The rumor began in the marketplace, as so many things did.
It started small. A whispered aside from Alren, a broad-shouldered boy from the northern side of Kevarith. He had been stacking crates with a friend when someone asked why he'd been late.
"Had to help Mira's kid," he said, without thinking. "They talked to me. In old words. Like they'd known them their whole life."
The words slipped out without weight, but the older vendors nearby froze. One repeated it quietly. Another shook her head. And just like that, it spread.
---
By the time the rumor reached the dye pits, it was no longer a quiet remark.
Mira's child knows the old tongue.
---
Tarren heard it while hauling a barrel of resin to the vats.
He ignored it. Pretended to.
But every time he passed another worker, he could feel their stares tighten.
When the bell dismissed them that night, he came home late, hoping the story would be gone from his head by the time he reached the door. It wasn't.
---
Mira was waiting, needle in hand, stitching a patch on one of Kael's tunics.
"You've heard it too," she said without looking up.
"Yes."
"About Alren."
"Yes."
The thread caught on the cloth, snapping with a sharp sound. Mira sighed, set it aside. "I told him not to talk to strangers."
"It wasn't strangers," Tarren said quietly. "It was another Noc'thera boy."
"That makes it worse."
---
They sat in silence for a while. The house was warm with the smell of steeped herbs. Kael was asleep in their nest of blankets near the embers.
"You think it's the curse?" Mira asked.
"No," Tarren said. "The curse changes how they look. This… this is something else."
---
When she finally spoke again, her voice was low. "What do we do?"
"Nothing," Tarren said. "What can we do? They spoke like they were born with it."
Mira stared into the embers. "If Elder Sira hears—"
"She's already heard," Tarren said.
---
The next morning, a boy from the southern lane knocked on their door with a message.
> "The elder asks for the child."
Not the parents. The child.
---
Mira stood in the doorway, blocking his view of the inside. "That isn't how it works."
The boy looked uncomfortable but firm. "That's what she said."
"I'll come instead."
"She said no."
---
Kael, still buttoning their tunic, said quietly, "I'll go."
---
Mira knelt and took their shoulders. "Do you understand who you're going to see?"
"Yes."
"And why?"
"Yes."
---
Something in their voice made her pause. She glanced at Tarren. His mouth was a hard line, but he nodded once.
"Go," he said. "But remember who you are."
Kael tilted their head. "I think that's why she wants me."
---
Sira's home crouched at the end of a street where the stone gave way to tree roots, twisting like ancient hands into the earth. The outer wall had collapsed long ago, leaving only a narrow path to a heavy hanging cloth that served as a door.
Inside, the air was cool and dry. Racks of dried herbs leaned against walls carved from old stone. The shelves were lined with small, smooth black stones — dozens, maybe hundreds, each with faint carvings.
---
Sira sat cross-legged in the center, as still as a shadow. Her hair, white as chalk, hung long down her back.
"Come closer," she said without opening her eyes.
Kael obeyed.
---
"You spoke the old tongue with Alren."
Kael nodded. "I didn't mean to. It just… came out."
Sira opened her eyes then, and they were sharp as glass.
"Good," she said. "That means you weren't performing."
---
She gestured to the floor in front of her. "Sit."
---
Kael sat. They waited.
Sira studied them, silent, the way a hawk studies a rabbit — not deciding whether to strike, but deciding what kind of creature it was.
---
"You know words your parents do not," she said finally.
"Yes."
"You know them without learning."
"Yes."
"You speak them as if the language was made for you."
Kael hesitated. "Isn't it?"
---
Sira's eyes narrowed. "Do you know why this happens?"
Kael shook their head. "I thought everyone felt it. Like… remembering a story you heard once, but too long ago to remember who told it."
---
Sira leaned forward. "No. Most of us do not feel it. We remember scraps. Pieces. Broken echoes of what we once were. Even your parents carry only fragments."
She placed a hand, light as falling ash, on Kael's chest.
"But you," she said, "carry more."
---
"When the world broke us," Sira said, "they tried to strip away everything — our homes, our names, and our words. They thought if they took the words, they could take the memory. But blood remembers."
She tapped Kael's chest.
---
"Over time, that memory grows faint in most. Quiet. So quiet that we can live and die without ever hearing it again.
But sometimes, once in many generations, a child is born whose blood remembers louder.
It sings. It hears. It speaks without being taught."
---
Kael whispered, "Like me."
"Yes," Sira said. "Like you."
---
She let the silence hang there, heavy, waiting for Kael to ask.
---
"Will that make people angry?" Kael asked at last.
"Yes," Sira said plainly. "The world is always angriest at what it does not understand. And when you speak, they will hear something that reminds them of what they tried to bury."
---
"So I have to hide?"
"No," Sira said firmly. "You must choose when to show it. If you hide forever, the tongue dies with you. If you speak too freely, they will strike at you before you learn to use what you carry."
---
She reached behind her and pulled a thin cord from a small wooden box. Three pale beads, polished smooth.
"Our people used to wear these when their blood remembered too much. It warned others: this one hears what we cannot."
She held it out. "It will not make them leave you alone. But the right ones will recognize you."
---
Kael took the beads.
---
When Kael stepped back out into the light, the sky was washed with gold and violet. The market noise returned like a tide: hawkers, carts, the hum of a thousand lives.
But their steps felt different.
Each word, each sound, was sharper now.
---
At the top of the lane, Mira was waiting, arms folded.
"You went," she said.
"Yes."
"And?"
Kael looked up at her, serious. "She said my blood remembers more than yours."
Mira froze, her lips parting. "She said that?"
Kael nodded. "She said I have to be careful."
---
Mira knelt, hugged them tight. For a long time, she didn't speak. When she finally did, her voice was soft.
"She's right."
---
That night, while the house slept, Kael lay awake with the beads curled in their palm.
They had known they were different for a long time.
Different in ways no one could see — ways that came from dreams that weren't dreams, and memories that belonged to a life before this one.
Different in how they thought, how they saw, how they moved through a world that felt too slow for them.
But this was something else.
Now they understood there was another reason.
Not just what they carried from before they were born…
but what they carried in their blood.
Two kinds of difference, woven together:
the quiet voice of another life, and the louder one that had always been here, waiting for them to listen.