There in her dreams, Itzima stood.
In front of a door.
It rose like a scar in the wall—oak warped and blackened by storms and smoke, its surface cracked into ridges that caught the faintest glimmers of sour light. Iron nails bit deep through the planks in crooked lines, binding them into a rough Z-brace, as though the wood had been broken and stitched back together too many times. Each nail looked hammered not for strength but for punishment, their heads rusted sharp as teeth.
The hinges sagged, black with age, swollen by damp, the metal blistered into flakes. They looked as though they could scream if moved, but no sound came. Only silence, waiting.
A small slit of a window sat near the top, patched with parchment yellowed and brittle, veins of age spidering across it like frozen streams. The skin of it let through a pale glow that did not belong to sun or moon. A kind of light that had forgotten warmth.
It was not carved. Not proud. Not beautiful.
But it endured.
Her hand rose, unbidden, and she rapped her knuckles against it.
Knock.
Knock.
The sound did not echo as wood should. Instead it went inward, devoured at once. The silence that returned was not emptiness but weight — heavy, pressing back at her chest.
She pressed her palm to it. The surface burned warm, far warmer than dead wood should be. Beneath it, faint, she felt a pulse. A heartbeat not her own.
Her throat tightened. She leaned closer, forehead brushing the cool air. "Hello?" she whispered.
Nothing answered.
The warmth fled, leaving the wood dead again. The silence returned and settled like ash. The door seemed to tell her plainly: not for you. Not yet.
Her hand fell away. She turned, or perhaps the door receded, for when she stepped the wall faded behind her.
She woke with her palm still half-curled, as though it expected wood.
————————————————————————————————————
Morning came pale. The first fingers of light slipped between shutters, striping the floor. The house creaked faintly with the cool, as though exhaling in sleep. Itzima lay still, heart beating against her ribs with a stubborn echo of her dream.
Her hand went to her throat. The pendant there, a segmented eggshell bound in silver links, was faintly warm, as though it too remembered.
She dressed quickly, tied her hair, ate a bowl of porridge barely tasted, and stepped out into the village.
The square was already stirring.
The blacksmith's hammer rose and fell in slow rhythm, the sound flat in the cool air. His forge belched smoke sharp with coal, heat already spilling into the square. A baker's boy darted between customers, carrying trays of steaming loaves, the smell of yeast and crust chasing him like a halo. Children played a chasing game around the well, their shrieks thin as birdsong. A donkey brayed in protest at a cart too heavily laden.
Life was here. Yet beneath it lay something else, something brittle.
She caught whispers.
A woman muttered of her hound barking through the night, hackles raised toward the woods. A farmer swore his cow would not graze, though the pasture was rich. A traveler at the inn claimed he had seen shadows too tall to be trees, moving against the moon.
They did not say these things loudly, but the murmurs wove together like nettles in stone.
Itzima shifted her basket higher on her hip and kept her head down. She had long known the village eyes. The way conversations paused when she passed. The way greetings came too late, too curt, and too shallow to be sincere. To be self-sufficient was to be strange. To be strange was to be unwelcome.
At the baker's stall, she exchanged coins for bread. The baker's wife smiled, but the smile was brittle, breaking at the edges. When Itzima turned, she caught an old man's sneer, his gaze sliding down to her basket and back up as though weighing her worth and finding it light.
Children stared too, but their eyes were different — curious, untainted, bright with a wondering that had not yet learned the coldness of adults. One small girl even lifted a hand as though to wave, before her mother pulled her aside sharply.
Itzima let out a breath and walked on.
The temple stood at the square's edge, pale lunar stone catching the sun and turning it blue-grey. It shimmered faintly, as though it drank the day's light and reflected only what it wanted.
A small line of villagers shuffled through its doors. A woman carrying rosemary, lips pressed in silent prayer. A child clutching a pebble as though it were a pearl. An old man hobbling forward with a stick too thin for his weight. Each brought their offerings — milk, berries, coins — laying them before Ix-Tazel, goddess of the moon.
Itzima paused only briefly. She had no rosemary, no pebble, no stick. She had no patience for empty ritual. Her prayers had been spent long ago, and the goddess had not answered.
————————————————————————————————————
Beyond the square loomed the Library.
It dwarfed the market stalls and the cottages, its pillars climbing into shadow, its walls alive with shifting tapestries that bent and rewove themselves endlessly. Images of forgotten wars marched across them: soldiers in bronze, beasts with too many limbs, towers crumbling in fire. Each story rewove as she watched, as if refusing to settle on one memory.
Inside, the air was cool. Dust motes spun in beams of light like things with their own slow purpose. The shelves groaned with weight, packed tight with volumes bound in bark, in hide, even in hammered copper. Some hummed faintly, as though displeased at being opened.
Itzima moved to her usual table. A cracked codex waited, heavy as if carved rather than written.
She read quietly, lips parting over the ancient script. Words of truths. How flame could be named harmless. How water could remember itself. How names, if spoken right, could bind a person tighter than rope.
She tested one.
A candle burned at her side. She held her palm above the flame, steady. The heat licked at her skin — but her flesh did not blister. The fire seemed to recognize her and relent, its flame bowing slightly as if tamed by a quiet word.
Encouraged, she tried another. The text spoke of water's memory. She dipped her fingertip into the jug, whispered the phrase, and pulled her finger back. The surface held, curved like glass, clinging higher than it should. Only when she blinked did it ripple, embarrassed, collapsing back to ordinary.
She pressed her lips into a smile.
A third passage spoke of "weight undone." She took a pebble from the floor and let it fall. Midway down, she caught it with a word, and for a heartbeat it hung there, trembling in the air. Her breath snagged in her throat. Then it dropped with a clatter, as if deciding she was not yet ready to command it.
Her hands shook faintly as she closed the codex. She traced the margin, where some old hand had scrawled: Choose gently. Each choosing narrows. There is always a cost, even when silence pays it.
Itzima read the line twice. It pressed harder the second time.
The hours slipped. Lamps were lit along the walls. A librarian passed, robes brushing stone, eyes narrowing faintly in warning not to linger too long after sunset. A younger scholar at the far table glanced at her once, lips curled as though wondering why a village girl wasted her hours among the shelves. She ignored him.
The tapestries shifted again as she left. A battle scene gave way to a single figure, too large for the wall, eyes many and mouths too wide. She shivered and looked away.
————————————————————————————————————
By the time she emerged, twilight had stained the sky.
The square was thinning. Stalls shuttered. The baker's boy swept crumbs from tables. Smoke curled from chimneys, supper already underway. The temple bell tolled the hour, its tone too deep for so small a village.
The forge was dark, though it never closed so early. Its silence lay heavy, unnatural. A dog growled faintly from a doorway, then whimpered and retreated inside. Children were already indoors. No laughter. No chasing. Only the hush of shutters drawn against the night.
Itzima's steps slowed. The road stretched homeward, familiar yet altered. The air pressed thick against her skin.
Her hand rose to her pendant. It was warm — warmer than it had been all day.
She told herself it was nothing. That absence weighed on her imagination. That Arsanguir would return, as he always had.
But as she walked, the silence followed her. Each shuttered window seemed an eye that refused to see her. Each breath of wind sounded like something holding itself back.
At her door, she paused. The weight of the day clung to her like a shadow.
It felt like the world was holding its breath.
Like a knock that had never been answered.