The ridge path eastward clung to the mountainside like a stubborn scar. One wrong step meant a tumble into gullies where the wind howled all year, but it was the only road leading toward the stone valleys. The dawn light spilled pale gold, catching on frost that glazed the prayer flags stretched between rock spires. Their colors—red, blue, yellow, green, white—had long since faded, but they still whispered when the wind pulled at them.
Arya drew his cloak tighter. The mountain air was thin and cold enough to nip the tips of his ears. Every breath puffed white, and each exhale reminded him how fragile his body still was, no matter what storm slept in his ribs.
Ahead, Ketu strode with the swagger of a man pretending the narrow path didn't scare him. His horn tapped lightly against his back. Every few steps, he cocked his head, as though listening to something beneath the rush of the wind. Mira followed close behind him, her staff balanced across her shoulders, humming a tune with no melody—just noise to keep her teeth from chattering. Sagar brought up the rear with two Guards at his flanks, his trident strapped, his gaze always counting, measuring, judging the world in terms of ambush.
Arya had grown familiar with silence that wasn't his. It came too often: silence that belonged to Ash-walkers, silence that belonged to the teacher made of absence. But this morning, the silence was alive with murmur. Whispers skittered over the ridge, slipping between the rocks, brushing the edges of his thoughts.
At first he thought it was villagers chanting prayers in the valley below. But the words didn't settle into any language he knew. They weren't prayers. They weren't even human conversation. They were fragments—half syllables, breathless laments—that threaded under his skin like icy veins.
"They're not the wind," Yeshe said. The old nun walked beside Arya, her cane finding stones as surely as a hawk finds prey. Blind eyes faced the cliffs without flinching. "Too jagged. Too crowded. These are voices without mouths."
Mira stopped humming. "So… ghosts?"
"No," Yeshe said, lips tightening. "Ghosts speak in grief. These speak in hunger."
A chill ran down Arya's spine. He rubbed his palm, tracing the faint scars of his vow-cuts. The storm inside shifted, eager to break free. But he remembered the lesson of the silence-teacher: not everything was solved by thunder.
The path narrowed further into a shelf, hemmed by stone walls on both sides. There, almost hidden by lichen, stood a shrine. It was small, cracked, forgotten. Its lips of stone were chipped; its surface dulled by moss and soot. Once, it must have been bright with vermilion and saffron powder, lamps blazing during festivals. Now it was starved of offerings, except for a few hardened grains of rice at its base.
The whispers thickened near it, wrapping the group in a cold shroud. Arya felt them tug at his breath. His chest tightened. He wasn't imagining it: the shrine wasn't abandoned. Something had claimed it.
Sagar raised a hand, halting the group. The Guards fanned out in practiced formation. Even the trident tips looked wary. Ketu crouched low, pressing his palm to the ground. His brow furrowed as though he'd just tasted sour fruit.
"Not soldiers," he muttered. "Not fog either. This is debt. The kind that lingers when no one remembers paying it."
Arya's stomach twisted. "Debt to who?"
As if in answer, the shrine exhaled. Dust poured upward in a slow spiral. It spun into faces—half-formed, half-forgotten. Old men with wrinkles like cracks, women with shawls of shadow, children whose eyes were hollow sockets. Their mouths moved, whispering ceaselessly, a thousand voices begging in the same breath.
"Souls bound to vows they didn't make," Yeshe said grimly. "A shrine stolen by hunger. It feeds on their names."
Mira gripped her staff. "Then we end it." Fire already threatened to spark at her fingertips.
"No," Arya said quickly. His voice cracked but steadied. Everyone turned. He felt the weight of their stares but pressed on. "Not fire. If they're whispers, they want to be heard. Burning them would only erase what little is left. That's what the silence-being wanted from me: noise. But this isn't noise—it's memory."
Sagar's eyes narrowed. "You're proposing mercy for thieves."
"I'm proposing small circles," Arya replied.
The captain didn't argue, but his jaw was stone.
Arya stepped forward. His knees trembled as the whispers surged, rushing at him like cold water. His ears filled with fragments of confessions, bargains, curses, prayers—so many voices fighting to be first. He wanted to cover his ears, to scream, but instead he pressed his palm against the cracked shrine stone.
"No storm," he whispered. "Only breath."
The vow-scars lit faintly. Words echoed through him: no fear, no pride, no harm to mine, no village as price. The shrine shook under his hand, stone dust trickling. The faces leaned closer, desperate.
"What do you want?" Arya asked, his voice almost breaking.
A single voice rose above the rest, thin as a reed flute: To be remembered.
Arya's throat tightened. His mind filled with fragments of the flute boy at the festival, the starving men tolling the road, Harish's hungry map. Always the same hunger: not gold, not flesh, but remembrance. To matter.
He closed his eyes and exhaled slow, forming a circle in the air above the shrine. "Then breathe with us," he whispered. "Not to bind, not to steal. Just to belong."
The circle pulsed faint blue. His breath filled it, then Mira's sharp inhale, Yeshe's steady draw, Ketu's reluctant huff, even the Guards' ragged exhales. The whispers lunged at it—and paused.
One by one, faces leaned into the circle. Not to devour it, but to rest. Their murmurs softened, blending into a low hum. The shrine's cracked lips shifted, almost smiling. Dust settled, as if the stone itself exhaled relief.
The cold loosened. The ridge felt like a ridge again, not a grave.
Arya staggered back, exhausted. His palm throbbed, but the storm within was calm, content.
Mira peered at the shrine. "So… you convinced a crowd of ghosts to join our breathing exercise."
"Yes," Yeshe said. Her tone carried a rare warmth. "And now they are people again, for a little while."
Ketu let out a sharp laugh. "Cheap trick, boy. You'll put priests out of business."
Sagar grunted but said nothing. That was the closest Arya would get to approval.
They turned to continue east. But Arya froze when he saw it—high on the ridge, where the trail curved. A figure crouched, cloak drawn tight, one knee up like a predator waiting. A faint red glow blinked in the shadow where its eye should have been.
The watcher.
Arya's stomach twisted. First silence. Then whispers. Now the same red-eyed figure, never intervening, only watching, measuring.
The storm inside his ribs stirred uneasily, drumming against his chest. The lesson wasn't finished.