The stone didn't speak again.
Not for a day. Not for three. And not for seven.
But the silence wasn't empty.
It watched me.
Even when I tried to forget, to return to normal—to daily chores, to the scrape of bark against Elna's knife, to the way Fenn laughed when he kicked a pebble into the stream—some part of me stayed listening.
Like my blood had become an ear.
Like silence itself was breathing words too deep to hear.
Father noticed.
He didn't ask.
He just watched me longer than usual when I skipped pulling weeds near the edge of the farm.
Mother noticed too, when I stirred the pot for too long and let the soup burn.
"Your head's up in the wind," she muttered, flicking my ear. "Bring it back down."
I nodded, but didn't.
How could I?
At twilight, I found the second mark.
It was on the underside of the bridge near the well—half-covered in moss, nearly lost to rain and time.
But it called to me.
Same symbol. The eye-tree.
But this time, there were lines beside it.
Not letters. Not a sentence.
Just a pattern—circular, flowing inward.
A spiral.
I traced it with a finger.
The wind shifted.
And I heard her voice.
Not the whisper from before.
This one was different.
Younger.
Female.
"He tried to bind the sky. We told him not to. But he was fire, and we were only ash."
I staggered back.
A boy saw me and narrowed his eyes. "You sick or somethin', Yul?"
I shook my head and forced a smile.
He didn't press.
No one ever did in Dustwall. Privacy was the last thing we owned.
But the words lingered.
He tried to bind the sky.
Who?
Tarrin?
Or someone else?
---
That night, I waited for the voice.
I lit no candle.
Let the dark sit beside me like an old friend.
And I opened the book again.
A new page had formed.
Not turned. Not written.
Formed.
Like the book had grown another limb.
On it, a sketch.
Rough. Blurred. But clear enough.
A tower, leaning.
Not grand. Not magical.
Just tall. Cracked near the middle.
And on its peak—a circle with three lines breaking through it.
I had never seen the tower.
But I remembered it.
I dreamed of rain.
Dustwall rarely rained.
But in my dream, it poured. Cold and clean, washing ash from my hands.
And through it, I saw her.
The girl.
She stood barefoot in the mud, her dress torn at the hem, her eyes… missing.
Not gouged. Just absent.
Hollow sockets that glowed pale.
"He built it with stolen names," she whispered. "And now the names sleep beneath the stone."
I reached for her.
She vanished like steam.
And the rain stopped.
I awoke before dawn.
Sweating.
Shivering.
But not afraid.
The book sat open beside me, though I hadn't touched it.
And on its page, the sketch had changed.
The tower had cracked further.
And underneath, a name:
Seren.
Not mine.
Not Tarrin.
Someone else.
Another thread in the veil.
I didn't tell Elna.
Not yet.
She watched me with suspicion these days.
She thought I was hiding something.
And I was.
But not because I didn't trust her.
Because I couldn't explain it.
How do you tell someone that silence speaks?
That symbols appear in places no one paints?
That your dreams are older than your body?
At the river, I found the third mark.
Carved into stone beneath the flow, barely visible unless the water shifted just right.
The eye-tree again.
But this time, another shape beside it.
A hand.
Open.
Pointing west.
When I returned home, Fenn was crying.
He'd scraped his knee falling off a crate.
Mother kissed the wound, Elna wrapped it, and Father grunted that he'd "live with two legs still."
But Fenn wouldn't stop crying.
Not from pain.
From fear.
"He's coming," he kept saying.
I crouched beside him.
"Who is?"
"The man with no mouth."
I froze.
He buried his face in my chest.
"He watches me in the night. Even when I close my eyes."
Elna rolled hers. "It's just a nightmare."
But I wasn't so sure.
Because in my dream, he stood behind the girl.
The man with no mouth.
And he was smiling.
Without lips.
That evening, the fog rolled in early.
And from it, came the whisper.
Not loud.
Not urgent.
But clear.
"The path is open. But not for long."
I opened the book.
Another line had appeared.
Scrawled like it had been carved with a nail:
"She remembers what we forgot."
And beneath it, my name.
Yul.
Written in a hand that wasn't mine.