The ceiling above me breathes.
Not literally, but I swear I see the swirling patterns pulsing with some hidden life. Deep blacks coil into reds and golds, the carvings shaped like crying eyes and coiled serpents—intricate, eerie, and somehow beautiful. The longer I look, the more they seem to watch me back.
I don't move. I don't speak. I just lie there, still as the grave I know I was thrown into.
The silence is shattered by the soft sound of bare feet pattering against the wooden floor. A boy enters—or no, not a boy. Something other. Short, childlike in size, but his gait is tired, too tired for any child. His hands are gnarled from work, his back slightly bent from years that shouldn't belong to someone with such a young face.
He carries a bowl of water and a towel, his eyes lowered in focus, muttering to himself.
"Let's clean the corpse again, Akolaz," he grumbles. "One day, she'll surprise you and blink." He lets out a snort. "Delusions keep you warm, don't they?"
He reaches the edge of the table—this thing I lie on, with its symbols and runes that look like they're etched in bone and blood—and finally looks up.
His breath catches.
The bowl trembles.
So do I.
Our eyes lock, mine wide open for the first time in years. His are wide with disbelief.
"Shkmah be praised," he breathes, reverent and terrified all at once.
I don't know why that name—Shkmah—makes my stomach twist. But it does.
I turn my head sharply, a reflex, and the bowl slips from his hands. The water splashes across the wood, the metal clattering across the floor with a loud, accusing ring.
"Ahhh! Bloody bones and cursed moons!" Akolaz shouts, leaping back. "Can't you rise from the dead without causing trouble, woman?! I just scrubbed this damn floor!"
He glares at me like I'm a stubborn pot he's been scrubbing for hours.
I blink.
He scowls.
And then suddenly, as if lightning has struck his brain, his face shifts from irritation to delight.
"Oh my stars, oh my precious moons—you're awake! I knew it! I told them! Every one of those mole-brained dull-heads! They laughed! They spat! 'She's dead, Akolaz!' they said. But look who's blinking and breathing now, huh?!"
I sit up slowly, each movement aching and surreal. "Who are you?" I rasp. My voice is dry dust wrapped in gravel.
He doesn't hear me. He's too busy pacing in frantic joy, arms flailing.
"For nine years, they called me mad. But I saw it! That flicker in your hand the night the winds blew west. That one time your toe moved—don't ask me how I noticed. I have a thing for toes. Point is, I saw you weren't done."
He places a hand over his tiny chest like he's just given a rousing speech to an audience of statues.
"I vowed I'd nurse you till your eyes opened or I keeled over first. And guess what? I'm still standing—well, sort of—and here you are, blinking like an owl in the sun!"
I clutch the edge of the slab I'm on. "Wait… Nine years?"
That shuts him up.
Just like that, the room folds inwards with silence. Akolaz's mouth freezes open, like a puppet whose strings were cut mid-performance.
He doesn't answer. He doesn't need to. The way his eyes flick to the door, then to the strange carvings on the walls, then finally back to me—there's enough truth in that silence to choke me.
Nine years.
The world forgot me.
But someone didn't.
I don't know why he saved me. I don't know how I'm alive.
But I do know this—
My heart didn't start beating again for nothing.
The door creaked open again.
I looked up just in time to see him — Akolaz — stepping out of what could only be a kitchen. He was holding a large tray stacked with steaming bowls, the scent hitting me before I could even react. My eyes trailed the dishes: thick stew, grilled meat, something bread-like, and a few things I couldn't name but desperately wanted to taste.
I stood near the edge of the room, staring at the tray, then at him. His face was as small as ever, scrunched in focused irritation, like balancing food was a divine task no one had trained him for. He used his foot to kick the door shut behind him.
"You can sit, you know," he said, setting the tray down on a long, carved table. "I don't bite."
I didn't move.
"If I wanted to," he added, glancing over his shoulder, "I'd have done that in the third year. Not now."
Somehow, that ridiculous statement made me feel slightly less tense. Not safe. Just… less like I needed to bolt.
I took a few cautious steps toward the table. My stomach growled — loudly — and I flinched at the betrayal.
He heard it. Of course he did. And smiled. "There it is. The sound of the living."
I sat. I didn't ask what anything was. I didn't care. I just reached for a bowl and started eating.
The food was hot, sharp, and spiced with something that tugged at memory. I didn't stop to question it. I didn't even breathe properly. I just kept eating — spoon after spoon — like the warmth could fill the years I'd lost.
He didn't speak for a while. Just watched me with that unreadable expression on his face. Then he said softly, "I still can't believe it."
I paused but didn't look up.
"You moved sometimes," he continued. "Your fingers. Your eyelids. But your heart? Nothing. No beat. Your body was cold — frozen."
My grip on the spoon tightened.
"I was losing hope," he said, voice lower now. "Truth is, I should've given up. Everyone said you were gone — long gone. But something told me…"
He stopped mid-thought.
"Nine years," I said, my voice quiet. Raw.
He didn't respond, but when I finally looked up, the look on his face said it all.
So I stared at him.
I didn't know what I felt. I didn't know what I was supposed to feel.
I just stared.
The food was gone. My stomach full for the first time in... what, years?
Time was a blur. I didn't want to count it. I didn't want to think of the missing nine. Or what had happened before. But I couldn't keep pretending. I needed to ask.
We were in the living room — if you could call it that. A small open space with worn rugs, crooked shelves stuffed with old books, herbs hanging dry from nails, and a creaky couch that looked like it had stories of its own. I sat on the edge, knees pulled close to my chest, arms around them like I needed to anchor myself to the present.
Akolaz was across from me, perched on a stool too small for anyone but him. He was peeling something. Fruit? Root? I didn't care.
My voice came out quieter than I expected. "Why?"
He didn't look up. "Why what?"
"Why did you wait? For that long? Why didn't you just... let me go?"
He stopped peeling. The silence between us stretched like thick fog.
"Because I couldn't," he finally said. "Something told me... you were not to be buried."
"That's not an answer."
He looked at me now. His eyes were sharper than they had any right to be. "I didn't know you. Not from Adam. Knew none of your kin, if you had any. But when they left you here... cold as snow, heart still as stone, yet fingers twitching—" he raised one of his own as if reenacting the motion, "—eyes fluttering every moon's turn... I knew something was wrong. Falsely rewired. Like a tale missing its ending."
"That doesn't make sense."
"Most truths don't," he replied, unfazed. "But I am no fool. I know the work of Shkmah when I see it."
That name again.
I stiffened. "What is that?"
"Not what. Who." His voice dropped low. "A force. A will. Some call it gift, others curse. But I know it moves through chosen hands, now and again. And you, Kaela... you were claimed. By Him."
I blinked.
"I do not know the reason," he continued, leaning forward, eyes never leaving mine. "I cannot say why He tethered you to breathless life or what fate awaits your second becoming. But I am certain... it is for good. That was all I needed."
He sat back, a small, tired smile playing at his lips.
"So I stayed," he said simply. "I fed you. Bathed you. Spoke to you like you could hear. I kept your skin from breaking, your bones from shrinking. I waited. I prayed. And I cursed, yes. Often. But I never stopped."
I couldn't speak. My tongue was heavy. My thoughts even more so.
He saw it. Let it sit between us.
"You're special," he said, quieter now, but firmer. "You exude it. You do not see it yet. Mayhap you never did. But I know it. It's in your bones. Your breath. Whatever you were before, it matters not. The mark is there."
I opened my mouth. Closed it. I didn't even know what I wanted to say.
He wasn't finished.
"I do not know what your gift is, nor your role in what is to come. But I know this: it must be harnessed. For the will of Shkmah. For the balance of what still remains good."
Silence.
Even the flames in the hearth seemed to hold their breath.
And me?
I just sat there.
Speechless.
Because deep, deep down…
Somewhere past the ache and the hunger and the confusion...
I believed him.