The storm was silent.
No thunder, no rain—only the heavy weight of clouds pressing low over the Western Reaches, as though the heavens themselves had sunk to their knees. Dust coiled on the wind like forgotten prayers, and the hills shivered beneath the gray sky.
In the ruins of Cael'Belen, the boy who bore no name—no tongue—stood at the threshold of the old world. Ivy clung to the stones around him, desperate, feral, as if the earth itself feared letting go. Behind him lay the crumbling chapel and the dead city; before him, only the open wilds and the thin black line of the road stretching toward the heart of the world.
He took his first step forward.
Lazhar, ever lounging in the caverns of his mind, chuckled low and warm. "Ah, little herald," the shadow purred. "Feel that? Even the wind knows your name now. It tastes your silence and gags on it."
The boy said nothing—could say nothing. But in the marrow of his bones, he understood: the world itself was listening.
And it was afraid.
---
Far above, the towers of Ashmount Monastery groaned in the rising winds.
Telvar moved through the empty corridors like a ghost, his bare feet silent against the worn stone. In the Hall of Echoes, once a place of solemn prayer, the old monk paused, his blind eyes turning toward the distant horizon.
Around him, the other monks slept uneasily, tangled in dreams they would never remember.
Telvar needed no dreams. His mind was clear as the mountain air.
He had seen the boy—the Spokesman, the Tongueless One. Had seen the flickering serpent of possibility coil around him, and the two-headed road that unfurled at his feet.
A road paved in revelation… or ruin.
In his right hand, Telvar clutched an ancient relic—a simple thread of silver, fraying at the edges. Once, it had been a binding, woven in secret around the First Tongue. A promise that certain things would remain unspoken until the world was ready to hear them again.
The thread was unraveling.
One by one, the old oaths were failing.
Telvar knelt and pressed his forehead to the cold floor, whispering a prayer not to gods, but to the broken pieces of creation itself.
"May the bearer be wise. May the liar be merciful. May the shadow walk without devouring."
The words fell into the silence like stones into a bottomless well.
There was no answer.
---
On the road, the boy walked.
The sky above him hung heavy with unborn storms. To either side, the wilderness stretched—hollow trees, crumbling stone fences swallowed by moss, the bones of a forgotten kingdom. Every step he took sent ripples through the unseen fabric of the world, like a drumbeat heard only by the dead and the dreaming.
Lazhar, riding the currents of his thoughts, sang softly:
"The world lies wrapped in silk and sleep,
Its kings forget their bargains deep.
Awake, awake, O harrowed land,
The Silent One extends his hand..."
The boy ignored him, focusing instead on the growing sense of pull ahead. Something waited for him—not an enemy, not yet, but a gatekeeper. A test.
He felt it in his blood, the way a river feels the sea before ever glimpsing it.
Another step.
And another.
Until, at last, the road bent sharply, and standing across it was a figure clad in robes the color of old bones.
The figure's face was hidden behind a mask of hammered bronze, featureless except for a single vertical slit where a mouth might have been.
The Guardian of Thresholds.
One of the last old sentinels, left behind after the Fracture to guard the hidden places of the world.
The boy stopped a dozen paces away.
The Guardian spoke—not with words, but with presence, its voice sliding into his mind like smoke under a door.
"You are not yet permitted. Turn back."
The air thickened. The dust stilled.
But the boy did not turn.
Instead, he opened his mouth—and though he made no sound, the ground between them trembled, and the ivy on the old stones curled away in fear.
A wave of silent intent poured out of him: raw, pure, undeniable.
I am the bearer of silence.
I am the judgment before the reckoning.
I will not turn back.
The Guardian's head tilted slightly.
For a long, aching moment, nothing moved.
Then, slowly, with a sound like grinding millstones, the figure stepped aside.
The path opened.
Lazhar laughed, wild and delighted. "Ah, little herald. Not even the old laws will hold you now. What a glorious mess we shall make!"
The boy walked forward without hesitation, stepping across the invisible threshold. The land beyond smelled sharper, older, like iron and root and storm.
Behind him, the Guardian watched—and wept a single tear of silver that burned a scar into the earth.