The trees in this part of the Riftwild had no bark.
Their surfaces were smooth as glass, gray as ash, and they stretched high into a colorless sky. No birds called from their branches. No insects stirred beneath their roots.
No wind.
No sound.
The moment Kaelen and Aelira stepped beneath their canopy, even their footsteps fell silent.
Kaelen paused. He pressed his boot to the earth and watched a puff of dust rise—but it made no noise as it fell back.
"I hate this," Aelira whispered. Her voice was barely audible, as though filtered through layers of wool.
"We've crossed into a silence field," Kaelen said.
She gripped her blade. "One of yours?"
He shook his head. "Older. Much older."
The path they followed was little more than a trail of broken stones—ruined markers from a civilization erased by the Rift. The map Kaelen carried, stitched together from memory shards and Loom-guided intuition, drew them toward a singular Weave distortion deep in the forest's heart.
A soundless ruin.
A tomb for memory.
As they moved deeper, reality flattened. Shadows faded. Perspective warped. It was as if the forest wasn't three-dimensional anymore.
Kaelen felt it first in his breath.
He exhaled—and the sound of it vanished before reaching his ears.
"Careful," he said through clenched teeth. "The silence isn't natural. It's suppressing vibration… possibly thought."
Aelira's eyes flashed. "Telepathy, then?"
Kaelen reached out with his mind, brushing hers lightly.
Are you hearing this?
She nodded.
"Good. Stay close. If we lose contact, we may forget we exist."
The path narrowed as black roots slithered from the earth, coiling like serpents petrified in motion. Some were shaped like hands. Others like mouths, open wide in eternal screams.
But no sound ever came.
Just silence.
And the pressure of a scream remembered, not heard.
Kaelen bent near one of the roots and touched it with two fingers. A pulse ran up his arm, and a fragment of ancient memory flashed through him:
A cathedral of silver and obsidian.
A choir singing a name not meant for mortals.
A single note held so long it collapsed reality.
He gasped and stepped back.
Aelira caught him.
"What did you see?"
He shook his head. "Not see. Heard."
She blinked. "I didn't hear anything."
"That's the point."
They reached a clearing.
In its center stood an obelisk made entirely of soundless Weavestone—pale, translucent, and vibrating faintly with inaudible frequencies.
It was cracked down the center, and from within leaked a dark mist that curled into spirals and vanished into the still air.
Around the obelisk: statues.
All humanoid.
All posed in terror, hands pressed to ears, mouths open in silent screams.
Kaelen frowned. "Victims?"
"No," Aelira said quietly. "Witnesses."
He nodded. "To a silence that shouldn't exist."
Kaelen stepped forward.
As he did, the Weave shifted around him. Not violently—but intimately. Like a lover brushing against skin. It knew him. Or remembered a version of him.
From the obelisk's base, runes lit up.
Kaelen knelt and touched them.
The moment he did, sound returned.
A single note.
High. Clear. Faint as breath.
Then a voice.
"We called to the stars—but the stars screamed."
Aelira flinched. "Did you hear that?"
Kaelen didn't answer. His hand was still on the stone.
"We sang the old name. And it sang back. And then it took our names from us."
The statues began to shift.
Not move—but ripple.
Their stone seemed to dissolve and reform like wax, reshaping them into new expressions. Some wept. Others looked peaceful.
Kaelen pulled his hand back—and the note stopped.
Silence returned.
"I think this place is a memory prison," he said slowly. "A vault of last songs. Whatever happened here… it tried to preserve itself in anti-sound. The absence of vibration. Of name. Of being."
Aelira paced around the obelisk. "So why come here? What are we looking for?"
Kaelen looked up.
Beyond the trees, the sky was rippling—slightly wrong.
"There's a thread here. Buried. We follow it."
They moved to the back of the obelisk, where the roots parted to reveal stairs descending into the earth.
As they descended, the silence deepened.
Kaelen felt his heartbeat but couldn't hear it.
Even his thoughts felt slow.
Then—darkness.
A full, absolute void.
Not just lightless.
But conceptually blind.
Even the Weave felt muffled.
Kaelen stopped and extended his Domain of Matter.
Shapes emerged in his mind—walls, glyphs, mechanisms.
He took Aelira's hand.
Telepathy carried his voice.
Don't let go. If we separate, we might forget why we came.
She squeezed his fingers.
Together, they walked forward.
At the chamber's center, they found a pedestal.
Upon it, a shard of pure Weaveglass—an echo-stone.
Kaelen approached.
His shadow began to vanish—not grow longer or shorter. Simply fade, as if light and absence both refused to acknowledge him.
He reached for the shard.
When his fingers brushed it—
Everything changed.
Kaelen's mind tore open.
He stood not in the tomb—but in the cathedral he'd seen before.
It was real.
Silver arches rising like ribs from a world long dead.
A choir of faceless figures sang a note that wasn't music.
It was a warning.
And he was the one they sang it for.
He looked down.
In his chest burned a black thread—pulsing.
A voice echoed around him.
"You are the silence that followed our last scream."
He reached for the thread.
He woke on the ground.
The shard pulsed in his hand.
Aelira knelt beside him, pale. "You stopped moving. I almost—"
Kaelen gripped the shard.
It sang in his mind.
Not sound.
Direction.
A new ruin.
Beyond the forest. Beyond the Rift.
A place where names were made.
He stood.
"We have a destination."
As they exited the tomb, the forest sighed.
Wind returned.
A leaf fell.
It struck the earth with a quiet whisper.
And that whisper was louder than any scream.