Chapter 1: The Forbidden Anthem
The grand hall did not breathe.
It simply froze.
For a place that had hosted coronations, peace treaties, and the rise and fall of noble houses, it had never felt so small. The fire in the marble hearth still crackled, but even that sound seemed hesitant now—like it feared being heard.
Every eye in the room remained locked on the stage.
On the piano.
On the child.
Chloe’s fingers hovered above the ivory keys, unmoving for a heartbeat that stretched too long. The final note of the forbidden melody still lingered in the air, vibrating faintly like a wound that refused to close.
Then came the silence after it.
Not empty silence—but judgmental silence. Heavy. Suffocating.
Duke Arthur Blackwood stood rigid beside his armchair. His pipe lay shattered at his feet, dark tobacco spilling like ash across the marble. He did not notice it. He did not even blink.
His entire world had narrowed into a single impossible detail.
That melody.
That cursed, burned, erased melody.
His voice finally broke through, hoarse and uneven.
“…Who taught you that?”
Chloe slowly lowered her hands from the piano keys. Her small shoulders rose and fell once with a controlled breath, as if she had just finished something far more exhausting than a performance.
She did not look frightened.
She looked… prepared.
“My mother,” she said calmly.
A wave of shock rippled through the hall again, sharper than before. Heads turned instantly toward Nora.
Nora froze mid-motion on her knees.
Her hands were still wet from cleaning broken glass. Her fingers trembled so violently she nearly dropped the cloth. Her face had gone completely pale, drained of every trace of color.
“No…” she whispered, barely audible. “Chloe… stop…”
But it was already too late.
Duke Arthur’s gaze snapped toward her like a blade being drawn.
“You,” he said slowly.
The single word carried decades of authority.
Nora bowed her head instantly, as if her spine had collapsed inward.
“I-I swear, Your Grace, I never—”
“Silence.”
The word cracked through the hall like a whip.
Even the nobles flinched.
Arthur stepped forward, each movement deliberate, controlled, but burning with something far more dangerous than anger.
Recognition.
Not of Nora.
Of fear.
He looked back at Chloe.
“You said… your mother taught you that piece.”
Chloe nodded.
“Yes.”
Arthur’s jaw tightened.
“That song was destroyed.”
Chloe tilted her head slightly, as if considering that statement.
“No,” she corrected softly. “It was hidden.”
A murmur spread again through the aristocrats, but this time it was different. Uneasy. Uneven. Like the room itself was beginning to fracture.
Arthur raised a shaking hand.
“Impossible,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “I burned every copy. I erased every musician who knew it. I buried its existence beneath royal decree.”
His eyes sharpened.
“And yet you play it flawlessly.”
He took another step forward.
“Only three people in this world ever knew that composition.”
Silence tightened again.
Arthur’s voice dropped.
“My daughter… myself…”
His gaze locked onto Nora with sudden violence.
“…and the composer who disappeared the same night she did.”
Nora’s breath stopped.
For a moment, she looked like she might collapse.
Chloe, still seated at the piano, reached slowly into her collar.
The silver chain emerged again.
The signet ring caught the chandelier light—cold, unmistakable, engraved with the crest of House Blackwood.
A collective gasp erupted through the hall.
This time, even the nobles stepped back.
Arthur stared at it.
For the first time in decades, his composure cracked.
“No…” he whispered.
The pipe tobacco scent, the shattered glass, the flickering firelight—it all seemed to distort around him.
“That ring… I buried that ring with her.”
Chloe held it steady.
“My mother didn’t bury it,” she said. “She kept it.”
Arthur’s voice turned sharp.
“Where did she get it?”
Chloe’s eyes lifted toward him.
And for the first time, there was something in them beyond confidence.
Something older.
Heavier.
“She said you would ask that first,” Chloe replied.
A pause.
Then:
“She also said you would pretend you forgot what you did.”
The hall erupted.
Gasps. Whispers. A chair scraping back violently somewhere near the banquet tables.
But Arthur heard none of it.
His attention collapsed inward, like the world had narrowed into a single collapsing corridor of memory.
The night.
The fire.
The burning sheet music.
His daughter’s voice screaming his name—
Arthur staggered half a step.
A royal guard moved forward instinctively.
“My lord—?”
Arthur raised a hand without looking.
“Do not.”
The guard stopped.
Arthur’s breathing became heavier.
He looked at Chloe again.
“Play it,” he said suddenly.
The hall froze.
Even Nora lifted her head in shock.
Arthur’s voice sharpened.
“Finish it. The entire piece. From beginning to end.”
Chloe did not move immediately.
Instead, she studied him.
Like a child deciding whether an adult was telling the truth.
“You will listen?” she asked.
Arthur’s lips tightened.
“Yes.”
A pause.
“And if I do?” Chloe pressed.
Arthur’s eyes darkened with something raw and unresolved.
“Then I will remember.”
That answer seemed to satisfy her.
Slowly, Chloe turned back to the piano.
Her fingers hovered once more above the keys.
The entire room held its breath.
Nora’s whisper broke through the silence, trembling:
“Chloe… please…”
But Chloe had already begun to play.
And this time—
the melody did not feel like music.
It felt like a locked door opening somewhere deep inside the castle.
May you like
Somewhere no one had entered for twenty years.
And something inside the walls… answered back.
