Tarren was not a man who wasted words.
In a city like Kevarith, words could be stolen, twisted, or used to mark you as a troublemaker. Silence was safer. Safer to work, safer to survive.
But lately, silence had begun to feel like a weakness.
Because Kael filled it without even trying.
---
It started small. Little things he noticed when he came home from the dye pits.
Kael's gaze always on the horizon, not the ground.
Their hands never idle — not fidgeting like a normal child, but building. Stones into balanced towers. Strings into patterns. Chalk into maps of nowhere.
Most children had restlessness. Kael had intention.
---
Tarren kept these thoughts to himself at first. Mira worried enough for both of them.
But the past few weeks… the wall, the neighbors whispering, Kael's endless wandering eyes — it was harder to pretend the child wasn't pulling at something the rest of the world couldn't see.
And tonight, after Kael had gone to sleep, Tarren finally said aloud what he'd been swallowing for months.
---
"He's going to get hurt," he murmured.
Mira was stitching a tear in her healer's satchel. "What?"
"Kael," he said. "The way he looks at people. The way he doesn't look away when they glare back."
Mira didn't stop stitching. "He's only a child."
"That's what scares me," Tarren said.
---
Outside, the street hummed faintly with mana from the workshops. In here, there was only the scrape of Mira's needle and the hollow weight of unsaid things.
---
The next morning, Tarren decided to follow Kael.
Not to spy — just to watch. To see where his child's feet led when no one was guiding them.
---
Kael's path was deliberate. Down the slope, past the dying market, through the cracked cobblestone streets to the far wall. Always the far wall.
And there, they stood.
Still.
Silent.
Looking at something Tarren could not.
---
Tarren stood there for a long while, letting Kael think he wasn't there.
His work-stiff hands hung at his sides. He wasn't a stranger to walls — had spent most of his life standing in front of one kind or another. But this was different.
Kael stood like the stones themselves had secrets to tell.
Finally, Tarren broke the stillness.
---
"What is it you see here?"
Kael didn't turn. "I don't see it. I hear it. In my head. Like an itch that doesn't want to stop."
Tarren came up beside them, leaning one calloused hand against the low stones at his hip. "And what do you think it is?"
Kael tilted their head, thoughtful. "Something asleep. Something that remembers."
---
Tarren studied his child in silence. The answer didn't surprise him. Nothing Kael said did anymore.
"You know," Tarren said after a moment, "when I was your age, I used to think these walls were hollow. That if you pressed your ear to them, you'd hear the ocean."
Kael finally glanced at him. "Have you ever tried?"
"I did," he admitted, smiling faintly. "I heard nothing but my own breath."
---
Kael's eyes lingered on him, searching, as if weighing whether to say more.
"What if I can hear more than that?" they whispered.
"Then," Tarren said carefully, "you'll have to decide when it's safe to tell someone. Not everything you hear is for everyone else."
"Even you?"
His throat tightened. "Even me."
---
They stood like that a while.
The low market hum carried faintly on the breeze. The wall seemed to breathe along with them.
Finally, Kael said, "Why do you let me come here?"
"Because," Tarren said, "if I don't let you come here, you'll still find a way. This way I can be near."
---
There was a pause. Then Kael smiled — small, almost shy — and rested their hand briefly against his.
"Thank you, Father."
No one had called him that in public before.
Tarren felt something in his chest go taut, then loosen.
---
The southern slope was quiet at this hour.
Just a few traders dragging empty carts back uphill and an old draft beast tied lazily near a half-collapsed stall.
Tarren was about to tell Kael it was time to head home when the quiet broke.
A wheel shrieked.
Then a snap.
---
One of the empty carts, stacked high with old barrels, had hit a gap in the cobbles.
The pin holding the yoke gave way, and the whole load lurched sideways, rolling fast down the incline.
Straight toward Kael.
The draft beast, startled, reared back with a wild cry, ropes straining.
---
Tarren didn't think.
He shoved Kael behind him and braced for the impact, his shoulder low, one arm out.
The barrel cart struck hard.
The force rattled every bone in him. He planted his feet, teeth clenched, as a barrel burst and rolled, but he kept himself between the danger and his child.
---
And then there was stillness.
---
"You all right?" he barked, looking over his shoulder.
Kael wasn't crying.
Wasn't even shaken.
They looked… calm. Watching him.
Like the chaos hadn't been chaos at all.
---
"You should be afraid," he said without meaning to.
Kael's head tilted. "Why?"
"Because that could have killed you."
"But it didn't."
---
Tarren swallowed.
There was no defiance in Kael's voice. No arrogance. Just a simple truth, said like fact.
That calm unnerved him more than the near-accident.
---
The cart owner came running down, apologies tumbling out, but Tarren barely heard them.
He gripped Kael's shoulder, steadying them, and something heavy settled behind his ribs.
It was pride.
And it was fear.
Both at once.
---
"Come on," he said. "We're going home."
Kael nodded and followed without a word.
---
That night, Tarren couldn't sleep.
He sat by the unlit hearth, staring into the dark, and wondered what kind of strength grows in a child who has already learned not to fear the world.
And if the world would ever be ready for it.