The world had gone terribly quiet.

Lark Delmare sat on a cot that smelled of iron and antiseptic, watching a medic pull shrapnel from his shoulder with steady hands. He didn’t flinch anymore. That part of him had already been spent somewhere between the first shell and the last scream.

He was supposed to be at a gala, not here. Somehow, “pianist” had become “survivor.” The absurdity lingered like dust.

Bandages were wrapped neatly around him, pale against bloodless skin. Lark stared at them as if they were piano keys laid out in a wrong order. His fingers twitched, remembering music that didn’t exist anymore.

Around him, the infirmary breathed—groans, prayers, the clink of glass. A terrible kind of orchestra. Once, he would’ve written it down. Now he wasn’t sure he had permission.

“You don’t belong here,” he murmured to himself, not bitter—just disoriented, like he’d stepped into the wrong life and hadn’t found the exit.

A shell had taken his hearing, they said. Not all of it. Maybe enough to matter. Maybe enough to change everything. Lark pressed a hand to his chest, feeling rhythm insist anyway.

Even half-lost, the world still tried to become music.