

And then, without signal, without sound, without warning, the crowd moved. Every person in the plaza began to turn their head at once.

Their necks creaked wrongly with the motion, twisted with a mechanical grace that abandoned all pretenses of human spontaneity.

From every row, every corner, every silent figure, dozens of faces shifted in unison. All eyes followed the blindfolded woman as she inclined her chin.

A chill slid down Ruvian’s spine.

Their gazes pressed against him.

Those eyes did not burn with hatred, nor with confusion. They carried a simpler message, one that left no room for doubt: we have been told to notice you.

Ruvian’s mouth twitched. He wanted to say a word, but his thoughts, as always, did it first.

‘Yeah, wonderful and bullshit. Out of all the clapping corpses in this parade of lunatics, I’m the only one left with a working brain cell.’

‘No, wait, perhaps…’

For a moment, he didn’t move. Then, calmly, carefully, mechanically, he turned his head over his shoulder and looked behind him.

There was no one there.

‘Damn it! It's only me!’

Just the empty stone of the plaza behind him.

And when he turned forward again, the faint scent of dried lavender and putridly older, swept into his nostrils.

The blind songstress was already right in front of his face.

Ruvian’s breath stopped for a second—a tense pause the body makes when the mind registers a threat too close for comfort.

He hadn’t heard a step. She had simply appeared there, her blindfold inches from his face, her smile unchanged.

Ruvian’s fingers curled reflexively.

He tried to move, to step back.

But his body didn’t listen.