The sound didn't just vibrate in the air; it vibrated in Aelindra's marrow.
The whistle was a fragile, lilting thing, a series of three ascending notes followed by a long, trailing trill that mimicked the call of a meadowlark, a bird that had no business existing this high in the frozen wastes of the Range. It was the sound of her father calling her home for dinner. It was the sound of safety, of a time before the world had turned to ash and soot.
But here, in the suffocating silence of the Still-Voice village, it sounded like a violation.
Aelindra scrambled toward the barred door, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. "Father?" the word slipped out before she could stop it, a small, choked gasp that felt like a sin in the presence of the woman who had traded her own voice for peace.
Severin's hand clamped onto her shoulder, his grip like a shackle of heated iron. "Aelindra, no. Look at her."
He jerked his chin toward their hostess. The woman wasn't just afraid; she was undergoing a terrifying transformation. She had collapsed onto the stone floor, her body curled into a tight, fetal ball. Her hands were pressed so hard against her ears that her knuckles were white, and her scarred throat was working convulsively, as if she were fighting back a scream that would tear her apart.
The silver bells in her hair, which had been silent since they arrived, were now vibrating with such intensity that they hummed a dissonant, jagged chord.
"It's not him," Severin hissed, his voice dropping into that low, predatory register he used when the Crownfire was close to the surface. He drew his sword, the steel whispering as it cleared the scabbard. "It's the mountain, Aelindra. It's using what we brought with us."
The whistle came again, closer this time. It seemed to be emanating from the central well, the violet light from the plaza outside bleeding through the cracks in the stone door. The light was no longer a soft pulse; it was a rhythmic strobe, turning the interior of the hut into a series of fractured, terrifying images.
Aelindra squeezed her eyes shut, but the melody was inside her head. It was tied to the dark glass shard tucked against her skin. She realized with a jolt of horror that the Keeper hadn't just given her a memory; he had given her a beacon.
"I have to go out there," she whispered, her hands shaking. "It's my father. If he's out there, if they took him to the Hold"
"Aelindra, listen to me!" Severin grabbed her by both arms, forcing her to look at him. His amber eyes were flecked with gold, the heat radiating from him in waves. "Your father died in the fire. You told me that. This is the 'noise' the villagers are trying to filter. It's the mountain taking the shape of your grief to draw you into the well."
"You don't know that!" she cried, a sudden, irrational anger surging through her. "You're just a Prince who forgot his own brother! You don't know what it's like to have the only thing left of your soul calling out to you in the dark!"
Severin flinched as if she had struck him. The shadow in his eyes deepened, a flash of hurt crossing his face before it was replaced by a cold, royal detachment. He let her go, stepping back.
"Fine," he said, his voice flat. "Go. Walk into the mouth of the mountain. See if your father is waiting for you at the bottom of a hole filled with silver sand."
The silence that followed his words was more painful than the whistle. Aelindra stood by the door, her hand hovering over the silver-wood bar. She could feel the vibration of the melody through the wood. It was so sweet. So familiar.
She looked back at the woman on the floor. The villager was now clawing at the stone, a thin trail of blood trickling from her ear. She was the filter. She was the one paying the price for the "noise" Aelindra had brought into the basin. Every note of that whistle was a needle in the woman's brain.
Aelindra's anger vanished, replaced by a cold, sobering shame. She wasn't just an Anchor; she was a weight.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, though she wasn't sure if she was speaking to Severin or the woman.
She stepped away from the door and sat back down on the moss mat, forcing her hands into her lap. She reached for the internal "quiet" the woman had shown her earlier, trying to wrap it around the memory of the whistle, to smother the sound before it could do more damage.
Severin didn't sit down. He stood guard by the door, a dark sentinel in the flickering violet light. He didn't look at her, but the Crownfire beneath his skin stayed low, a steady, protective ember.
"It will stop," he said after a long, agonizing minute. "The mountain is a scavenger. If it doesn't get a reaction, it moves on."
The whistle grew louder, more frantic. The melody twisted, losing its bird-like quality and becoming something sharper, more dissonant. It began to sound less like a whistle and more like the screech of metal on metal. The strobe of violet light outside intensified until the entire hut felt like it was spinning.
And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.
The silence that rushed back into the basin was absolute. The woman on the floor went limp, her breathing coming in long, ragged gasps. The silver bells in her hair settled, the vibration dying away.
Aelindra slumped forward, her head in her hands. She felt as though she had been hollowed out. The memory of the whistle was still there, but it felt tainted now, oily and wrong.
"Is it over?" she asked.
"For tonight," Severin said. He sheathed his sword, the click of the metal final and grim.
He walked over to her and sat down, not quite touching her, but close enough that she could feel the lingering heat of his fire. They sat in the red glow of the hearth stones; two strangers bound together by secrets they were only beginning to understand.
"You were right," Severin said, his voice a low rasp. "I don't know what it's like. I don't have a father's voice to miss. I don't even have a mother's face. I only have the hole where they were supposed to be."
He looked at the jars on the shelves, his expression haunted. "Sometimes I think the people in this village are the only ones who have it right. If you don't have a voice, you can't tell the lies. And if you don't have the memories, the mountain has nothing to use against you."
"But then what are you?" Aelindra asked, looking up at him. "If you're just a body without a past, aren't you just... silver sand?"
Severin didn't answer. He reached out, his thumb brushing the soot-stain on Aelindra's cheek. For a moment, the Prince was gone, and there was only a man who was terrified of the dark.
"I think," he whispered, "that we are whatever is left when the mountain finishes eating."
The next few hours passed in a daze of exhaustion. The woman eventually recovered enough to crawl back to her pallet, though she didn't look at them. The trust that had been established earlier was gone, replaced by a wary, clinical distance. They were the source of the "noise," and the village would not forget it.
Severin eventually fell into a fitful sleep, his hand still gripping the hilt of his sword.
Aelindra, however, couldn't close her eyes. Every time she did, she saw the violet light of the well. She thought about the Keeper's words, about Valerius being "unwoven." She wondered if the Severin's brother had ever walked through this village. If he had heard a whistle or a call that led him toward the Spire.
She reached into her tunic and pulled out the dark glass shard. In the dim light of the hearth, it didn't look like a memory. It looked like a piece of the abyss.
She realized then that the journey to the Shadow-Hold wasn't just a mission to find a brother or a father. It was a race to see who could stay whole the longest. The mountain was a predator of identity, and they were the richest prey it had seen in generations.
As the first hint of gray light began to bleed through the cracks in the door, a new sound began.
It wasn't a whistle.
It was a rhythmic, heavy thud. Thump. Thump. Thump.
It was coming from the southern entrance of the basin.
Severin's eyes snapped open, the Crownfire instantly igniting in his pupils. He was on his feet before Aelindra could even draw a breath.
"They're here," he whispered.
"The creatures?"
"No," Severin said, his voice hardening into the steel of a Prince. "Creatures don't march in step. Those are boots on stone."
He moved to the door and peered through the slit. His body went rigid.
"Aelindra," he said, his voice tight with a mixture of disbelief and a sudden, sharp hope. "The man in the lead... he's wearing the colors of the Royal Guard. But those aren't my father's men."
Aelindra joined him at the door, her heart leaping into her throat. Through the mist of the early morning, she saw them. A small group of survivors, their clothes tattered, their faces grim.
Leading them was a man with the broad shoulders of a soldier and the weary eyes of someone who had seen the end of the world. Beside him, a woman moved with the sharp, coiled energy of a predator.
But it was the third person who made Aelindra's breath stop.
A man in scout's leathers, his face pale and etched with new scars, but his eyes... they were the eyes of the man she had reached into the abyss to save.
"Caelan," she breathed.
The reunion was beginning, but in the silence of the Still-Voice village, it felt less like a rescue and more like a gathering of ghosts.