The silver-wood bar was heavy, but Severin moved it with a strength born of frantic adrenaline. The door slid open, and the freezing, soot-choked air of the basin rushed into the hut, clashing with the warmth of the lavender-scented hearth.
Aelindra didn't wait for Severin to clear the way. She ducked under his arm, her boots hitting the obsidian ground with a series of sharp, rhythmic cracks that seemed to scream in the heavy silence of the village.
The figures in the mist finally stopped.
The man in the lead, the one wearing the scorched, tattered remains of the Royal Guard's blue-and-gold, raised a hand, signaling his small unit to halt. His eyes were sharp, scanning the stone huts with the practiced caution of a man who had spent his life expecting an ambush. This was Captain Valen Draken. Severin recognized him instantly from the palace training grounds, though the Captain had been stripped of his rank years ago. Back then, the official story was that Draken had defied a direct order from the High Council regarding the border skirmishes. Now, seeing the state of the world, Severin suspected the "Council" had been nothing more than a mouthpiece for the same shadows they were currently fighting.
But Aelindra's gaze bypassed the Captain. It locked onto the man standing just behind him.
"Caelan!"
She ran. The distance across the plaza felt like miles, the violet light from the central well casting her shadow long and flickering against the stone.
Caelan met her halfway. When they collided, it wasn't a graceful reunion; it was a desperate, messy impact of two people who had both tasted the abyss. Caelan's arms wrapped around her, his leather armor cold and smelling of iron and damp earth, but his chest was warm, beating with a life she had literally stitched back together with her own spirit.
"You're alive," he rasped into her hair, his voice thick and raw. "I felt the pull... I thought the mountain was just trying to drive me mad with the memory of you."
"I anchored you," she whispered, her tears finally breaking free. "I didn't let you go."
Severin stepped out from the hut, his sword lowered but his posture rigid. He watched the embrace, a strange, hollow sensation opening in his chest. It wasn't just jealousy; it was the realization that while he had been bonding with Aelindra over their shared trauma, there was a history here, a deep, rooted connection, one that he could never touch.
"Captain Draken," Severin said, his voice regaining its royal authority to mask his unease. "The last I heard, you were rotting in a cell for treason against the Council."
"The Council is a den of snakes, Your Grace," Draken replied, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. He offered a crisp, soldier's salute that felt out of place in this ghostly village. "I escaped when the first violet flares hit the capital. I've been gathering what remains of the loyalists in the lower tunnels. I found your people near the Breach."
As if on cue, two more figures emerged from the gray haze. Arveth moved with a slow, pained dignity, leaning on a staff of ironwood. Beside him, Mira walked with her hand on her silver cord, her eyes darting to the high ridges with predatory focus. Marienne was nowhere to be found.
The group was whole again, but they were a wreckage of their former selves.
"We need to get inside," Aelindra said, pulling back from Caelan to check the new scars on his face. "The villagers... they can't handle the noise we're making."
They retreated into the stone hut, the space suddenly becoming cramped and heavy with the influx of soldiers and scholars. The silent woman who had hosted Aelindra and Severin retreated to the furthest corner, her eyes wide with a terror that surpassed mere fear of strangers. To her, this wasn't a reunion; it was a cacophony of "noise" of memories, regrets, and loud, beating hearts, that would act as a dinner bell for the mountain's hunger.
Mira immediately began checking the walls for structural weaknesses, while Draken stood by the door, his hand on the hilt of a heavy broadsword.
"We saw something in the deep tunnels, Your Grace," Draken reported, his eyes fixed on Severin. "The Herald is moving. He has a cadre of soldiers that aren't quite human anymore. They don't breathe, and they move through the snow like it's air. We call them the Unwoven. They're tracking a name."
Severin sat by the hearth, the glow of the stones casting deep shadows across his face. He looked at Caelan, who was now standing protectively behind Aelindra. The tension between the Prince and the Scout was palpable, a silent contest of who had the right to stand closest to the Healer.
"My brother," Severin said, his voice dropping an octave. "Valerius. I can feel him. Somewhere up there, in the heights."
Arveth sighed, the sound like dry leaves. "The name is a powerful anchor, Severin. But be careful. The Veiled Eye spent twenty years making sure Valerius stayed a ghost. If you go looking for a brother, you might find something else entirely."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Severin snapped, his fire flaring briefly.
"It means," Arveth said gently, "that twenty years is a long time to spend in the dark. We don't know what they've done to him. Or what he's become."
Caelan stepped forward, his gaze meeting Severin's. "We found a trail in the Old Veins, Prince. Aelindra might have saved me, but she couldn't save everyone. We found Marienne's harness near a breach. She's... she's gone."
Aelindra felt the blood drain from her face. "Gone? You mean she fell?"
"No," Mira said from the corner, her voice flat. "The buckle was undone. She wasn't taken. She walked away. We saw her later, on a ridge, traveling with men in silver masks. She didn't look like a prisoner, Aelindra."
The silence of the village returned, heavier than ever. Aelindra felt a cold stone settle in her stomach. Marienne, the scout who had been their shield, was with the enemy? It didn't make sense. None of it made sense.
"She's a survivor," Severin muttered, though he looked at Caelan with a newfound suspicion. "Maybe she saw which way the wind was blowing and decided not to die on a frozen rock."
"Marienne wouldn't betray us," Caelan growled, his hand tightening on his sword. "Something happened to her. The same thing that's happening to the mountain."
"Enough," Arveth commanded. "We can't stay here. The violet light in the well outside is changing. The villagers are the filter, but they can't hold back the noise of this many broken people for long."
As if to confirm his words, a low vibration started in the floor. It wasn't a shake; it was a hum, a rhythmic thrumming that matched the pulse of the violet well. The jars on the shelves began to rattle, a thousand tiny voices whispering in a language of static.
The silent woman in the corner let out a sharp, choked gasp. She pointed to the door, signaling for them to stay down and then blew out the small oil lamp that was set burning on the table.
The hut went dark very quickly, save for the faint red glow of the hot coals.
"Stay quiet," Draken whispered, drawing his blade.
Outside, the air began to vibrate with a sound that Aelindra recognized with a jolt of pure, ice-cold terror. It was the whistle, the three ascending notes of her father's meadowlark call. But this time, it wasn't alone, it was joined by something else. A chorus of voices, all whispering the same name over and over, until the air itself seemed to be made of the word.
Valerius. Valerius. Valerius.
Severin grabbed his head, a heavy groan of agony escaping his lips. "It's too loud," he gasped, trying to steady himself. "It's... it's not a whistle anymore. It's a beckoning."
Aelindra reached for him, but her hand was caught by Caelan in the dark. She was caught between the Prince who was slowly losing his mind to a ghost and the Scout who had returned from the dead to claim her.
Through the cracks in the stone door, the violet light expanded, turning the basin into a sea of purple fire. The villagers were outside now, kneeling in a circle around the well, their bodies beginning to dissolve into silver sand as they gave everything they had to filter the name that was currently tearing the Prince apart.
"We have to move," Arveth urged in the darkness. "Before the silence swallows us too."
The violet light from the well was no longer a pulse; it was a scream made of color, tearing through the soot-choked sky. They didn't speak as they scrambled toward the northern ridge, their breath coming in white plumes that were quickly swallowed by the encroaching gray. Behind them, the Village of the Still-Voice began to blur, the stone huts dissolving into the very silence they had tried so hard to protect. Every step away from the basin felt like a betrayal, but the mountain was no longer asking for their names, it was demanding their momentum. They left the silver sand to the wind, their eyes fixed on the jagged ascent ahead, knowing that the peace they had found was a ghost they could no longer afford to carry.