The cell was meant to humble him.
It was not cold, not cruel. The Tribunal did not use chains of iron or pits of filth. That would make martyrs.
Instead, they gave him a clean room with stone walls, a narrow bed, and food left in silence through a hatch. The light from the window shifted with the hours, reminding him that time belonged to them, not him.
But Frido was not humbled.
He was listening.
The walls themselves carried echoes. The Tribunal had built its dungeons beneath the Hall so that all condemned might hear the scratch of quills above their heads. The endless sound of scribes recording judgments was meant to crush hope. But Frido, seated cross-legged on the floor, heard something else.
Between the scratching, there were pauses.
And in those pauses… faint murmurs.
The people in the gallery had not dispersed quietly. Their voices had lingered, pressed into the stone, leaving behind an aftertaste of defiance.
"I hear him."
Faint. Fading. But still there.
---
The Watcher
On the third day, a guard came to his door. Not a brute. Not a soldier. A young man with eyes too soft for this place.
"You should speak," the guard whispered through the bars. "If you confess, they'll free you. Not all at once, but eventually. If you keep resisting… you'll vanish like the others."
Frido raised his gaze slowly.
No words.
Instead, he touched two fingers to his lips, then pressed them against the stone.
The guard frowned. "What does that mean?"
Frido picked up his charcoal stub and wrote on the floor.
"Even if I vanish, my silence will not."
The guard shivered. He said nothing more, but he lingered, as if unsure whether he was guarding a prisoner—or being guarded himself.
---
Outside the Tribunal
Mirea could not sleep. The words she had spoken during the trial—her confession—looped in her mind. She had declared herself openly. There was no return.
Yllara sat across the chamber, crown still upon her head, though it weighed heavily. "They will delay the verdict as long as they can," she said. "They fear what will happen if they condemn him quickly. They fear even more what will happen if they release him."
Loras leaned against the window frame, arms crossed. His jaw was tight. "So they'll trap him in between. A symbol locked away where no one can see him, hoping the people forget."
"They won't forget," Mirea whispered.
Her hands clenched the parchment she had carried from the archives. Forbidden texts. Old accounts of other trials, other silences weaponized into law. She read them now not as history but as instruction.
"They built their power on silence," she said. "But they do not understand his. His silence is not absence. It is presence. That is what terrifies them."
Yllara studied her closely. "You love him, don't you?"
Mirea's throat tightened. She looked down, ashamed. "I—" She could not finish. The truth was too raw.
But Yllara smiled faintly, not cruelly. "Love is not weakness, Mirea. In times like these, it is the sharpest blade we carry."
---
The Prison Transforms
Days passed. Frido did not mark them by food or light. He marked them by footsteps.
He began to notice patterns. Guards changed shifts with precision. Scribal echoes waxed and waned depending on which trials were underway above. At night, when all fell still, he listened deeper.
There—beneath the walls. Faint tapping. Like stone against stone.
He pressed his ear to the floor.
A rhythm. Not accidental. Not rats.
A human signal.
Tap. Pause. Tap tap.
He recognized it. An old code used by farmers during sieges, passed down quietly in villages.
Slowly, with care, he tapped back.
For hours they traded messages in silence. The one beneath was a prisoner too, held in another cell. A mason from the northern villages. His crime: speaking against taxes that starved his town.
When Frido finally tapped his name, there was a long pause. Then the reply:
"I hear you."
Frido closed his eyes. He breathed deeply. The prison was no longer stone. It was resonance.
---
The Whispering Corridor
Word spread quickly among the cells. Taps became codes, codes became songs. No voices were raised—no guard heard rebellion shouted. But in silence, in rhythm, the prisoners began to share.
Stories. Hopes. Names of loved ones. Frido gave them something more: not just listening, but acknowledgment.
When a prisoner tapped their grief, Frido answered with a single line of charcoal on his wall, then pressed his palm against the stone as though offering it to them.
The prisoners began to do the same. Their walls filled with silent marks. Symbols. Bells. Runes Mirea had once taught him.
The prison was becoming an archive. A library of the voiceless.
The guards noticed strange behavior: inmates calmer, less broken. Some even smiled when led to judgment. The Tribunal panicked. They had meant to cage a man. Instead, they had caged a movement.
---
The Council's Dilemma
In the upper chamber, the judges argued.
"If we kill him, we make him a martyr."
"If we free him, he becomes a saint."
"If we keep him, the people will build shrines at our gates."
"What then?" one demanded.
The chief judge's voice was cold. "We do what we always do. We wait until memory fades."
But memory was not fading. It was multiplying.
---
Mirea's Defiance
Mirea began to act. By day, she studied transcripts of the Tribunal's rulings, hunting for contradictions. By night, she wrote—letters disguised as scholarly treatises, copied by sympathetic scribes, spread into taverns and marketplaces.
Each letter ended with the same line:
"I hear him."
The phrase caught fire. Farmers spoke it at dawn before their plows. Mothers whispered it to their children at night. Soldiers carved it into the hilts of their swords.
Even within the Tribunal's walls, servants passed it in murmurs, afraid but unable to stop.
Yllara used her crown to shield Mirea's work. "Let them summon me again," she said. "I will stand before them every day if needed."
And Loras—Loras gathered knights. Quietly, discreetly. Not to storm the gates. Not yet. But to be ready when waiting no longer served.
---
The Night of Storms
One night, a storm broke over Dorthvale. Rain lashed the stone, lightning shook the frescoed ceilings. The scribes fled the hall, terrified the storm was a judgment from above.
In his cell, Frido sat beneath the shaft of light—now replaced by rain. It poured through the window, soaking the floor.
He dipped his charcoal in the water, staining it darker, and began to draw on the walls. Not words this time. Shapes.
Bells. Bridges. Circles that touched without breaking.
The storm became his ink.
And when thunder rolled, the prisoners tapped in rhythm, their codes rising and falling like a hidden choir.
The guards shouted for silence, but the sound was not noise. It was music without voice. It could not be stopped.
---
The Tribunal Watches
At dawn, the judges came to his cell.
They expected defiance. They expected begging.
Instead, they found walls covered in symbols.
Symbols echoed in other cells.
Symbols even some guards had copied on their own armor straps.
The chief judge trembled. "You have infected this place."
Frido raised his gaze. Slowly, deliberately, he pressed his bound hands against the wall.
The charcoal left its mark.
Silence, living.
The judge turned away. His voice shook. "Prepare the final trial. This ends soon."
But even he knew—it was already too late.
---
Mirea's Dream
That night, Mirea dreamt of bells. They hung in the sky like constellations, each one glowing softly. Frido stood among them, his back to her, light gathering around him.
She tried to call his name—but no sound came. Only silence.
Yet he turned, as if he had heard her anyway.
She woke with tears on her cheeks.
And for the first time, she whispered aloud what she had kept hidden:
"I love you."
The words vanished into the dark. No one heard.
Or so she thought.
But beyond the stone, in his cell, Frido lifted his head.
As though her silence had reached him.
---
End of Chapter 59