I never noticed the quiet until it was too late.
It always started like that—gentle things that made you forget how easily the world could break.
"Rule one," Solas said, spinning in a lazy circle as the tall grass parted for him like it owed him something. "No blinking during sky-passes. You blink, you lose your name."
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and stared at the clouds. My throat felt like it had thorns in it. "That's not a real rule."
He smiled without looking at me. "It is if I say it is."
That grin. All teeth and trouble. I'd forgotten how wide it was. How crooked. Like his mouth didn't know how to pick a side. I don't remember if I smiled back. I think I did. But maybe that's just what I want to believe.
This was our place. Our rules. Our ritual. Every third afternoon—the real ones, not the ones made of dream-garbage and sour sky—we played the game. That was a rule too. Only on the third afternoon. Not second. Not fourth.
"Rule two," I said, picking a pebble out of my boot. "You can only lie if your hands are dirty."
He dropped to the ground and shoved both palms into the mud.
"Why are you like this?" I asked.
"To win."
"You never win."
"I'm undefeated."
"Sure. In your own dumb universe."
"It's our dumb universe," he said.
I looked at him. Couldn't look away. I don't know why it felt like goodbye.
I stared at him and for a second—I don't know. Something was wrong behind his eyes. Not fear. Not sadness. Something heavier. Like he was holding a weight that hadn't landed yet.
"You good?" I asked.
He nodded too fast. "Yeah. Yeah, just… tired."
I almost asked tired from what, but the question stuck to my teeth and stayed there.
We laid back in the grass. The sun bled over us in long strips. I could feel the earth under my shoulders, warm, slow-breathing. I wanted to sink into it. Just for a minute.
He reached out and grabbed my pinky. "Rule three: If your heart stutters, you owe me your worst secret."
"You don't want my worst secret."
"Sure I do."
"You really don't."
"Tell me anyway."
I didn't answer. I think I laughed. The kind of dry, breathy almost-laugh that barely qualifies. I stared at the sky and counted the clouds that didn't move.
One. Two. Four.
Wait—
No.
There was no three.
I blinked.
Everything lurched.
The grass dipped, like the ground had inhaled too hard. A low whine started behind my ears—quiet, like metal under water. Solas sat up fast.
"Do you feel that?"
I couldn't speak.
The sky cracked.
It wasn't lightning. It wasn't sound. It was like someone took the sky and peeled it back. A long seam tore down the middle, and behind it—there was no behind. Just void. Just pressure. Just the taste of copper in my mouth.
"What is that?" I choked out.
Solas grabbed my wrist. "Run."
We didn't decide. We just moved. The way we always did. He pulled, I followed. Over the hill. Toward the treeline. The trees that weren't supposed to be real. The ones we made jokes about but never got close to.
Rule four: Never go into the trees.
I broke it without thinking.
The air turned cold. Not the kind of cold that touches your skin. The kind that lives under it. The sky kept tearing. The light flickered in and out like a dying candle. My lungs felt wrong. Like they forgot what air was.
"Faster!" he shouted.
I tried.
I tried so hard.
But then it grabbed me.
Not a thing. Not hands. Just force. Like being plucked by something with no body, no sound, just intent.
I screamed his name—I think. Maybe I just opened my mouth. Maybe nothing came out. Maybe I was already gone.
My feet left the ground.
I saw his face. That face. Terrified. Distant. Still reaching for me, like if he stretched far enough he could undo the moment. I was slipping.
"Solas—!"
He was gone.
Or I was.
Same thing.
When I hit the ground, I didn't know if I was alive.
My body screamed, but it felt like someone else's pain. Like I was watching it from the wrong side of my skin. My body landed in a twist of bone and stone and I just—stayed there. My mouth filled with dirt. My ears rang with static. The air didn't smell like air.
I was still screaming inside. But my voice wasn't working. Maybe I'd left it behind. Maybe it got caught in the tear.
I tried to crawl.
Hands grabbed me.
Four figures—faces covered in blank, rusted metal—dragged me out of the dust like I wasn't even a person. I kicked. Bit. One of them elbowed me in the ribs and I folded in half. I couldn't even breathe. My brain was all noise and my chest was lightning and I was crying but I didn't know when that started.
"Get off me! I'm looking for—he's still there—he's—" I couldn't say his name. It was stuck. Like my mouth forgot how.
They didn't talk.
None of them made a sound.
They bound my wrists with a rope that smelled like mold and old skin and dragged me toward the horizon.
I should've fought more.
But the sky above me was the wrong color. The world wasn't dead—it was trying to remember how to be alive, and kept putting the pieces back wrong. Like it didn't know what breathing felt like. Trees leaned the wrong way. Birds floated without wings. The ground pulsed if you stared at it too long.
I couldn't trust anything.
Except the pain in my legs from walking too far on torn feet.
Except the silence.
The silence...
Even the wind was scared.
The fortress—if you could call it that—looked like it had been put together by someone trying to build a memory from broken bones. Nothing lined up. Walls bled into the ground. Windows looked out into places that didn't exist.
Inside smelled like wet iron and abandonment.
They took me underground.
I stopped struggling after the first flight of stairs. There was no sound down there. Not even footsteps. Like the place had swallowed sound.
When they threw me into the room, I didn't stand up. I didn't move. The door shut behind them and I was alone.
No. Not alone.
There was a chair. Made of something pale and wrong. Not wood. Not bone. Something in-between. Something that remembered being alive.
I didn't touch it.
I curled against the far wall and counted my breaths. Made up new rules.
Rule five: If no one says your name, you disappear.
Rule six: Don't look in mirrors. They lie.
Rule seven: This isn't real.
I was screaming. I think. Or I was sobbing. I don't know. My chest was fire and static. "I want to go back, I want to go back, I want to go back—"
Eventually, I heard the door open.
He walked in like he'd always belonged there.
Tall. Unmoving. Covered in black—coat, boots, gloves. His mask was white. Not painted—white. Like bleached out of meaning. No eyes. No mouth. Just a hollow outline of a human.
I didn't ask who he was.
I knew.
He was the thing in charge of this place. Not king. Not judge.
Just the one who watched.
He didn't speak.
He didn't move.
He just stared at me.
I stared back, shaking, because that's all I had left.
"Where is he?" I asked.
Nothing.
"Say something… please…"
He didn't blink. He didn't shift. Just stood there like a statue sculpted from silence.
I stood up—stumbled, really—and limped forward. My knees almost gave out. I grabbed the chair just to stay upright.
"I'm not supposed to be here. This isn't—this isn't where I belong. I was with someone. My brother. You must've seen him—he would've—he…"
I stopped.
His head tilted.
That was the worst part. Just a little tilt, like he was curious. Like he didn't understand why I was still trying.
"You have to tell me where he is," I whispered.
I didn't expect an answer.
I didn't get one.
He turned and left.
I collapsed.
Later—I don't know how long—someone came in. Left water. A crust of something I didn't eat.
I drank because my mouth was fire.
I didn't speak after that.
There was no point.
They didn't want anything from me. No questions. No demands. No names.
They just wanted me to sit still and forget who I was.
On the third night, I forgot the sound of Solas's laugh.
I curled against the wall and screamed into my own chest so the room wouldn't hear it.
I dreamed of fields but they were ash now. And he was there, but far. Too far.
When I woke up, my face was crusted with salt. My hands were shaking. My voice was barely real.
But I still had this.
"I'll find you," I said into the darkness.
It wasn't a vow. It was a scar.
"I'll find you. Even if I forget your face. Even if I forget my own."
The room stayed silent.
But I kept saying it.
Because it was the only thing I had left.