Oakhaven was not a place for those who loved noise. The village lay at the foot of Shadow's Edge, a towering mass of stone that seemed forever watching from behind a veil of eternal mist. Here, time did not move forward; it circled endlessly within the same drifting fog, the same scent of damp earth, the same silence that had seeped into the bones of its people for generations.
To outsiders, it felt like a prison made of moisture and memory.
To Sienna Fiora, silence was shelter.
She stood behind the old wooden counter of her grandmother's inn, its edges worn smooth by thousands of passing hands over the decades. Her pale, slender fingers moved in a steady rhythm, polishing glasses that were already spotless, their surfaces catching the trembling glow of oil lamps.
Srrk. Srrk.
The soft drag of flannel against glass became the only heartbeat in the dim room.
Sienna was thin, almost fragile—her skin pale as porcelain beneath the muted light, giving her the appearance of something carved from winter itself, as though too much sunlight might cause her to melt. Yet behind that delicate frame lived a pair of large brown eyes that held more than they revealed.
They never truly settled on the person speaking. They drifted instead toward the large window in the corner—toward the snow-laden peak swallowed by black clouds that night.
Sienna had been born without a voice. From her first breath, sound had refused her. There had been no newborn cry, no childish laughter echoing through the narrow halls of the inn.
She grew up in a world without words, yet her other senses sharpened to an almost painful precision. She could hear the ticking of the old wooden clock at the end of the corridor as if it were a distant but constant explosion. She could smell the shift in weather before the clouds gathered—the dry edge of air before rain, the metallic chill that announced coming snow.
But tonight, the air carried something unfamiliar.
A scent that did not belong in a forgotten village like Oakhaven.
The inn door creaked open, and winter forced its way inside. The fire in the hearth flickered uneasily.
Sienna did not turn. She didn't need to.
Her senses caught the weight of a presence—heavy, deliberate. She smelled wet pine, aging iron, and mountain frost clinging to worn fabric. The scent of a traveler who had walked too far without destination. The scent of a man who had not known home in a very long time.
He was tall, wrapped in a weathered gray cloak stained by the dust of long roads. Snow melted slowly along his shoulders as he paused at the threshold. When he lowered his hood, a sharply cut jaw and roughened features emerged. His eyes were black—dark as the deepest ravine.
Kaelen Vane.
He did not speak at first. His gaze swept the quiet room.
Only Sienna stood there, still as a shadow behind the counter.
Their eyes met for a fleeting second, and Kaelen felt something unexpected. Her silence was not empty. It was inhabited.
"One room," he said at last, his voice low, hoarse, weighted by distance.
Sienna set the glass down without a sound. No nod. No polite smile. She held his gaze a heartbeat longer before turning, her long dark-brown hair swaying softly behind her. She retrieved a wooden key marked with the number seven from a row of hooks along the wall.
"Sienna? Who is it?" came a raspy voice from the kitchen, accompanied by the warm scent of broth.
Grandmother Celia appeared moments later, wiping her hands on her apron. She paused when she saw Kaelen.
"Sit, sir. The night out there can kill the unwary. Sienna, bring him some warm water and a piece of bread from supper."
Sienna obeyed, her footsteps barely disturbing the floorboards.
Kaelen chose the darkest corner and watched her from a distance. The girl was a point of stillness in a world that felt perpetually unsettled.
After serving him, Sienna asked permission to retire with a small glance toward her grandmother.
Her room was narrow and faintly scented with dried lavender. She did not light the oil lamp.
Instead, she knelt on the cold wooden floor and reached beneath her bed, drawing out a small wooden box. Her fingers trembled as she opened it.
Inside lay a worn scrap of paper, its edges frayed by time.
Two words were written there—the beginning and the end of her world.
I'm sorry, Sienna.
It was the last thing her father had left her eleven years ago, on the very day her mother was buried. He had disappeared toward Shadow's Edge before the soil on her mother's grave had even settled.
Sienna took a fresh sheet of paper and a small piece of charcoal she had saved from the hearth. She wrote carefully. Deliberately.
Then she slipped out the back door of the inn.
The night air struck her lungs sharply.
In the village square, the Festival of the Wishing Tree was nearly over. Hundreds of paper wishes whispered in the wind, tied to the branches of the great oak at its center.
Sienna approached the darkest side of the tree—the side that faced the mountain.
She knelt among its protruding roots and brushed aside the dry leaves at its base, revealing her hidden stack. Eleven papers rested there, worn thin by time.
Eleven years of waiting.
With a piece of twine, she tied her new wish among them. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the rough bark, standing there long enough for fine snow to begin gathering in her hair.
When she finally lifted her head, she stared at the mountain peak—longing in her gaze, sharp enough to resemble obsession.
Then she turned and walked back toward the inn.
From the upper balcony, Kaelen Vane stood in silence. He watched her small figure beneath the branches, kneeling as though in sacred ritual.
When she disappeared inside, he descended.
His boots crunched against frozen earth as he crossed through the mist and stopped before the ancient oak. He knelt where she had knelt.
With rough fingers, he uncovered the stack of papers she had touched moments before. He took the one at the bottom and read it beneath the dim wash of moonlight.
"Six years…" he murmured quietly.
He read the next. And the next. Until he reached the eleventh.
Finally, he unfolded the newest one, the charcoal still dark and fresh.
I wish, just once, to look upon my father's face with my own eyes.
Kaelen went still.
His gaze shifted to another worn scrap tucked among them—the old paper bearing the words I'm sorry, Sienna.
Eleven years.
A girl without a voice, preserving hope for a man who had left her with nothing but an apology.
Kaelen said nothing. He did not curse. He did not pity.
He simply let the papers fall back into place beneath the leaves.
Then he rose and looked toward the dark peak of Shadow's Edge, his expression unreadable.
A moment later, he turned and walked back toward the inn—
carrying with him the quiet secret he had stolen from beneath the roots.