There's a stillness that comes after silence—
not the hush of sleep,
but the kind that clings to old stones,
to buried things that once breathed.
That stillness filled me for days.
No voice. No visions. No whispers in that forgotten tongue. Just the sound of Dustwall—children chasing crows, water sloshing in buckets, the low hum of a worn city surviving one hour at a time.
Sel didn't return.
I'd gone back to the granary every morning, hoping to see her brown eyes peering from the shadows, her voice curling like fog between rafters. But she'd vanished like smoke, as if she were never meant to stay. Only to speak. To stir something inside me. Then fade.
Like a name once spoken, and never again.
That morning, Father returned early from the fields, his boots caked with frost and mud. He handed Mother a bundle of gathered greens and collapsed onto the stool by the fire, rubbing the ache from his knees.
"We won't make quota today," he said.
Mother didn't scold or sigh. She only nodded and took the greens to sort.
Elna met my eyes. The quiet in her gaze said more than words.
We were slipping again.
The quota—the 20 copper, 2 silver—wasn't just a number. It was breath. It was the line between meal and hunger. Between warm and cold. Every family in Dustwall danced on that thread, and any misstep meant tightening belts and chewing silence for supper.
So I offered the only thing I could.
"I'll help gather firewood," I said.
Father looked up, surprised. "You sure? The path's rough this time of year."
"I know."
He stared at me a moment longer, then nodded. "Take the knife. In case something stirs near the thorns."
The woods outside Dustwall weren't forests.
They were more like scars—twisted groves and stunted trees that clawed toward gray skies. The soil was thin. The roots shallow. But if you knew where to look, you could find dry bark, fallen limbs, and sometimes mushrooms that sold for an extra coin or two.
I liked the woods. Not for their beauty, but their silence. There, no one asked questions. No one stared when I traced letters into the dirt or muttered strange syllables beneath my breath.
The deeper I went, the softer the world became. The sounds of Dustwall faded, replaced by wind and the distant drip of hidden streams. My fingers brushed moss and frost. My boots crunched on curled leaves. And somewhere behind it all, I felt it again—
That pressure.
Not a sound. Not a word.
Just the weight of something ancient watching.
I found the door by accident.
It wasn't a door in the usual sense—no hinges or frame. Just a slab of stone leaning against a half-buried wall, covered in lichen and root. But there were markings on it. Faint, weather-worn, nearly erased by time.
Symbols.
Like the ones I'd seen in dreams. Twisting, flowing lines that didn't belong to any tongue I knew.
My fingers traced them before I could stop myself. The stone was warm. Not from sun, but something deeper. A pulsing, quiet heat like a resting heart.
And beneath my breath, without thinking, I whispered:
"Ka'seren..."
The air shifted.
A groan echoed through the soil. The ground trembled, soft as a sigh. The slab didn't move, but something behind it did. A mechanism? A presence?
I stumbled back, heart hammering, mouth dry.
Nothing happened.
And yet, I knew I had awakened something.
I didn't tell Elna.
Not that night. Not yet.
She would've followed me. She always did.
Instead, I scribbled the symbols I remembered into the dirt behind our house. Over and over. Practicing strokes, guessing meanings, feeling each line hum beneath my fingertips.
Fenn found me once.
"What's that?" he asked, tilting his head.
"Letters," I said.
"They don't look like ours."
"They're not."
"Are they magic?"
I hesitated.
"…Maybe."
Fenn nodded solemnly, as if that explained everything, then returned to poking snails with a stick.
The next day, I returned to the stone.
This time, I brought charcoal and scrap cloth. I made rubbings of the symbols, careful to preserve each curve. As I worked, the air grew heavy again, like rain pressing down from above. But the sky remained clear.
I crouched, listening.
Not to birds. Not to wind.
But to the faint echo that now lived in my bones.
"...Ni'tel va… ka'ren… shel'eth..."
My name didn't come this time.
But something else did.
A thought—not mine—pressed into my mind like ink into paper.
"The veil thins."
I froze.
That wasn't the voice I'd always heard. This one was colder. Distant. A layer above the dream, just brushing against my thoughts.
"The ash remembers."
Then silence.
That night, I told Elna.
Everything.
The stone. The symbols. The words that slipped into my mind.
She listened without speaking, eyes locked on mine like she was weighing every syllable.
When I finished, she asked, "Do you want to go back?"
I nodded.
"Then I'm coming with you."
We left before dawn.
The woods were darker than I remembered. Shadows hung from branches like cloaks. Elna carried a lantern. I carried the rubbings.
When we reached the stone, she crouched beside it, tracing the symbols with cautious fingers.
"These look older than the wall," she whispered.
"They are."
"How do you know?"
"I don't."
She didn't question it. Just nodded.
"I'll keep watch."
I placed both palms against the slab.
This time, I didn't speak. I just listened.
The warmth returned. The ground shifted.
And then—slowly, with a hiss of air—
The stone moved.
Not much. Just an inch.
But enough to reveal a sliver of black beneath.
Stairs.
Descending into earth.
Elna took a sharp breath.
"Are we… going in?"
I looked into the dark.
It smelled of dust and time.
I should have said no.
But I didn't.
I stepped forward, one foot on the first stone.
The air below greeted me like an old friend.