Chapter 8 – Echoes in the Dying Light
The group's footsteps echoed softly on the worn cobblestones as they made their way back from the
northern outskirts toward Mare Rosso. The sun, a heavy orb of molten gold, hung low on the
horizon, casting long shadows that stretched ahead like fingers reaching for the city.
Behind them lay the wild fields and ruined remnants of Vale — or whatever had once stood there.
Now, the broken rooftops and crumbling walls melted into the fading light, swallowed by creeping
vines and the chill of approaching dusk.
Ahead, Mare Rosso's lively streets began to glow with the warm flicker of lanterns, promising the
familiar bustle of market voices, laughter, and the rich scent of roasted almonds and sea salt. But
the farther they walked from the silence of the outskirts, the more the city seemed both inviting and
strange — vibrant yet somehow hollow, as if carrying echoes of a story just out of reach.
The air grew heavier, the fading music from distant taverns weaving through the twisting alleys like
a ghostly thread. The group began to drift apart, each step falling into an uneasy rhythm — Liza's
gaze fixed on the bleeding red horizon, Elli's mind wrapped in old legends, John's sharp eyes
scanning the shadows, and Ren... Ren caught fleeting glimpses of shapes and memories, of places
whispered in half-forgotten stories.
In a narrow street bathed in lamplight, Ren's breath caught. Between flickering shadows, he
thought he saw the faint outline of rooftops — old, broken, forgotten — framed by the crimson sky.
It was the shape of Vale, or something like it, tucked away just beyond the city's edge.
He blinked, and the vision vanished, swallowed by the warm glow of Mare Rosso's streets.
But the feeling lingered — that Vale was never far, its silence and shadow just beneath the city's
surface, waiting to be found.
The narrow streets tightened, flanked by tall, weathered stone walls whose surfaces bore scars of
time—cracks, creeping ivy, faded murals peeling into ghosts of color. The bright, lively hues of the
city center gave way to muted grays and the somber green of tangled weeds. The air grew cooler
and heavier, thick with a stillness that pressed against their skin like a silent warning.
For a moment, it felt as if the city itself was holding its breath.
And then the song began.
It was faint—at first just a fragile murmur carried on the breeze.
"Little bird, fly away...
The sun dips in the horizon...
The dark grips the soul..."
The melody wove through the alleys, slipping from cracked windows and curling around shuttered
doorways. It was a slow, haunting tune, a lullaby both sweet and sorrowful, sung with a voice that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. The sound folded over itself like a shadow
sliding beneath the fading light.
The song pressed against their minds, a persistent thread pulling at the edges of thought.
The group faltered.
Liza's breath caught, her gaze clouding as she hugged her sketchbook tighter to her chest. The
bleeding red sky and twisted bird from her drawings haunted her thoughts, the strange boy's
bloodied smile flashing behind her eyelids. Her fingers trembled slightly as the echoing song seeped
into her bones.
Elli stopped in her tracks near a weathered fountain, eyes fixed on a statue whose face had long
since crumbled. Her lips parted, but no words came. The melody stirred something deep inside
her—an old, uneasy memory she struggled to place.
John shook his head sharply, trying to dismiss the creeping unease. "It's just some street music,
probably some local playing for coins," he muttered, though his voice lacked conviction.
Ren felt the song's cold tendrils curling around his thoughts, tightening like a noose. His gaze darted
down the narrowing street, the air thickening, the shadows pooling like ink. The silence around
them grew louder, a deafening absence beneath the haunting melody.
One by one, without a word, the group began to drift apart, each drawn away by unseen currents.
Max lingered by a shuttered window, his eyes tracing the twisting vines clinging to the old stone.
His hands rested lightly on the glass, feeling the cold behind it, as if trying to reach through to
something hidden.
Elli moved slowly toward a row of closed shops, the signs above them faded and scrawled in an
ancient script she recognized but couldn't decipher. Her fingers brushed the cracked wood of a
doorframe, as though seeking some forgotten secret.
John paced along the edge of a broken fountain, cursing under his breath. He kicked at a loose
cobblestone, eyes darting nervously to the darkening alleyways. "This place gives me the creeps,"
he muttered.
Liza pressed her back against a cracked wall, her breath shallow. She closed her eyes tightly, trying
to push the song away, but it burrowed deeper, threading through her thoughts like a poison.
Ren stayed rooted in the center, heart pounding, eyes scanning the horizon beyond the rooftops
where the cliffs loomed like silent sentinels. His mind raced, caught between the tangible and the
spectral.
Then, through the fading light, he saw it.
Far off in the distance, a cluster of ruined buildings crouched beneath the jagged cliffs. The outlines
were blurred by the thickening dusk, but the shapes were unmistakable—the twisted angles of steep gables, broken rooftops tangled in ivy, empty windows like dark, hollow eyes staring into
nothingness.
Vale.
The word echoed silently in Ren's mind, though the image was fleeting, like a dream dissolving at
dawn. The ruins seemed to breathe with a dark history, soaked in shadows older than the city itself.
He swallowed hard, the melody still lingering in the air like a dark promise.
The streets behind him pulsed faintly with life—the faint glow of lanterns, the distant murmur of
voices—but here, on the fringe of Mare Rosso, beneath the dying light and the endless echoing song,
the city felt transformed. It was no longer the place they'd wandered earlier, but a threshold, a
boundary between the known and the unknowable.
Ren's fingers clenched into fists as he turned back toward the group, but they were no longer whole.
The song had unraveled them, each lost in their own silent struggle against the unseen weight
pressing down.
Liza still leaned against the wall, eyes closed, pale and trembling.
Elli stood distant and quiet, staring at a broken sign like a woman haunted by memories she could
neither forget nor face.
John muttered to himself, pacing in restless circles.
Max watched the twisting shadows without blinking, lips pressed thin.
Ren's breath came hard. The city's edges seemed to blur, the present folding into a past he couldn't
fully grasp but felt closing in like a tide.
The melody rose again, carried by a sudden breeze that rippled through the weeds and cracked
stones:
"Little bird, fly away...
The sun dips in the horizon...
The dark grips the soul..."
And then, silence.The melody faded into silence, leaving the air unnervingly still. The group gathered slowly, pale and
unsettled, their voices hushed without reason. Even the sound of the sea felt distant, as though
someone had placed glass between them and the world.
Ren glanced toward the horizon one last time. The sun's disc was almost gone, but the light lingering on
the water had changed. It was no longer the warm gold of sunset — it had taken on a reddish-gold
sheen, shimmering like liquid metal, bending the air around it. The reflection stretched unnaturally far,
an elongated band that seemed to pull toward the shore.
For a breath, the shimmer appeared to ripple, as if the horizon were a thin curtain stirred by unseen
hands. Buildings along the far edge of Mare Rosso's coast seemed to waver, their outlines softening
before snapping back into focus.
Ren blinked hard. Probably heat haze, he told himself, but the air was cool, the evening breeze sharp
with salt.
Beside him, Liza froze mid-step, her eyes fixed on the water. "Do you see that?" she whispered.
Max followed her gaze, his hand tightening on the strap of his satchel. "Yes."
John swallowed, voice low. "It's just the light… right?"
Elli didn't answer. Her eyes darted between the horizon and the narrow alleys behind them, as though
she couldn't decide which was more dangerous.
The reddish shimmer flickered once more — then was gone, the sea returning to its normal darkening
blue. Lanterns along the harbor flared brighter in the absence of the sun, but the memory of that
distorted horizon clung to them like the afterimage of a flash.
Without speaking, they turned back toward the city's busier streets. The laughter and music of Mare
Rosso's night life grew louder, but it felt like a thin veil — behind it lay the memory of that bending light,
the sensation of something vast pressing close, just out of reach.
Liza kept her gaze low, but in her mind she still saw it — the shimmer, the distortion, and somewhere
within it, the faintest suggestion of a black-winged shape circling in the bleeding sky.