Aelren arrived without warning.
Which wasn't unusual for him.
The man was the kind of elder who never announced himself, just showed up at the edge of a settlement with three days of road on his boots and silence in his throat, waiting for someone to notice. That was how it had always been — even before the last Noc'theran enclaves faded into dust.
When Tarren opened the door and saw him standing there, hood down, walking staff crusted with dried salt, he stared for a long moment.
Then stepped aside.
No words exchanged.
None needed.
---
Kael watched from the stairwell.
They didn't speak either.
Aelren's eyes met theirs.
And the silence between them stretched just slightly longer than comfort allowed.
---
They shared a meal in soft candlelight. Fish and root stew, with Mira's flatbread and boiled herbs that Aelren didn't ask the names of.
The man had the kind of presence that made a room feel older — like the house remembered things it hadn't seen. He smelled of cedar oil and ash.
Tarren finally broke the quiet. "You're far from your usual path."
Aelren grunted. "Paths shift."
"That's not an answer."
"Didn't offer one."
Tarren smirked. "Still a snake under the mountain, I see."
Aelren's mouth tugged upward, barely. "And you're still an oak trying to grow in a cliffside."
Mira served tea before the banter could sharpen.
---
Kael sat on a cushion near the hearth, watching.
Always watching.
Aelren's eyes drifted to them again.
"You let them sit through everything?" he asked, not unkindly.
"They remember what they want," Tarren said. "Might as well give them something worth remembering."
"They remember too much," Mira said under her breath.
---
Later, when Mira went to fetch water and Tarren stepped out to speak with a merchant, Aelren turned toward Kael fully.
The child didn't look away.
"You understand what you are?" Aelren asked in the old tongue — rough and rhythmic, like wind through gravel.
Kael answered without hesitation. "I understand what others are not."
That gave Aelren pause.
He leaned back on his folded legs.
"Where did you learn that language?" he asked, this time in Common.
Kael tilted their head. "It felt right."
"It's not taught anymore."
"I don't remember being taught."
Aelren hummed, eyes narrowed. "And yet you speak it with breath."
Kael shrugged. "Maybe I breathed before I was born."
---
Aelren didn't reply.
He just reached into his coat and pulled out a carved stone. Weathered. Smooth. Its surface was etched with the oldest sigils — marks made to be felt more than seen.
He handed it to Kael.
Kael accepted it like they already knew its weight.
"Keep that," Aelren said. "Don't show it unless it speaks first."
Kael turned it over once.
Then nodded.
---
That night, Aelren stood alone on the balcony, gazing at the swamp-misted city and the stars trapped above it.
Tarren joined him.
"She frightens me," Tarren said.
"He," Aelren corrected. "Today."
Tarren chuckled. "Tomorrow, they'll be someone else entirely."
"Not someone else," Aelren murmured. "Just… seen differently."
Tarren glanced sideways. "You know something, don't you?"
Aelren didn't answer.
Instead, he whispered an old prayer — not a protective one. A funeral verse.
Then said:
"Your child carries memory like a blade. And I don't know what they'll cut."
---
That evening, after the meal was cleared and the air smelled faintly of spice and tannery smoke, Aelren began to speak.
Not to the adults.
To Kael.
He sat cross-legged on the floor by the hearth, his old staff laid across his knees like a sleeping beast. His voice came low, measured, but not slow. The kind of storytelling that felt like truth even when the details were impossible.
"There was a time," he began, "when we did not hide.
Before chains. Before the shame.
Before the forgetting."
Kael didn't blink.
Mira sat with her sewing. Tarren leaned against the wall, arms folded, eyes half-shut. Both listened.
But only Kael watched like they'd heard the story before.
---
Aelren drew a circle in the ash beside the hearth.
Inside it, he marked three shapes — one sharp, one smooth, one broken.
He didn't name them.
He just looked up at Kael and said, "Tell me what they are."
Kael studied them for a long moment.
Then pointed:
"That's memory," they said, touching the broken one.
"That's breath," touching the smooth.
"And that," the sharp shape, "is the lie we made to survive."
Aelren's fingers twitched. Just barely.
Mira looked up from her stitching, brow furrowed.
Tarren didn't move.
Aelren smoothed the ash with a sweep of his palm.
"Good," he said quietly. "You listen with more than ears."
Kael tilted their head. "So do you."
---
Later that night, after Mira and Tarren had fallen asleep and the fire had gone to embers, Kael padded silently across the room and found Aelren sitting alone in the dark, eyes open, unmoving.
"Are you meditating?" Kael asked.
"No."
"Dreaming?"
"No."
Kael sat beside him.
They didn't speak for several minutes.
Then Aelren said, "You aren't afraid of me."
"You don't hide like others," Kael replied. "So I don't need to be."
Aelren chuckled. "Maybe you should be."
"I don't think I'll ever need to fear you. But I think you'll fear me one day."
The words weren't cruel. They weren't even said with force.
They were simple.
And true.
---
In the morning, Aelren prepared to leave.
He left no farewell gifts, no messages, no promises.
Just nodded once to Mira. Gripped Tarren's forearm in the old way.
And looked at Kael one last time.
"There is a storm buried in you," he said.
Kael didn't look away.
"Storms cleanse," they replied.
Aelren smiled, for real this time.
Then he left.
---
Hours later, Kael sat alone by the hearth, the small carved stone in their lap.
They didn't try to activate it. Didn't speak to it.
They just held it.
Turned it once.
Twice.
Then set it down carefully, tip-first into the ash, standing upright.
It stayed.
Perfectly balanced.
As if it had never belonged anywhere else.