Morning came gray.
Not cloudy. Not stormy. Just… gray.
The kind of morning where breath hangs longer, where even birds forget to sing. Dust hung in the air like smoke, curling in the stillness. Our roof creaked with a slow sigh, as if the house had grown tired overnight.
I sat by the window, book in hand, though I hadn't opened it yet.
Some part of me was afraid to.
Since the dream, the pages felt heavier.
As if they carried more than ink now.
As if they watched me, too.
I traced the carved name again—Tarrin—with my thumb.
It was shallow, just a faint groove at the base of the spine. But it pulsed when I touched it, faint and cold, like a pebble left too long in the shade.
A name I hadn't known.
A man no one spoke of.
Except Ralf.
A Walker, he'd said.
One who listened. One who wandered too far.
But where was "too far"?
And why did the book know him?
Why did the voice say my name alongside his?
That evening, Elna returned with a split lip and a satchel of bruised herbs.
"Boy tried to steal a root from my basket," she muttered. "So I hit him."
She didn't sound proud.
Just tired.
I nodded and handed her a wet cloth.
"You ever think about leaving Dustwall?" I asked.
She flinched, like I'd stepped on a wound. "Where would we go?"
"I don't know. Somewhere better."
"There is no better for people like us."
Her voice wasn't angry. Just certain.
Stone-certain.
"But what if—"
"No, Yul." She pressed the cloth to her lip. "We stay. We survive. That's enough."
I didn't reply.
Because deep down, I wasn't sure she was wrong.
But I hoped she was.
That night, I opened the book again.
And it opened itself.
Not where I left it.
Not where I marked.
A page I'd never seen before stared up at me—pale parchment, ink darker than shadow.
One line:
"There is a path between what is seen and what is hidden. Step lightly."
And beneath it, a symbol.
Not a letter. A shape.
Like a tree growing from a single eye.
Or a crack in glass bending toward a star.
I touched it.
And the candle beside me flickered out.
I didn't sleep that night.
Not because I was afraid.
Because I wasn't.
Even as the dark thickened, even as the walls felt closer, even as something whispered through the floorboards in a language I didn't fully know—I stayed awake.
Listening.
Waiting.
And the voice returned.
Not in my ears.
In my bones.
"Tarrin was the First. You are the Next. But not the Last."
The next morning, I followed where the whisper had pointed.
North.
Past the kiln.
Past the alley with the copper wires strung like vines.
To a wall no one used anymore—half collapsed, leaning into itself like a drunk trying to stand.
There was a mark on it.
The same shape from the book.
The eye-tree.
I knelt and placed my hand against it.
The stone was warm.
And then, it opened.
Not with hinges.
With breath.
Behind it, a narrow space. Barely wide enough for a child to crawl through.
But I didn't hesitate.
Dust clung to my arms, my knees. Something sharp scratched my cheek.
But I pushed forward, deeper, until the world behind me disappeared.
Only the smell of earth, rust, and forgotten things remained.
And then—I found it.
A door.
Wooden. Circular. Burned with the same mark.
It opened when I exhaled.
And behind it:
A room with no walls.
Only fog.
Only silence.
And in the center—a pedestal.
And on the pedestal—a stone.
Ash-colored. Cracked.
Whispering.
"Do you remember, Caller?"
I reached for it.
And in the instant I touched it, the world folded.
Not broke. Not shattered.
Folded.
Like a page turning.
I wasn't in Dustwall anymore.
Or rather—I was.
But beneath it.
Below it.
Where the city had a heart.
And that heart was burning.
Flashes.
People in robes with ink-stained hands.
Children with golden eyes, chanting words I didn't know but felt.
A girl. Laughing. Then screaming.
Tarrin, older, standing over a map drawn in blood.
And then—
A wall. The Wall.
Rising.
Not built. Called.
And on the other side?
Darkness that breathed.
I gasped and fell back.
The stone was cold again.
The room was gone.
Only the little crawlspace remained.
Only me.
But the mark had changed.
It glowed now—dim, like a memory.
And I could read the words beneath it:
"Ash remembers."
I returned home with dirt in my hair and something new in my hands:
A fragment of the past.
A path I didn't choose, but couldn't escape.
The book pulsed once when I set it down.
And for the first time, the whisper didn't ask me a question.
It gave me a truth.
"You are not from here. But you belong."