A Kinder Silence
The silence came softly.
That was what made it dangerous.
Lumi first noticed it in the infirmary.
The western ward had been loud for weeks—groans of the wounded, the hiss of poultices, whispered prayers layered thick with fear. Tonight, it was almost peaceful. Too peaceful.
People slept.
Not the restless, pain-twisted sleep Lumi had grown used to seeing, but something smoother. Deeper. Faces slack with relief.
At twenty-two, Lumi knew the difference between rest and absence.
She reached for the truth—and felt resistance.
Not a wall.
A veil.
Her breath caught.
"Blake," she murmured.
He was at her side instantly, shadows alert. "I feel it too."
A healer approached them, eyes bright with exhausted gratitude. "Isn't it wonderful?" she whispered. "They finally stopped screaming."
"What did you give them?" Lumi asked carefully.
The healer smiled. "Serath's mercy draught. It dulls memory. Not erases—just softens the edges. No nightmares. No reliving."
The truth trembled.
The pain is real. The relief is real.
Lumi swallowed hard. She knelt beside a young woman whose arm was bound in fresh linen. "Can you tell me what happened to you?"
The woman blinked slowly. "There was… fire?" she said, uncertain. "I think." She frowned, then shrugged. "It doesn't matter now."
It mattered.
Lumi stood abruptly. "This isn't healing," she said, voice tight. "It's forgetting."
"And what's wrong with that?" the healer asked gently. "They've lost enough."
Outside, the streets echoed with the same quiet.
Candles burned without vigil. Children laughed too easily. Conversations skipped cleanly over the raw places that had once demanded to be named.
Serath Vale stood at the center of it all, unguarded as ever, speaking with a small circle near the old fountain.
"You look like you've found peace," Lumi said as she approached.
Serath turned, unsurprised. "Temporary peace," he corrected. "Sustainable."
"You're teaching them not to look," she said.
"I'm teaching them how to survive without reopening wounds every day," he replied. "You expose. I preserve."
The truth did not flare.
It only watched.
Blake stepped forward, tension radiating from him. "You're deciding which memories people deserve to keep."
Serath nodded calmly. "Yes."
"That's not mercy," Blake snapped. "That's control."
Serath's gaze slid to the Dreadsword. "So says the man bound to a blade that would happily decide for all of us."
The sword pulsed—offended.
Lumi felt the pull of competing certainties tear at her chest.
That night, she walked the city alone.
She passed a couple holding hands, laughing quietly where grief should have lived. An old man staring at the stars without remembering what he'd lost beneath them.
They were not lies.
They were omissions.
Back on the watchhouse roof, Lumi finally sank to her knees, exhaustion crashing over her.
"What if I stop?" she whispered. "What if I let them have this?"
Blake knelt beside her, hands warm and steady on her shoulders. "Then you save them pain," he said softly. "And lose them something else."
"What?"
"Choice," he answered.
The truth stirred—aching, unwavering.
Silence chosen can still be stolen.
Lumi closed her eyes.
She understood now.
Serath's kindness did not end suffering.
It postponed it.
And when the silence finally broke, the sound would shatter what little remained.
As the stars dimmed further overhead, Lumi rose, resolve settling painfully into place.
A kinder silence was still a silence.
And she would not let Noctyrrh forget how to speak.