The hush didn't only feed on the living — it hoarded the dead. Rafi learned this the moment he slipped past Mere's circling guardians and crawled into the heart of the split grove. There, beneath the roots knotted like veins around a giant rotted stump, something whispered in a language of bone against bark.
He found it half-buried under a web of hair-thin roots: a journal, its cover a patchwork of leather, fungus, and old bloodstains. The pages were stuck together by sap that smelled like bitter wine. Rafi ripped it free, ignoring the roots that tightened hungrily around his wrists.
Each page crawled with cramped handwriting, some lines scratched out so furiously the paper tore. He squatted in the crook of the giant stump, reading by the forest's jaundiced glow.
"...first circle of hush: a vow of silence broken when the eldest begged for her child's life..."
"...roots drink fear as water, bark drinks sorrow as sunlight..."
"...we fed it because we thought it could hold our grief for us — fools, every one..."
He turned pages with shaking fingers. The words ran together: a record of the first settlers who fled something worse than hunger. They'd prayed for the forest to swallow their sins. And it had. It became the hush because people could not bear to speak their pain aloud.
A sound behind him: a dry chuckle. He jerked around. Mere stood in the mist, the sap crown dripping down his forehead like a bleeding halo.
"You think reading dead prayers will stop me?" Mere crooned. His voice carried oddly — soft as mist yet sharp enough to cut through the hush's droning. "They wanted a mouth for their suffering. I am that mouth now. I am what they wished for."
Rafi held the journal up like a shield. "It's lies. The hush was just—just rotten earth and grief! It doesn't love you, Mere."
"Oh, it does." Mere stepped closer, so close Rafi could see roots threading beneath his skin, wriggling at his temples. "It loves my hunger. It loves my teeth. It loves that I have no mother left to cry for me."
A snarl cracked Rafi's chest. He hurled the journal at Mere's face, lunged, and slammed him against the stump. The hush hissed at the violence, wind rattling branches above like bones knocking in a grave.
They grappled — two feral boys caked in sap and tears, old grief boiling out their throats. Rafi pinned Mere's shoulders, spitting curses, trying not to see his own reflection in the boy's wide, hate-lit eyes.
Under them, the roots shivered. The hush purred.
Rafi leaned in, forehead to forehead. "You want to be its king? Fine. But kings rot alone in graves."
He slammed Mere's head back against the stump once — twice. The hush shrieked. The journal caught wind and flapped open at his feet, final words scrawled in jagged ink:
—Break the root, burn the mouth, silence the sorrow—
Mere's breath rattled. He laughed, blood bubbling between his teeth. "Too late, Rafi. It's in you, too."
Rafi stumbled back, chest heaving, the hush's whisper crawling under his ribs. He knew then the fight was bigger than Mere — bigger than his mother's ghost, bigger than any prayer scratched in old bark.
It would end only when the root burned to ash.
He scooped up the journal, turned to the mist where the braid girl waited, and felt the hush's voice coil deeper inside him.
One last fight. One last fire.