A Rip in the Silence

The silent overture had a flaw. A single, dissonant note. It came not from Rhys, but from within. An elder, one of the first to join Lyra, introduced a thread of pure, unadulterated noise into the heart of their sculpted city. It was not an act of malice, but of fear. Fear that in their pursuit of a new, silent beauty, they were creating another form of stillness, another echo chamber. The thread, a chaotic jumble of conflicting data-streams, pulsed like a wound in the heart of their creation, a question posed not to an enemy, but to themselves.