The fire had burned low, its embers glowing like watchful eyes in the hearth. Elara sat rigid in her chair, every muscle taut, her ears straining for the sound she dreaded most: silence.
The night deepened. The village outside quieted. Even the goats had stilled in their pens, their bells no longer jangling. Elara gripped the arms of her chair, her nails digging into the wood.
Then it came.
Not the silence she remembered. Worse.
The air folded in on itself, the way a pond goes still after a stone sinks beneath. The warmth of the fire vanished in an instant, replaced by a breathless cold. And then—
DONG.
Elara's head snapped up.
The bell tower.
It rang once.It rang twice.
Her pulse thudded against her throat. She counted.
Ten.
Eleven.
Twelve.
She rose slowly to her feet, trembling. The air vibrated with each strike, yet her window glass did not rattle, her plates did not quiver. It was sound without sound, a hollow echo that lived inside her bones.
Then the world should have ended its count. The bell always stopped at twelve.
But it didn't.
DONG.
Thirteen.
The noise carved through her like a blade. The candle sputtered out though no wind blew, and her hearth embers froze, as though locked in stone. The world had stopped again—but this time it was worse.
The shadows moved first.
They seeped from the corners, rising like smoke, pulling themselves into shapes that resembled people but not quite. Faceless, hollow-chested, tall and bending as if the air itself bent with them.
Elara stumbled backward, her hand clapping over her mouth to stifle a scream. They had come again.
But now, they spoke.
Not with voices—no mouths, no tongues. Their words were carved into her mind, pressed into her skull like the edge of a chisel.
The Hour is broken.
Her teeth chattered. She shook her head violently. "No, no, please—"
The Guardian has turned.
She fell against the wall, heart slamming in her chest. The figures drifted closer, filling her small cottage, passing through furniture as though wood and iron were smoke. Their presence was suffocating, heavy as stone.
One shadow reached out an arm—if it could be called that—and brushed the edge of her sleeve. Her body iced instantly, her breath freezing in her lungs.
"Stop!" she gasped.
The shadows stilled. Then, in one whisper of thought, all at once:
You are the key.
Her knees buckled. She sank to the floor, clutching her head, her body trembling with the force of the words. They echoed inside her skull until she thought her bones might shatter.
"Key to what?" she cried. "I don't understand!"
But the figures only leaned closer, their hollow faces pressing near. She squeezed her eyes shut, tears streaking her cheeks, wishing she could claw herself out of her own skin to escape their presence.
Then, just as suddenly, they drew back. Every one of them turned their headless faces toward the window.
Elara's stomach knotted. She dared not move. Slowly, she followed their gaze.
In the square, visible through the glass, the statue stood.
But it was no longer faceless.
A shape had formed where its features should have been. Not a face of flesh, but of broken stone, cracked and jagged, with deep pits where eyes should be.
And those pits glowed faintly—faintly but unmistakably—with pale light.
Elara's breath stopped.
The shadows bowed.
The Guardian watches.
Then, as if some unseen rope had snapped, sound crashed back into the world. The embers popped violently in the hearth. The candle wick hissed into smoke. From the fields beyond came the late, startled cry of a night-bird.
And the shadows were gone.
Elara collapsed forward onto her hands, gasping, her palms stinging where they scraped the floor. Her ears rang, not from sound but from silence.
The bell tower loomed in her mind. Thirteen chimes. A forbidden number.
She dragged herself upright and stumbled to the window. Her stomach turned cold.
The statue still stood there. Unmoving. Silent.
But the faint glow in its hollow eyes lingered, just enough for her to know she had not imagined it.
And carved fresh into the stone at its base, gleaming faintly in the moonlight, was another mark.
XIII.
Elara staggered back, slamming the shutters closed with shaking hands.
Her life had split in two. Before the Silent Hour. And now.
And the Guardian was watching.
Elara stayed where she was, pressed against the wall, her hands still trembling from where they had slammed the shutters. Her breath rasped too loudly in the small cottage, each inhale a betrayal against the silence she had just escaped.
She wanted to believe it was finished. That the Hour had ended, that the shadows were gone, that the statue had returned to its cold, lifeless stone.
But the glow in its eyes had been real. She had seen it. And the shadows—bowing—had been real.
The Guardian watches.
The words echoed in her skull like an iron bell.
She staggered to her chair and sank down heavily, clutching her arms around herself. She felt raw, hollowed out. Not even fear remained now, only a numbness that seeped into her bones.
Outside, the village stirred faintly again. She could hear the barking of a distant dog, the soft rattle of shutters in the breeze. Ordinary sounds. Life resuming. But they no longer sounded the same. They were too fragile, too breakable. A thin curtain stretched over a world that had already split apart.
Her eyes fell to the loaf of bread on the table. She had left it untouched after seeing the mark. The crust gleamed faintly in the moonlight leaking through the cracks of the shutters.
XIII.
The thirteenth chime. The proof she had not imagined it.
She snatched the loaf and hurled it into the hearth. The crust cracked as it struck the stones, and for a moment she thought she heard the faintest ringing sound, as though from a bell struck far away. She squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to look again.
When dawn finally bled pale over the hills, Elara had not slept. She sat rigid, staring at the barred door, waiting for someone—or something—to come.
But no one came.
And when she finally unbolted the door and stepped outside, the village looked as it always had. The sky stretched wide and bright, smoke curling from chimneys, children chasing hoops through the mist. The statue stood silent in the square, its face once again blank, its eyes empty pits of cold stone.
But Elara's gaze went straight to its base.
The mark was there. Fresh. Carved deeper now than the one before.
XIII.
Her stomach twisted. It hadn't been erased by the morning sun. It hadn't faded like a dream.
Someone would see it. Someone had to see it.
Yet as villagers bustled about the square, none of them looked at the base of the statue. None of them glanced at the marks that screamed so loudly to her. Their eyes slid over it, uninterested, as though the numbers were invisible.
Elara's throat went dry. Could they not see? Or would they not?
"Morning, Elara!"
The cheerful call made her jump. It was Tomas, the blacksmith's son, hauling a bucket of water from the well. His brow shone with sweat though the air was cool. He smiled easily, as though nothing in the world were wrong.
She forced herself to nod back, though her lips barely formed the word: "Morning."
Tomas followed her gaze briefly toward the statue. For a terrible second she thought he would notice. She braced for his eyes to widen, for the inevitable questions.
But he only shrugged and carried on. "My father says the rains will come late this season. We'll be mending roofs by next week, mark my words."
And he was gone, whistling off-key.
Elara turned back slowly. The mark remained, plain as sunlight, etched into stone.
And no one else saw it.
Her heart pounded.
She was alone.
The Guardian had turned. The shadows had bowed. The Hour had struck thirteen.
And only Elara bore witness.
She wrapped her cloak tighter around herself, though the morning was mild. If no one else could see, then she had no allies. The Guardian's gaze was on her.
And if the thirteenth chime had rung once…
It would ring again.