The carriage rocked gently over the uneven road, its wheels creaking like an old song. Inside, Noah sat across from James, one hand resting on the hilt of his cane, the other clenched against his knee. His eyes lingered on the passing fields, yet his thoughts were far from the present.
Five years. Five years since Eleanor had slipped from their lives without a word. The silence she left behind was louder than anything else Noah had ever known.
James broke it first.
"You're awfully quiet. Brooding again?" His voice carried the same lightness he always used to mask what lay beneath.
Noah didn't answer at once. Instead, a memory clawed its way up, uninvited: Eleanor's laughter echoing in a candlelit drawing room, her hand brushing his sleeve as she leaned too close during a heated debate. She had defended him that night he remembered it sharply. When the others mocked his temper, Eleanor alone had spoken for him, eyes glimmering with mischief and defiance.
The ghost of that smile haunted him now. He shifted uncomfortably.
"She's not the kind you can forget," he said at last, his tone sharper than intended.
James smirked faintly, though his eyes softened.
"No one's asking you to forget. Only to find."
The carriage lurched over a stone, and James leaned forward, lowering his voice.
"i heard that this is a place. An old church. Abandoned long ago when the town dwindled. People whisper about it say only a few with strange faith still gather near. Judaism mostly, though... no one dares to claim it fully. It's a ruin now, covered in grass and broken glass. But I've heard... she might have been there."
Noah's gaze snapped to him, sharp as steel.
"Eleanor?"
James nodded once, deliberately slow.
"I can't be sure. But the church draws the kinds of souls who disappear. Misfits. Wanderers. A woman with her kind of silence could've hidden there."
Noah leaned back, jaw tight. For a long moment, he said nothing. Are we here ??
James chuckled. " I think so "
The rest of the ride passed in a strange quiet, heavy but unbroken, until the carriage rattled to a stop before a shadow rising against the dusk.
The church stood like a skeleton of faith, its spires crumbled, walls overtaken by vines. Grass grew thick around the shattered stones. Once-beautiful stained glass hung in jagged shards, bleeding fractured light across the floor. The silence here was profound, broken only by the caw of distant crows.
James stepped down first, boots crunching on gravel. Noah followed, his eyes fixed on the dark archway.
Inside, the air smelled of damp earth and old prayers. Pews lay broken, half-buried in dust. At the far end, where an altar might have stood, a faint rustle stirred.
From the shadows emerged a man. Old, bent, wrapped in worn robes. His face was a map of years, his eyes milky but aware. He leaned on a staff of twisted wood.
"Visitors," the old father murmured, his voice a thread of sound. "It has been... long since the bells called anyone here."
James glanced at Noah before stepping forward.
"We're looking for someone. A woman."
The old man tilted his head, listening. Then, with a faint smile that unsettled more than it soothed, he whispered:
"A muse does not vanish. She only changes the shadows where she hides."
The words hung in the ruined air, heavy and strange. Noah felt his heart lurch, his chest tightening as if the church itself conspired to trap him in its silence.
The priest's pale eyes turned toward him, piercing despite their clouded film.
"You've carried her memory like a wound," he said softly. "Perhaps that wound will lead you."
Noah's fists clenched. Hope and fury warred in his chest.
James laid a steady hand on his shoulder.
"Then this is where we begin."