Chapter 19: The Guardian of Forgotten Songs

The air cracked like shattering ice.

Jungkook’s fingers barely grazed the sheet music before a deep, guttural growl echoed through the vault. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t anything they had ever heard before.

The whispers in the shelves turned to panicked shrieks, as if the songs themselves were warning them—Run.

Jin yanked Jungkook back just as the pedestal collapsed in on itself. The sheet music floated midair for a second before—

A hand emerged from the darkness behind it.

No, not a hand. A claw.

Long, spindly fingers, blackened like burnt paper, reached out and snatched the sheet from the air. The arm stretched impossibly long, vanishing into the shadows beyond the shelves.

Then, slowly—it pulled itself forward.

A towering figure stepped from the abyss, its body wrapped in tattered sheet music, ink bleeding from the ancient notes. Its face was obscured, shifting between empty silence and a screaming void.

Namjoon’s breath caught. “That’s—”

“The Guardian,” Hana whispered.

The entity loomed over them, the missing piece of Moonlit Echo clenched in its clawed grip. The air around it vibrated, distorting like a song played backward.

And then—

It sang.

The sound wasn’t a voice. It was thousands of voices at once. Echoing. Warping. Screaming.

Jungkook’s knees buckled as the melody ripped through his skull. It wasn’t just sound—it was memory.

All the erased songs.

Everything that had ever been silenced was screaming to be heard.

Taehyung gritted his teeth. “Tell me someone has a plan.”

Hana’s fingers trembled as she pulled out a small tuning fork. “This will—”

The Guardian lunged.

Hana barely dodged as a claw slashed the air, ripping through reality itself.

Jimin grabbed her before she fell. “What does it do?”

She gasped. “It can momentarily disrupt a song’s existence. But I need to strike the right frequency—”

Yoongi didn’t wait. He grabbed a fallen record and hurled it at the Guardian’s face. The record shattered midair, its sound twisting into a warped, unfinished note.

The Guardian staggered, its form flickering.

Hana seized her chance. She struck the tuning fork against the ground.

A pure, resonant note rang through the vault.

The Guardian froze.

Its body convulsed, the stolen songs unraveling, peeling away like burnt pages in the wind.

Jungkook lunged forward.

He ripped the sheet music from the Guardian’s grip—

The moment his fingers closed around it, the vault collapsed.

The shelves disintegrated. The whispers screamed. The world bent inward.

Jungkook barely had time to register it before—

Everything went white.

Chapter 20: The Song That Remembers Us (Coming Next)

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