The silence wasn't his alone anymore.
It crept through the streets like fog — unnoticed at first, then unsettling. Vendors still shouted, but their voices seemed to dissolve before reaching listeners. Bells rang softer. Conversations faltered for no reason at all.
In the Upper Halves, people whispered about a "hush-draft," a wind that stole words instead of breath. Superstition. Blame. The kind of thing people told each other when reality bent in ways it shouldn't.
Down in the lower tunnels, Kesh paced.
"This is wrong," she muttered. "Too soon."
The boy sat beside the dry fountain, trying not to think. That was getting harder. Thoughts still came, but language was slipping — replaced by shapes and sensations. A memory of falling, not as an image, but as weight. The idea of grief, not as a word, but a chill that wouldn't leave his bones.
"You're adapting faster than you should," Kesh said, crouching beside him. "The second Truth doesn't just arrive. It builds. It nudges. You're supposed to resist."
He tilted his head.
Kesh frowned. "You are resisting, right?"
He didn't answer. He wasn't sure he knew the difference anymore.
That night, Kesh lit three lanterns with different-colored flames — blue, orange, and violet. She arranged them in a triangle, muttered something under her breath, then drew a jagged line through the center with iron chalk.
"A boundary ward," she explained. "Not to keep anything out. To keep you in."
His brow furrowed.
"If the second Truth manifests fully before you've chosen it, it won't ask. It'll take. Your voice. Your shape. Maybe even your name."
He pointed at the spiral on his arm. It had faded slightly — not dulled, but less solid. Like it wasn't sure if it belonged on skin or stone anymore.
"It's bleeding into the rest of you," Kesh said. "That's not uncommon. But... this?"
She gestured to the stone walls. They were damp. Not with water. With quiet. A stillness that clung like condensation.
"The world is responding."
Outside, people began murmuring about the Archive.
Apparently, a stone reader had collapsed mid-ritual. Claimed she could no longer hear the text. The glyphs had stopped speaking. In the Mistvault to the west, dream-seers reported nights with no sound — not even breath or heartbeat. One had scribbled a single line before clawing out their own tongue:
"The world is trying not to remember."
The boy read this in a smuggled report Kesh brought back from a contact. She didn't speak as he read. Just watched.
"It's pulling other places in," she said at last. "You're not just waking the Truth. You're becoming a point of resonance."
He looked at her blankly.
"A wound," she clarified. "Reality's trying to scab over."
The days blurred.
He stopped trying to count them. Language was gone from his thoughts now. He didn't miss it. Not exactly. But something ached where words used to be — like a healed bone that didn't set quite right.
Kesh grew quieter, too.
Not out of necessity. Out of caution.
She only spoke in short bursts. When she did, she used gestures and touch more often than voice. A tap on the shoulder meant danger. A hand on his wrist meant pause. Two fingers against his throat meant remember who you are.
They stopped lighting lamps.
Sound traveled strangely near the boy now — echoing longer than it should, or not at all. Sometimes footsteps arrived before the person walking them. Other times, they didn't arrive at all.
He began sleeping without dreams.
Or maybe the dreams were still there — just silent.
One night, Kesh didn't return from her supply run.
He waited.
An hour passed.
Then another.
The room began to shift again — slightly at first. The chalk line at the center of the ward wavered. The lanterns flickered without air. The air grew thick, like he was breathing through velvet.
He stood.
Something was entering.
Not from a door. From the absence between thoughts.
A presence.
Not a person. Not a sound.
A question.
Not spoken. Felt.
"Will you wear the silence, or be worn by it?"
He took a step back.
The spiral on his arm began to spread — lines branching toward his shoulder, faint but visible beneath the skin like veins of light.
"One truth must be yours."
He shook his head.
He hadn't chosen.
"Then one will choose you."
The light flared—
—and Kesh burst through the door, a blade drawn, her coat torn. She flung something onto the floor — a broken sigil-stone — and the presence recoiled instantly.
The world snapped back into shape.
Breath returned.
The lanterns blinked.
He dropped to his knees, gasping.
"You weren't ready," Kesh said quietly, voice trembling. "But it almost didn't matter."
She helped him sit.
Then whispered:
"It's hunting you now."