The Broken Chorus
Beneath the surface, lives become resources.
Hidden from the world above, the MCA measures people by what can be taken from them. Deep within it, an experiment leaves one survivor carrying memories she cannot trust.
Beneath the World They Know
The people above do not know the MCA exists.
Below, lives follow an institutional rhythm: wake, eat, test, work, sleep. For those born there, the surface is a world they have never known.
The MCA
Run by the government, the MCA values people for what their bodies can provide. Mana is extracted to power the world above. Those supplying it are used until their bodies fail.
Life Inside
Wake. Eat. Test. Work. Sleep. Repeat.
The MCA measures each person’s tolerance for mana, then assigns them a use. Reproduction, infrastructure, experimentation—the work differs, but the institution decides where each life belongs.
Children are born below, into a system that measures their worth by what they can provide.
What Powers the World
Above ground, power is part of everyday life. Below, people are made to supply it.
The MCA extracts mana from human bodies and channels it through infrastructure. Every working system depends on people the surface never sees.
The Echo Cradle
Within a human-sized shell of black, bone, living crystal, and gold veins, the MCA tests a new technology: extracting memories and transferring them into another person.
What survives the transfer may be a memory. That does not make it your own.
Kamari
Kamari carries fragments of lives she never lived. A word, a scent, a taste can bring them rushing back, along with emotions she cannot reliably separate from her own.
What Remains
A memory can arrive without warning. So can the fear, grief, or affection carried within it.
For Kamari, these fragments overlap with her own experience. Feeling something deeply does not tell her whose life it came from.
The Echo Cradle
The Broken Chorus · Book One
An experiment leaves Kamari alive with memories she cannot trust. Inside the MCA, survival means living under an institution that measures her usefulness. Now even her own mind holds experiences she cannot reliably call hers.
Follow the JourneyOther Worlds Await
Enter the Awakened world, where divine power reaches beyond the grave, or explore Fractured Earth, where magic carries a cost.
