My Charity System made me too OP

"That third pattern still isn't flowing right," he said, not unkindly.

"I know," Aris grunted. "It's… off. Like it's fighting me."

"Because you're trying to make it match the Tower's rhythm," he said. "Stop doing that."

Aris dropped to the ground with a sigh, lying flat against the warm stone. "Easy for you to say."

Kael chuckled quietly. "It isn't."

Just then, Roman approached, carrying a sealed scroll.

He looked grim.

"Leon needs us. All of us. Now."

Kael stood. "What's happened?"

Roman handed the scroll over, his fingers tight.

"No floor breach. No attack. Something worse."

Aris pushed herself upright. "What's worse than a floor breach?"

Roman didn't answer right away.

Instead, he looked at her directly.

"They found a song," he said. "A dead one. From before the Tower was built."

Aris's skin prickled. "How is that possible?"

"It shouldn't be. But the glyph readers pulled it from the wind above Floor 290. Just a whisper. Four seconds long."

Kael opened the scroll and scanned it quickly.

The color drained from his face.

"I know this," he said quietly. "I thought it was erased."

Aris stepped forward. "What is it?"

Kael lowered the scroll.

"Part of a performance," he said. "One that once turned a Sovereign floor into silence overnight."

Aris stared at him.

Roman said it aloud.

"The Void Choir."

Far below, near Floor 289, in the ruins of a collapsed Tower segment, it moved.

The creature was not large.

It did not glow. It did not roar. It did not break the world around it.

It slipped through it.

Tall, thin, and wrapped in old Choir robes made of soundless thread, it walked through walls as if they weren't there. Its face was stitched with red silence, and its steps left no imprint behind.

It had no name.

Only a designation:

[CHOIR – Voice Three]

Its task was simple.

Listen.

Search.

Locate the one who had written a new rhythm.

Aris Vale.

The creature paused at the edge of a shattered tempo chamber. A glyph flared weakly in the corner, and with a flick of its finger, the glyph died.

It raised a hand and drew in the static around it, forming a ghostly map—lines of rhythm, threads of power.

At the center, far above, pulsed a new song.

An unfamiliar one.

Uncatalogued.

Unapproved.

Alive.

It began moving again, slowly climbing the lower floors in absolute silence.

There would be no alarm.

No warning.

Not until it was far too close.

Back on Floor 307, Aris stood before Leon in the Harmonium chamber.

He looked tired.

But focused.

"The Choir is real," he said, eyes locked on the rhythm scroll Kael had given him. "And they've started moving."

Aris swallowed. "So what do we do?"

"We prepare," Leon replied. "And we plan. Because if the Choir's returned, they're not just here to fight."

He turned toward her.

"They're here to erase."

The training field on Floor 307 had been altered overnight.

Kael stood at its center beside Roman and Liliana, surrounded by tempo disruptors—devices designed to interfere with pulse flow and rhythm manipulation. They looked like dull gray towers, each humming quietly but unpredictably. As Aris stepped into the field, the air shifted.

Immediately, her baton went cold.

She blinked and tried to summon a beat—any beat.

Nothing.

The pulse was gone.

Kael nodded. "Good. You feel it."

Aris frowned. "It's like… my rhythm is being swallowed."

"It is," Liliana said, circling her slowly. "This is what a Void Choir field feels like. Not an attack. Not destruction. Just removal. You don't get to fight with rhythm anymore."

Roman held out a scroll. "You'll learn to move without echo. To think without beat. To act without tempo."

Aris hesitated. "But I'm a Tempo Writer. My power is rhythm."

Kael stepped forward.

"No," he said firmly. "Your power is that you create. Rhythm is just your first tool. But real writing doesn't rely on tools. It relies on understanding the world—even when it turns silent."

He snapped his fingers.

The tempo disruptors flared.

Aris's baton became heavier in her hand.

"First lesson," Kael said, backing away, "learn to move without rhythm."

A blur struck her from behind.

She rolled, reacting just in time to block a strike with the shaft of her baton. Liliana had moved faster than expected—no song, no buildup. Just raw movement.

"That was a test," she said calmly. "Next one won't be."

Aris breathed hard, gripping the baton tighter.

She moved left, felt the silence close around her again, and then struck forward—aimless.

No feedback. No tempo support. Just instinct.

The hit landed—but not clean. Roman parried it with his staff and swept her feet.

She hit the ground.

"Again," Kael said.

And so she did.

For the next six hours.

They broke her rhythm.

They blocked every beat she tried to build.

And by the end of it, Aris lay flat on the stone again, gasping for breath.

But something was different now.

Her thoughts were still. Her movements more direct. She was starting to feel the space between rhythm—not just the beat, but the absence of it. Where most fighters would hesitate when the music stopped, she was learning to listen deeper.

Kael sat beside her as the others walked off.

"You're starting to feel the quiet," he said.

Aris nodded faintly. "It's like… something's waiting there."

He looked at her. "It is. The Choir uses silence like a weapon. But silence is also where you were born. Remember that."

She stared at the sky.

"The next time they come," she said, "I want to meet them in the silence. Not run from it."

Kael smiled.

"Good. Because they're already climbing."

Far below, near Floor 295, Voice Three paused.

It stood before the wreckage of a Tower outpost.

The defenders were gone.

No blood. No fight.

Just… absence.

It reached down and pulled something from the earth.

A small, cracked rhythm stone—still faintly humming.

It crushed it between its fingers.

The figure raised its head.

Then it walked on.

Toward her.

Toward the beat.

Toward the song that should not exist.