Silent - Hope

The king’s throne was a mire of sunken houses and half-eaten faces pressed against the glass of memory. The mud tugged at Kaelen’s ankles, then his knees, whispering in a thousand wet mouths: You are alone. You are forgotten. Make no sound.

Kaelen descended the oak without a rustle and approached her across the mud-cracked square. When he was close enough to see the pale map of veins on her hands, she smiled. Silent Hope

Kaelen did not ask for time. Time was another thing the king had drowned. He asked only for the tune. The king’s throne was a mire of sunken

Now, at fourteen, Kaelen was the village’s Listener—the one who climbed the dead oak at dusk to hear the king’s movements. It was a job for the light-footed and the hollow-hearted. Kaelen had not laughed in six years. Make no sound

He saw her from the ridge: a woman standing at the edge of the old well, her hair the color of dry reeds, her clothes dry despite the weeping air. She held no lantern, made no noise. Yet the fog curled away from her feet as if afraid.