The sky above Dustwall had been quiet for days.
No crows. No gulls. Not even the gray-winged things that nested in the gutters of the high walls. Just wind and ash and the low rustle of the barley fields curling into sleep.
It was the kind of silence that made people talk less.
At night, the air grew thick. Damp wood creaked even when no one stepped. Lamps flickered twice before catching. Our father lit one candle instead of three. Said oil had grown too expensive. But I saw his hands. Rough, stained with soil, shaking just slightly.
Something weighed on him.
He hadn't smiled in days.
"You'll watch Fenn today," Mother said that morning.
I nodded, though she didn't wait for an answer. Her shawl hung from her shoulders like a shadow. She kissed the top of my head and whispered something I didn't quite catch, something too soft and fast. Then she stepped into the fog, out toward the well where women gathered.
Elna had already gone.
She'd taken on more lately. Bartering, carrying water, sometimes even helping fix tools with old Ralf down the alley. People trusted her more than most. She rarely smiled. But she remembered things. Who owed what. Which roof leaked. What herbs to boil for cough.
Fenn leaned against me as the door closed.
His hand clutched my sleeve. Thumb in his mouth. Hair a tangle of brown fluff and straw bits. He'd been having bad dreams again.
"Stay," he said.
"I'm not going anywhere."
He looked at me like he didn't quite believe it.
By midday, the wind changed.
It came low, brushing the windows with a cold breath, stirring the ashes in the hearth that hadn't burned since morning. Dust scattered in lines across the floor, trailing like veins from the walls toward the center of the room.
I swept them away.
They returned.
Fenn was dozing near the edge of the bed, clutching my old linen satchel. He liked its texture, said it smelled like "wood and safe." I let him keep it.
As I folded the last rag into the basket, I heard it again.
Not the wind. Not the steps outside.
The voice.
"…Ni'so kel...'ra hethren…"
It came low this time. Not from the sky. Not from the window.
From beneath the floorboards.
I froze.
No breath, no twitch, just cold stillness. My ears strained. The voice paused, as if waiting for me to listen. Then again, just a whisper louder.
"…eth'ni… araken…"
The boards near the hearth. The oldest ones. Burn-stained, rough, patched more than once.
I stepped closer.
The sound faded.
That night I didn't sleep.
Elna returned after sundown. Her hands red from cold. Her eyes sharper than usual.
"There's news," she said.
She didn't wait for questions. She rarely did.
"They found a body near the middle wall. Burned. No mark of house or sigil. No name."
Mother crossed herself. "Was it plague?"
"No. Clean burn. Ash only." Elna glanced at me, then looked away. "People say it's a curse."
Father said nothing.
The silence sat long at the table.
I dreamed of the voice.
But in the dream, it wasn't a whisper.
It was a chorus.
Hundreds of them. All speaking at once. Different languages, different cadences. Some harsh. Some like lullabies. But one thread wove through them all. The old tongue. The one I'd heard since the day I was reborn.
And in the center of it all—
A door.
Wooden, cracked down the middle. Buried in soil and fog. It pulsed like it was breathing.
Something knocked from the other side.
I woke up cold. My shirt clung to my skin. My fingers curled tight around a rolled scrap of parchment I didn't remember holding.
It was blank.
I waited until Fenn fell asleep the next day.
Then I moved the rug.
The floor beneath was worn smooth by years of feet and fire. I pressed along the edges, found the corner that shifted when stepped just right. I pulled. It groaned. A board lifted.
Beneath, only dark.
I lit a candle.
There, hidden in the shallow hollow, lay a box.
No lock. No seal. Just a simple square of gray wood, dry and quiet.
I lifted it slowly.
Inside—dust, mostly. Bits of cloth, too frayed to name. But below them, wrapped in string and sealed with wax faded to near gray, was a scroll.
I didn't touch it. Not yet.
The wax bore a mark—faint, but there.
A symbol.
Not from this part of Dustwall. Not from any wall I knew.
A tree with roots shaped like letters.
I didn't show anyone. Not even Elna.
That night I lay awake, fingers brushing the hidden box beneath the bed. The scroll sat in my mind like a drumbeat.
What did it say?
Why was it hidden?
Why here?
No one in our family could read. Not the high scripts. Not the noble markings. Not even the trade tongues beyond Dustwall. Yet this had been placed here. Left in silence. Beneath where our hearth had always burned.
I rolled over.
And in the stillness, I heard the voice again.
Closer now.
"…Ash'tel… vi'nor… ka'ren…"
It didn't scare me.
But it felt like something had noticed.
Two days later, the priest came.
His robes were clean. Too clean. White that hadn't seen ash or mud in months. His hands gloved. His voice calm, clipped.
"Inspection," he said.
No one asked why.
He walked house to house, asking strange questions. Names. Ancestry. If anyone had heard odd sounds at night. If any children had shown strange behaviors.
Elna lied better than I did.
"No," she said. "Nothing strange. Just poor."
He nodded once, smiled like a knife, and moved on.
When he passed our door, I hid the box.
He didn't check under the floorboards.
That night, I broke the seal.
The wax crumbled like old bread. The parchment beneath felt warm, as if it had been waiting. I unrolled it with shaking hands.
The symbols weren't just letters. They were shapes. Layers. Each one held weight, as if it might fall from the page.
I didn't recognize most of them.
But one word repeated near the bottom.
"Ashveil."
Not "Ash Veil." Not like a name.
A word. A title. Or perhaps an event.
Each time I whispered it, the room felt smaller.
Like it was listening.
In the days that followed, I copied the symbols.
Again and again.
I traced them in ash, in dirt, in steam on the window.
Fenn asked what they meant.
"I don't know," I said. "Not yet."
But I wanted to.
More than I wanted to eat. More than I wanted to see the middle wall. More than I wanted to rest.
The scroll didn't just hold a language.
It held a door.
And I had started to knock.