Doran dreamed of Kell's eyes.
Empty. Not blind—empty. As if someone had scooped out the part that made him a person and left the rest to go through the motions of living. He woke before dawn with the image burned into his mind and the pull from below stronger than ever.
He couldn't stay above ground anymore.
Lian was already awake, sitting on the inn's porch and watching the sun creep over Thornwall's walls. He didn't turn when Doran sat beside him.
"You're going down today."
It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
Lian nodded slowly. "Figured. You have that look. Same one Kell had, thirty years ago." He finally looked at Doran. "You sure?"
"No."
"Good. Certain people go down certain they'll be fine. They're the ones who don't come back." Lian stood. "I'll take you to the entrance."
The entrance was a well in an abandoned courtyard.
Not a well that had ever held water—a hole in the ground, lined with stone so old it was crumbling, descending into darkness so complete it seemed to swallow light. A wooden cover lay beside it, removed recently by someone.
"The depth-keepers," Lian said. "They monitor who goes down. Try to stop the ones who aren't ready." He glanced at Doran. "They're not here today. Figure that means something."
Doran looked into the hole. The pull was almost unbearable now—a thread attached to his chest, drawing him down.
"How far does it go?"
"No one knows. Kell made it to the fourth layer. Farther than anyone in living memory." Lian paused. "There are seven layers total. That we know of. Each one is a different city, buried on top of the last. The oldest is seven thousand years old."
"And below that?"
Lian was quiet for a moment. "Below that is what Kell found."
Doran nodded. He stepped toward the well.
"Doran." Lian's voice stopped him. "I still want that witnessing. When I'm done." His smile was fragile but real. "So come back, yeah?"
Doran almost smiled. "I'll try."
He climbed over the edge and began to descend.
The walls were close. Cold. Damp with something that wasn't water. Doran climbed down handhold by handhold, his feet finding ledges cut into the stone centuries ago. The light from above shrank to a pinprick, then vanished.
Darkness.
He kept climbing.
After what felt like an hour, his feet hit solid ground. A tunnel stretched before him, just tall enough to stand in, leading away from the well. He couldn't see, but he didn't need to. The pull guided him—a thread he could follow with his eyes closed.
He followed.
The first layer opened suddenly—a cavern so large he felt rather than saw its vastness. The air changed. Grew older. Heavier.
He stopped and closed his eyes. Reached for the moments here.
They came immediately.
Thousands of lives. Thousands of deaths. A city that had stood for centuries, fallen, been buried. He felt them all at once—lovers, fighters, children, kings—pressing against him like a crowd in the dark.
But they weren't hostile. They were just... there. Waiting.
He walked through them, through the empty streets of the first layer, feeling their weight settle onto his already heavy shoulders. Not choosing. Just receiving. Just witnessing.
By the time he reached the second layer, he'd added a thousand ghosts to the ones he already carried.
The second layer was older.
The architecture changed—rougher stones, stranger angles, doorways built for people slightly different than modern humans. The moments here were fainter, worn thin by time, but still present. Still waiting.
Doran walked for hours. Maybe days. Time moved strangely in the depths.
He found the first body in the third layer.
A man, long dead, curled against a wall. His clothes were rotted to nothing. His skin was leather stretched over bones. But his face—frozen in whatever expression had marked his final moment—was peaceful. Not afraid. Not in pain.
Just peaceful.
Doran knelt beside him and witnessed.
The man's name had been Harvath. He'd been a depth-seeker like Doran, drawn by the same pull, following the same thread. He'd made it to the fifth layer—farther than anyone—and found something there. Something he couldn't leave.
But he hadn't died afraid. He'd died satisfied. As if whatever he'd found had been worth everything.
Doran stood and kept walking.
The fourth layer was silent.
Not the silence of emptiness—the silence of attention. As if everything here was watching him, waiting to see what he would do. Doran felt it pressing against him from all sides, ancient and patient and utterly still.
He found Kell's name carved into a wall.
KELL WAS HERE. TURN BACK.
Doran touched the letters. They'd been carved recently—thirty years ago, by a man who'd already felt whatever was waiting below.
He didn't turn back.
The fifth layer was different.
Not a city. Not ruins. Just a space—vast and empty and somehow before. Before cities, before people, before anything. Doran stood at its edge and felt the pull stronger than ever.
Below this was what Kell had found.
Below this was what had taken his eyes.
Doran stepped forward.
The moment he crossed into the fifth layer, the world changed.
Not slowly—instantly. One breath he was in the depths, surrounded by ancient stone and older silences. The next he was somewhere else entirely.
A field. Green grass. Blue sky. A single tree at the center.
He knew this place. He'd never seen it, but he knew it.
It was the place before.
Before the hollow tree. Before his grandmother. Before anything. The template from which all moments were made.
And beneath the tree, something sat waiting.
Doran couldn't look at it directly. His eyes slid off it the way water slides off stone. But he felt it—ancient, patient, aware in a way that predated awareness itself.
You came.
The voice was inside him. Not words—meaning, directly implanted.
You're the first in eight hundred years.
Doran tried to speak. Couldn't.
The last one stayed. He's still here. Would you like to see him?
The thing beneath the tree moved—shifted—and suddenly the Silenced One was there.
Not dead. Not alive. Just... present. Their eyes were empty like Kell's, but deeper. Older. As if they'd been looking at this thing for so long they'd become part of it.
They witnessed me, the thing said. Fully. Completely. And now they can't look away.
Doran forced words out. "What are you?"
A long pause.
I don't know. I've never known. I was here before names. Before words. Before anything that could name me. Another pause. But you could.
"Witness you?"
Yes. Truly witness me. The way the last one did. The way no one has since.
Doran looked at the Silenced One—at what eight centuries of witnessing had done to them.
"If I do that... I'll become like them."
Yes.
"And I'll never leave."
No.
Doran stood at the edge of the fifth layer, looking at something that had waited since before existence began.
The pull was unbearable now.
He stepped forward.
Something stopped him.
Not physically. Not magically. Just... a hand on his shoulder, inside his mind, in a witnessed moment he'd almost forgotten.
Orin.
Not yet, the old man said. You're not ready.
Doran tried to pull away. The pull was so strong.
Look at them. Look at what happened. Do you want that?
Doran looked at the Silenced One. At their empty eyes. At their stillness. At eight centuries of being unable to look away.
Come back, Orin said. Learn more. Grow stronger. Understand what you're doing. Then choose.
The pull screamed at him to stay.
But Orin's hand was gentle, and steady, and full of eighty years of love.
Doran made himself turn away.
He climbed for what felt like forever.
The layers passed in a blur. The cities. The ruins. The bodies. He didn't stop. Didn't witness. Just climbed.
When he finally pulled himself out of the well, daylight nearly blinded him.
Lian was there. So was Mira. So were others—name-bearers he'd never met, gathered to see if the Witness would return.
He stood at the edge of the well, covered in dust and centuries, and met Lian's eyes.
"Well?" Lian asked quietly.
Doran thought about what he'd seen. What was waiting. What would always be waiting.
"It's real," he said. "And it's patient."
He walked past them toward the inn.
Behind him, the well waited.
Below, something waited too.
It had waited before existence began.
It could wait a little longer.