One autumn evening, a new discord arose. It wasn’t a scream or a brawl. It was a lack of sound. From the Undercroft, the city’s subterranean slums, a silence spread like a stain. People didn’t argue or laugh or weep. They simply stopped. They stood in doorways, mouths slightly open, eyes glazed, as if the song inside them had been plucked out by a careless hand.

She stopped the blade an inch from the Off-Key’s throat. The Tuneblade trembled, its perfect light fracturing.

: Upon launching, TuneBlade automatically scans the network for compatible AirPlay-ready devices.

"No," he said, standing. "I’m exposing it. Your harmony is a lie. It’s a single, boring note played over and over until everyone forgets there were ever others. The Guild silenced the blues of the dockworkers, the atonal cries of the forgotten, the dissonant joy of a drunkard’s shanty. They tuned the world to a dead, polite frequency." He blew a single, flat, wailing note on his pitch pipe. The silence around him deepened, becoming a pressure that made Elara’s ears ache.

He lunged, not with a blade, but with a gesture that sent a wave of atonal static toward her. Elara parried. The Tuneblade’s perfect E-major clashed with the static, and for the first time in its history, the blade didn’t win. It screeched. A sound like grinding glass. The blade’s light flickered.