"Her bell has been stolen," he continues. His voice carries easily above the drums, steady and measured, the voice of someone long accustomed to being heard. "It will be used tonight. During the ceremony."
A man near a cider stall chuckles and nudges his neighbor. "Festival rumors already, from our dark elf guest?"
Laughter moves through the cluster. Easy, dismissive, the kind of laughter that has always known how to make a thing smaller than it is.
My chest tightens. I step up beside Khaivor.
"I made that bell."
The words spread outward. The laughter does not die all at once. It fades the way heat fades from metal, unevenly, reluctantly, until the silence that follows feels almost fragile.
"Roseth?" someone calls from the back. "The bellsmith?"
"The same." I do not raise my voice.
"I forged that bell six weeks ago during the festival preparations. I know exactly what it does. It amplifies resonance across enormous distances, further than any bell in Kaynvu. In the wrong hands, during a ceremony where thousands are gathered at the water's edge?—"
"What happens?" The question comes from a young woman cradling an infant against her chest, her voice stripped of everything except fear.
"It can shatter minds. Crack stone. Drive people to their deaths." I hold her gaze. "Everyone here is in range."
The silence breaks into motion. Not panic yet. Something more controlled, more frightening — the collective moment before panic when people truly understand they have no good choices.
"Father Orrick has the bell," Khaivor says. "He intends to ring it during the closing ceremony."
That lands differently.
"Orrick?" A merchant shakes his head. "That is the high priest of the lake temple. He has served this town for thirty years."
"He has spent those years preparing for tonight," Khaivor replies.
"And you expect us to trust your word over his?"
I step between them. "You do not have to trust his word. Trust mine. I built the bell. I know what the frequencies do when they compound across open water with this many people gathered in one place." My voice does not waver. "Move away from the lake. Find shelter in the stone buildings up the hill. Move now, before the ceremony begins."
A low vibration trembles through the ground beneath my boots.
Then the hum deepens.
Ripples spread across the lake in perfect concentric rings, undisturbed by current or tide. The flames inside the floating paper lanterns flicker sideways, all of them at once, as though something beneath the surface exhaled.
Khaivor's hand closes around mine.
"He has begun."
The lake erupts and a violent wave tears across the docks. Lanterns shatter against pilings. The resonance hits like a fist — not sound so much as pressure, a compression that drives the air from lungs and the sense from thought. Screams rip through the music before the music dies entirely.
Wood splinters. Stone cracks along old seams like something long held tight finally releasing. Windows burst in cascading explosions down the market street, glass raining bright and sharp across the cobblestones.
Panic spreads faster than I can track.
"Move away from the water!" I shout into the surge. "Into the streets, up the hill — move!"
The crowd fractures. Vendors abandon their stalls. A display of ceremonial bells crashes from a wooden rack, their voices ringing wildly and discordantly as they scatter across the ground. Children cry out for parents already ten steps away and moving.
Another wave of resonance detonates across the shoreline. The dock closest to the temple splits clean down the center and drops half its length into the churning water. A storage shed collapses at the seam, folding inward as though the sound alone pressed it flat.
Khaivor releases my hand.
