There was something under the floor.
Not just the old box anymore.
Something older. Deeper. Waiting.
The board that shifted last night groaned again when I stepped near it. Not loudly. Just enough. Like an exhale through tight lips.
Morning light slid in through the shutter cracks, dusty and pale. Fenn was still asleep. Elna had gone to help Mother at the herb stall. Father was likely already in the eastern fields. The house was mine for the moment.
So I knelt.
I pressed my hand against the warm plank. It didn't resist. It almost welcomed me.
And slowly, carefully, I pried it loose.
It wasn't a hidden stair, or a trapdoor, or a vault of gold.
Just a small hollow.
Inside: dust, dried leaves, and something wrapped in cloth the color of old parchment.
I lifted it out.
Not heavy. Just… dense. Like it carried more than its weight.
The cloth was dry, brittle at the edges. I peeled it back—and found a book.
No title. No emblem. Just a leather-bound cover that shimmered faintly in the light, like ash stirred in wind.
It smelled of smoke and lavender.
I held it like a newborn.
And then I heard the voice again.
Closer.
Clearer.
"You are no longer lost."
I opened the book.
The pages weren't blank. But the ink didn't stay still. Lines swam like reflections on water. When I blinked, a sentence would vanish. When I stared too long, the letters turned to shapes, then to sounds I could almost feel inside my teeth.
But the first page didn't run.
It stayed.
Written in that same twisting, elegant script I was starting to read as if I'd always known how:
"Ash is not death. It is what remains after the fire."
I turned the page.
Another phrase:
"A veil hides not to deceive, but to protect."
The next few were harder to hold. They shimmered, blurred—but one word burned brighter than the rest.
"Caller."
I whispered it.
The room stilled.
Later that day, Elna caught me staring too long at the book.
"You're doing it again," she said.
I didn't look up. "Doing what?"
"Looking like you're somewhere else."
"Maybe I am."
She didn't laugh. She just sighed and sat down next to me. "I dreamed about Mother last night. When she was young."
"You never saw her young."
"I know." She paused. "But it felt real."
"Maybe it was."
She looked at me.
I didn't explain.
That night, I traced the new symbols in the dirt again.
The ones from the book.
Tree. Eye. Flame. Spiral.
I thought of the scroll, the dream, the echoing stair.
The mirror.
The face that wasn't mine anymore.
And I thought of the word—
Caller.
What was I calling?
Who had answered?
The wind didn't reply. But the candle flickered sideways.
And I could've sworn the book sighed.
Days passed. Quiet ones.
I went through the motions. Helping Father with the fence. Listening to Fenn repeat words with a toddler's pride. Sitting beside Elna as she mended torn sleeves with hands tougher than her age should allow.
But I carried the book everywhere.
Even if no one saw.
Even if it stayed hidden beneath my shirt or tucked in my belt like a scrap of bread.
It whispered.
Not in voices. Not like before.
In pulls.
I'd be walking through the alley near the weaver's kiln, and my steps would shift toward the left wall.
I'd pass the corner where Ralf slept in summer, and feel a tug—look down.
Every time, I found something.
A symbol scratched in soot.
A phrase half-burnt on parchment.
A name.
---
One name came up twice.
Tarrin.
Not spoken. Not local. Not common.
But scrawled once on a brick near the dying fountain.
And again, carved faintly into the back of the book's cover.
Not etched like a signature. Embedded like memory.
When I whispered it aloud, the wind changed direction.
"Who's Tarrin?" I asked Ralf the next day.
His hand froze mid-air, sorting old coins.
Then he laughed. But it didn't sound right.
"Now there's a name I haven't heard in too many winters."
"Who was he?"
"Not who. What." Ralf stared at nothing. "He was a walker. Same as you."
I hesitated. "Walker?"
Ralf nodded. "Those who listen where others hear nothing. Who see before they understand."
"Did he live here?"
"For a time."
"What happened to him?"
Ralf's smile didn't reach his eyes.
"He walked too far."
That night, I dreamed again.
Not stairs this time.
A field. Wide. Ash-colored. Skyless.
At the center: a man with no face, reading a book without pages.
I stepped closer.
He looked up—though he had no eyes—and pointed behind me.
I turned.
There was a wall.
High. Pale. Veined with light.
And carved into it: my name.
Yul.
And below it:
Tarrin.
The man without a face spoke.
Not aloud. Not in sound.
In thought.
"Two names. One flame. Which will burn?"
I woke with my throat dry and my fingers aching.
The book lay open on my chest.