The bag of twenty gold coins weighed more on my spirit than on my waist. We had paid Gorrin, which at least freed us from his constant presence and his ever-endangered jars. But the look of disdain Brom gave me when I explained that I could only pay five coins upfront for his stable was a fresh wound on my already battered reputation.
"Twenty years saving for renovations, Takumi! Twenty years!" he lamented, holding the five coins as if they were common stones.
We needed a mission. A quiet one, far from gods, truth orbs, and amnesiac chickens. Something that didn't involve the possibility of destroying someone else's property.
It was Elara who found it on the guild's mission board. A simple piece of parchment, pinned with a rusty tack.
"Seeking resilient messenger. Deliver a letter to the Hermit of the Silent Vale. Reward: 40 silver coins. Warning: The Vale is… too quiet. Bring your own ink to write your will, if necessary."
"Forty silver coins," Elara read softly, her tired eyes lighting up with a flicker of hope. "It's enough to start paying for Torin's roof."
"And 'too quiet'?" I asked, suspicious. "That sounds like a euphemism for 'full of unspeakable horrors.'"
"Ooh, unspeakable horrors!" Vespera rubbed her hands together. "I love when they're unspeakable! Makes it more fun to guess what they are!"
Liriel, who was watching the guild's bustle with her usual boredom, shrugged. "A hermit. Probably a cranky mortal who thinks silence is a virtue. Must be better than the smell of sour beer and despair in this place."
The Silent Vale was a day's walk from Vaelor. The name wasn't poetic; it was literal. As we descended the winding trail, the sounds of the forest faded away. The birds didn't sing. The wind didn't whisper through the leaves. Even our footsteps seemed to be absorbed by the soft, mossy ground. It was an oppressive quiet that weighed on the eardrums.
"Okay, this is… weird," Elara murmured, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the acoustic void.
"It's calming," Liriel declared, though even her voice seemed a bit subdued. "Finally, peace."
Vespera tried to whistle. The sound came out muffled and died after half a second. She frowned. "I don't like it. How am I supposed to provoke danger if it can't hear me?"
The hermit's cabin was a small, simple structure made of wooden logs, built against the face of a cliff. The wooden door was closed. No smoke rose from the chimney.
I knocked, the sound of impact swallowed by the silence.
The door opened soundlessly. An old man, with a long gray beard and eyes that seemed to have seen too much—or too little—stared at us. He didn't say a word. He merely raised an eyebrow.
"Hermit Orin?" I asked, holding out the letter. "I brought a message for you. From Vaelor."
He extended his hand, and I gave him the letter. His fingers were thin and knotted. He broke the seal, read the contents with eyes that moved quickly across the lines, then looked at us. His face revealed no emotion.
He gestured for us to enter.
The cabin was dark and austere. A single table, one chair, an unlit fireplace, and a shelf with a few old books. He pointed to a small wooden box on the table. Then he pointed at me, and finally at the door.
"You… want me to take this back?" I asked.
He nodded once.
I picked up the box. It was light, made of a dark, smooth wood, with no visible lock or hinges.
"Alright… and the reward?"
Orin looked at me for a long moment. His eyes seemed to pierce my soul, weighing every failure, every debt, every moment of hesitation. Then he turned, took a small cloth pouch from a drawer, and placed it on the table. It contained the forty promised silver coins.
He then made another gesture, this time toward the door, more emphatically. The audience was over.
We left the cabin, and the door closed silently behind us. The stillness of the valley felt even deeper now.
"Well, that was… efficient," Elara commented, relieved that there had been no monsters or runaway magic.
"Boring," Vespera complained. "Not a single attack from a… from a… silent thing!"
"He was just an old man in a quiet valley," I said, feeling a similar relief. "Finally, a simple mission."
That was when Liriel, who had been watching the box in my hands with growing interest, spoke. "That wood… it's Void Ebony. It doesn't grow on this plane. And it has no openings because it's not meant to be opened. It's a dimensional container."
"A what?" I asked, stopping in my tracks.
"A container. For something that shouldn't exist in this world. Something the hermit didn't want to keep with him." She touched the smooth surface of the wood. "I can feel a resonance… familiar. And sinister."
Before we could process that, a figure emerged from behind a large rock on the trail ahead. A man dressed in black robes, with piercing eyes and a sharp smile.
"Hermit Orin was always a coward," the man said, his voice a raspy whisper that, strangely, echoed faintly through the silent valley. "Handing over the amulet to messengers… so predictable."
"Who are you?" I asked, gripping the box tighter.
"You may call me Corvus. And I've come to retrieve what belongs to my master." His eyes fixed on the box. "The Amulet of the Night Whisper. A key piece, you must understand. Part of a greater set."
Liriel stepped in front of me. "Your master… would he be a certain Demon King who insists on complicating my existence?"
Corvus smiled. "The former Goddess Liriel. Yes, he spoke much of you. Of how your… influence… has been hindering the collection."
Elara raised her staff, but Corvus merely laughed.
"Spare us the drama, little mage. I didn't come to fight. I came to collect. Hand over the box, and you may return to your insignificant debts."
"I've had enough of owing favors," I said, feeling a false surge of courage. "I'm not about to start owing one to a demon lackey."
Corvus sighed, theatrically. "Very well. Stubborn messengers have always been my favorite."
He raised a hand, and the shadows around him twisted and solidified, taking the form of slender, silent creatures with claws of pure darkness. They moved without making a single sound.
The battle was the strangest we'd ever had. There was no clang of metal, no screams, no explosions of magic. Only the muffled sound of our footsteps, our ragged breathing, and the deadly silence of the shadow claws reaching for us.
Elara tried a light spell, but her mana seemed to dissolve in the quiet air, producing only a faint flash. Vespera fired her arrows, which flew silently and, miraculously, struck one of the creatures, making it dissolve into smoke without a sound.
Liriel fought with pure divine energy, silver rays cutting through the mute air, but she seemed weakened, as if the valley were draining her power.
Corvus watched, that sharp smile still in place, as I swung my old sword to defend myself, each strike feeling futile against the murderous quiet.
That was when the box in my left hand began to vibrate. A low hum, almost imperceptible, but it seemed to tear through the veil of silence.
Corvus stopped smiling. "No!"
The lid of the box slid open soundlessly. Inside rested a dark silver amulet, with a black gem that pulsed with a deep light. It released a wave of… sound. Not loud, but the idea of sound. The echo of laughter, the sigh of a forest, the whisper of a secret.
The shadow creatures recoiled, disoriented by the sudden intrusion of sonic concepts into their realm of silence.
Corvus shouted something we couldn't hear and retreated into the shadows, vanishing.
The valley didn't become noisy, but the oppression lessened. We could hear our own hearts beating again.
The lid of the box slid back into place, sealing the amulet.
We looked at each other, panting. The simple mission hadn't been so simple after all.
"It seems," Liriel said, gazing at the now inert box in my hands, "that the hermit didn't pay us forty silver coins to deliver a letter. He paid us to take a dimensional time bomb off his hands."
I held the pouch of coins in my other hand. Suddenly, it felt very, very light.
We returned to Vaelor in silence—but this time, it was a contemplative silence. We had avoided a new monetary debt, but carried a new burden—one that glowed in the dark and drew the attention of the Demon King's servants. Sometimes, the quietest missions are the ones that leave the loudest echoes.