It began with the silence of the roots.
For days, the great tree that held the sacred library Laylay-an had hummed gently, a soft vibration that echoed through the floor and the inner walls like the rhythm of a heartbeat. It was always there. Like breath. Like trust.
But that morning, the root-song had stopped.
Not all at once but as if something were listening, and each note, each whisper of life, withdrew into itself.
Iliya noticed it first.
He sat alone in the meditation hollow, a chamber ringed by shelves of bark-scrolls and anchored by a sap-filled basin. He had come to listen again — not with ears, but with breath. Kalwa had told him that the basin reflected emotion more than image.
Today, the surface was flat. Still. Unmoving.
"It doesn't respond."
He reached out again, whispering the same invocation Kalwa taught him. Still nothing. No echo. No ripple.
Something inside him curled in warning.
Salimbay found him moments later.
Her footsteps were quick, but not loud. She moved like someone who had drawn a blade in her mind even before her hand.
"You feel it too?" she asked.
"The silence?"
"No — the watchers."
She pointed toward one of the upper walkways. "The memory-vessel children. Gone. All of them. No word. No ritual."
And then, even lower: "Kalwa is missing."
That chilled Iliya more than anything.
Kalwa had not once left the library's core since their arrival. Her absence did not rest. It was wrong.
Together, they made their way to the inner chamber of the vault that held the rarest of scrolls. The one Kalwa had led them to days ago. The one where she handed Iliya the red-threaded bark-scroll: the map to the first Echo relic.
They reached it in silence.
And saw the door ajar.
Not broken. Not forced.
But… unlocked. As if someone trusted who should not be trusted.
Iliya stepped inside first. The lanterns were still glowing but dimmer. Uneasy. One of them pulsed irregularly, like a candle choking on a wet wick.
And at the center of the room, where scrolls should have rested
"It's gone," Iliya whispered.
The red-threaded scroll. The guide.
Salimbay drew her blade, gaze sharpening.
"Someone here knew what to take."
"But no one saw them."
"No," she replied. "They didn't need to be seen. This place trusted its own."
They began their search in the ink hall where sacred scrolls were copied in root-dye and ash-dust. The smell here was always heavy with spirit smoke and fermented bark.
Today, it reeked of salt.
Not fresh river salt.
But deep salt is the kind found near death-touched reefs and flooded catacombs. The kind that never belonged here.
Iliya leaned over a scroll table.
There, in the ink, was a spiral.
His spiral. But reversed.
"This wasn't written by hand," he murmured. "It's drawn by something else. Something that doesn't breathe ink, but bleeds it."
"A spirit from Dalom?" Salimbay asked.
"Or someone claimed it."
That night, they stayed close to the tree's upper hollow, the highest place they could find, where the bark thickened like armor.
The monks had retreated. The children were still missing. Kalwa… had not returned.
And then, as the wind howled beneath the roots, they heard **a voice inside the tree**.
Not from outside.
From within the living wood.
"Vessel of memory… keeper of rupture… why do you run from the truth that made you?"
Iliya froze.
It wasn't a scream. It wasn't even loud.
It was spoken like a secret already known.
Salimbay stepped beside him, sword drawn, eyes darting between shadow and silence.
"It's inside. Beneath us."
They ran not away, but **downward**.
Into the roots.
The tunnel that led beneath the tree should have been sealed. It had been a twisted knot of sacred wood, bound by old ritual and glyph.
Now?
Split.
As if something from beneath had pushed upward.
Inside the hollow, they saw what remained:
A trail of ink-ash footprints
A cloak soaked in sea-salt
The scroll — the red-threaded bark half-burned, half-eaten
Not torn. Consumed.
"They took part of it," Iliya said. "Left the rest to mock us."
And on the far wall, freshly carved into the root:
"The gate weeps. The vessel bleeds. Dalom opens."
They found her just before dawn.
Kalwa stumbled through the upper walkways, blood seeping from her ribs. Not from a blade from inward splitting. as if something had tried to possess her and failed
She collapsed into Iliya's arms.
"He… was one of ours," she whispered. "The scribe. Or he had been."
"What did he take?" Iliya asked.
"Not just the scroll," she said, eyes dimming. "He took **a name.** One long sealed. One not meant to wake."
Her hand gripped his shoulder, weak but trembling.
"The Deep walks. It wears your shadow."
When dawn broke over the canopy, the sanctuary had changed.
No longer sacred. No longer safe.
Kalwa lay resting in the root-healer's chamber, her breath thin, her spirit flickering. The monks whispered protection rites. The memory-vessel children returned, eyes foggy, as if they'd been put to sleep by something ancient.
Iliya stood alone at the library's edge, looking down into the forest below.
Salimbay joined him.
"They came for you. They'll come again."
He didn't answer right away.
Then:
"Then I won't hide anymore."
She looked at him not with surprise, but with something closer to respect.
"We go to the shrine?"
"Yes," Iliya said. "We follow the half-map. We found what they tried to steal."
She nodded once.
And together, they descended into a world no longer sleeping.