A Clangour of Scales contains the following:
Depictions of blood and death
Some violence and gore

Music in media: Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns

A skull hurls its shadow onto a spellbound audience. Gold shimmers as pale fingers with scarlet nails bloom from the skull's sockets. The commingling of ebony and ivory jerks and detaches from its stillness, twisting till the numerous pairs of eyes see the inanimate object evolve into something far greater and alive.

Claws comb an inky stream as a woman and her Hakamo-o divide like cells, slender figures gliding across the smooth timber floorboards. Grey and gold slink to the front whilst black and white, with tinges of red, twirl to the back. They spring into motion, vital spirits engaged in a series of locking and popping till the woman leaps and backflips, her hands landing on the stage floor before her head does, with a swoosh of black. Her long eyelashes and light purple eyeshadows seem to brighten along with her expression. As she spins on her head, the Hakamo-o stomps and sways his tail left, right, left in a cyclic, hypnotic fashion as he rakes claws charged with a dark violet energy into the air, creating a shadowy X.

In the corner of his eyes, the doors open, the thump jolting the dragon. "Hak!"

Skala, focus! Remember, this is a tribute to those killed by the Abomasnow in the nearby Ivory Hill! The woman sends him a look as she switches gears, accelerating anti-clockwise. With a gentle smile, she throws petals into the air.

He glances back and resumes, unleashing a Sky Uppercut, sending red waltzing through the air, only to be smashed to bits by a flurry of jagged stones not his to control.

Skala pauses. The woman freezes. The audience stares, unmoving.

The scene of petrifaction splits apart with an Iron Tail, succeeded by an Echoed Voice sending the stones away from the audience. Then comes a retaliating blow to Skala — a wispy head of a blue Midday Lycanroc materialising above the intruder, Splintered Stormshards spewing from its mouth for about half a minute before it vanishes like the ephemeral soul it is. In return, the worked-up Hakamo-o chops the stone shards and slashes them into powdery bits.

"Falleg, Dragon Dancer Yuxia and her Hakamo-o!" A figure treads down the aisle, a hand pulling off his burnt sienna hood.

"How beautiful, indeed. You disrupted everything." The woman leaps off the stage, joined by Skala. Her eyes are suns, Stygian lashes akin to rays, ambers burning and blazing. Crossing her arms, she leans forward. "What is an Ancient Savage mage doing here?"

"Your honeyed eyes attract even trouble who's wrapped in a three-piled piece of velvet." The man, somewhere in his mid-forties, licks his lips and clasps his hands together. "Have you been out of this hall, as of late?"

"Not really." Yuxia shrugs off the curious gazes of the audience and whispers, "Be quick. I have a performance going on."

"No."

"I'm being serious here, rock-wrecker."

"Why, I could say the same, with a gravel matter at hand." The mage smiles broadly and shakes his head again. Fingering his dusky moustache, he mumbles, "If you must know, your nickname for me is so lapidary I want it on my tombstone."

"Be direct," Yuxia scowls and flips her hair.

"I'll be more frank than fracking then. Step outside and I'll say, vinnukona." The mage twists his lips and pulls her out of the hall before she can refuse or resist.

"Listen up, Lithomancer. I don't know who you are and I have someplace else to be!" Yuxia groans and Skala roars beside her.

The gruff voice bellows, "Don't maul me for what happens next then."

Before either Yuxia or Skala can react, a boulder falls from the sky and crashes into the dome-shaped, oriental performance hall. Screams reverberate and die down almost immediately. In the vicinity, passers-by scurry away from the arresting collision.

"You—"

"Now, will you hear me out? Or are you too petrified?" He steps forward, runs his fingers across the woman's chin. "I wonder if those eyes contain Aerodactyl."

"I'm years younger than you," Yuxia says bitingly as she takes in the dawn cloaking grey buildings in its scarlet and orange hues. As she sucks in the temperate air, she tries to avert her attention from the surrounding people attempting to cool down from the shock, shifting her gaze to the auburn-haired male. "And I wonder if your brain is an empty dome."

"I'll take that as a compliment. I've always aspired to be a Kabutops." He breaks into a mirthful laughter.

"You don't have to aspire to be one when you're already a Shellfish." Yuxia storms ahead and into the gradually crowding city of Ryst, allowing the waves of people to push her further into the marketplace, with Skala following suit.

Touts rise above incessant chatters as items like fruits and Chansey eggs are traded for kopars, copper coins with a crystal-shaped hole in the centre. Yuxia and Skala brush past long sleeves that reach the waists of people, feeling the cool silk against their skin. Tauros carts cut across the cobblestone path, carrying fruits and small kids on them. The duo pauses as one child carrying a red ornamental lantern nearly hits them and another with a Vulpix mask over her hair rushes past with a plastic bag containing three tiny Remoraid.

Yuxia heaves and tries to erase the gruesome scene from her mind. She hears the audience's blood swelling in her eardrums, pelting like a storm of bullets onto her. However hard she struggles, she cannot free herself from the binding noose, like a soul caught in birdlime.

He's too cruel. The Dragon Dancer bites her lips and whirls around to enter an asphalt path. She glances at the two birch lattice baskets rising and falling, taut ropes attached, along the three-storey houses to her left, a man selling newspapers putting one in a basket that soon elevates while swiping two kopars from the other basket. The duo shrugs and returns to their path, passing through the wooden red arch with a board reading 'Ryst City' in golden calligraphy juxtaposed against dark blue, framed in bronze, bevelled serpentine dragons.

They stop at the gate upon hearing a whistle and Yuxia dons a stoic expression as she turns to face the dark corners of a nearby alley.

"You're too slow. I've been waiting here for seven minutes." A russet tassel emerges from the silent shadows. "Oh, don't give me that look. I'm a burr under your saddle, a fine whetstone that'll cut your keenness before all else." A grin slices his pale skin. "Accept it."

"What do you want from me?" Yuxia steps back and Skala grunts while clutching her waist.

"As a Dragon Dancer, you will do well in safeguarding Ryst City's peace as well. That's a rough duty, no?"

Like a Kabutops, he plunges calculated, gaunt blades — long, narrow flakes piercing a viscous red — into her heart and punctures it gradually.

"Who are you?" Yuxia spits.

"Who Tor is... is insignificant." The Lithomancer reveals himself fully. "I enlist your help to protect our precious city. We only have three hours."

"What do you mean?"

"Look around you."

Yuxia and Skala do a three-sixty and meet the sprawling towers and mansions. Red lanterns line the snow-covered roofs and, from where she stands, she can see the iconic curved obelisk erected from the top of Ryst Musuem. People in baggy clothes walk by, carrying baskets of fresh berries and vegetables. A rickshaw trods along the road. Their gazes don't encompass the city though, for it is but a portion of Ryst.

"Everything seems about right." Yuxia scratches her chin.

"Look at your feet."

She glances down at the cracks on the shingly path and proceeds to press her ear against the cold, rough surface. Skala copies her and squints when the faint quaking reaches his ears.

"Is the Ancient Savage starting an earthquake?"

"Not quite. Our Geomancers aren't as idle." Tor raises his hood. "But you see, Lithomancy tells of futures still volat—"

An army of disgruntled roars echo through the cityscape. Crates fall off the orderly stack near the trio.

"Ah," the man muses, lowering his head such that the top half of his face is overshadowed by his cowl. "Something wicked this way comes."