Chapter 12: The Weight of Silence

I woke to something missing. 

For a moment, I couldn't place what it was—the world around me felt wrong, off in a way I couldn't quite grasp. The air was still, thick with the scent of damp earth and sweat, but there was no weight pressing against my skull, no voices whispering in my bones. 

The whispers had stopped. 

The realisation sent a cold jolt through me, clearing away the haze of sleep. My eyes snapped open. The sky above was no longer the deep, endless black of night. The stars still lingered, but their brilliance was fading, swallowed by the slow, creeping hues of morning. Shades of lavender and gold bled into the horizon, a quiet reminder that time had moved forward without me. 

I didn't remember sleeping. Had I slept at all? 

The last thing I recalled was fire crawling up my spine, the creatures watching, the laughter inside my head. But now… silence. 

And pain. 

A sharp, throbbing ache pulsed at the base of my neck as if something had bitten me or pressed too hard against the skin. I reached up instinctively, my fingers brushing over the spot. No wound, no mark—just the dull, insistent throb of something wrong. It hadn't been there before. I was sure of it. 

I swallowed, my throat dry, and tried to ignore the discomfort. 

The first sound I heard was not my breathing, but the restless shifting of the prisoners around me. 

No one truly slept in this place. Some twitched violently in their sleep, their bodies jerking as if fighting off unseen hands. Others whispered, their words fragmented, lost in feverish dreams or prayers to gods that had long since abandoned them. And then some lay awake, unmoving, their eyes wide and glassy, their bodies trembling as if they had already accepted their fate but still feared the moment it arrived. 

Beside me, Lyra was still. Her knees were drawn to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. If not for the slow rise and fall of her shoulders, I might have thought she was dead. Her face was slack, her lips slightly parted, but I could see the tension in her fingers, curled so tightly against her arms that they had turned pale. 

I swallowed again, the ache in my neck flaring for a moment before settling into a low, steady throb. 

Movement outside the cage drew my attention. 

The masked man sat on a low rock, watching the stars as they faded from sight. He hadn't moved since the last time I saw him—or maybe he had, and I simply hadn't noticed. The flickering torchlight barely touched him, his presence more shadow than substance. The mask was the same as ever, smooth and featureless, reflecting the dim glow like polished bone. 

For a brief moment, he turned his head, his gaze flickering toward me. 

It was the barest glance, a moment stretched too thin, and then he looked away, returning his attention to the heavens. As if I wasn't worth more than a passing thought. 

I let out a slow breath. That was fine. I wasn't sure I wanted his attention. 

Something else was watching, though. 

The creatures. 

I forced myself to turn, my stomach coiling with unease as I took them in. 

Not all of them were the same. 

One sat near the bars, its skin stretched too thin over a body that looked like it had never been meant to exist. Its limbs were long, spindly, bent at angles that made my bones ache just looking at them. Its fingers—clawed, delicate—twitched against the metal, tapping out some rhythm only it could hear. Its mouth was too wide, its lips slightly parted as if caught mid-breath, though it made no sound. 

Another was crouched in the corner, its body wrapped in a tangle of itself, limbs drawn in as if trying to make itself smaller. It rocked slightly, its large, glassy eyes unfocused, staring into something far beyond this cage. Its chest rose and fell in uneven, shuddering gasps, it's breathing almost human, almost fragile. 

The beautiful ones were different. They did not move, did not tremble or whisper or jerk in restless sleep. They simply watched. 

I met their gaze, and the feeling of wrongness crawled beneath my skin. 

They were still in a way nothing should be. No rise or fall of breath, no twitch of fingers, no flicker of thought behind those too-perfect eyes. They observed. Not like animals, not like captives. But like something studying a puzzle, it had yet to be solved. 

They were learning. 

A shudder ran through me, and the pain in my neck throbbed again, sharper this time, as if in response. 

The camp beyond the cages had begun to stir. Soldiers groaned as they rose, stretching stiff limbs and rolling their shoulders. Some still slept, their bodies sprawled near the dying embers of their fires, but others had already begun breaking down the camp. Boots crunched against the dirt, weapons were strapped to belts, murmured orders passed between men who had done this a thousand times before. 

Then, I heard it. 

"The journey to Veridion shall be long."

I stiffened. 

Veridion. 

The name hung in the air like something sacred, something untouchable. The so-called magical city. The heart of power, where those who ruled pretended they were gods. 

But why would the journey be long? 

From the Ashes, Veridion was only ten hours away—less on horseback. Even if they moved slowly, even if they had prisoners to drag along, they should be there before nightfall. 

So why did they speak as if the road stretched further? 

My fingers curled into the dirt. 

I didn't like this. 

I stole another glance at the masked man, hoping—praying—for a sign that I wasn't the only one who noticed. But he remained as he was, motionless, lost in the stars. As if none of this concerned him. As if he already knew. 

The realisation sent ice through my veins. 

Lyra awoke with the crushing weight of silence pressing into her chest. She could feel it like a tangible force, smothering her, forcing her breath to come in shallow gasps. Her eyes fluttered open, but they didn't find clarity right away. Everything felt too slow, too heavy, as if the world itself had wrapped her in a cocoon she didn't know how to escape from. Her eyelids felt as though they were made of stone, dragging with every blink, fighting against the pull of the darkness she had been trapped in.

She was so, so tired. Her body ached in places she didn't understand like the very act of existing was an effort. But it wasn't just her body. Her mind was numb from the screaming she hadn't been able to do. There had been so much want—so much desperate need to scream through the night, to break the silence that clung to her skin. She had tried. She had tried with every ounce of her being, but no sound had come.

The man in the black mask. He had done this to her.

The silence he had brought to her was not the absence of sound, but the weight of it, a suffocating, oppressive force that clung to her skin and settled deep in her chest. It was as if a hand had clamped over her mouth, cold and unyielding, forcing her to swallow every scream she had tried to let out, every desperate cry that had clawed its way to the surface of her throat.

Her mouth was dry, her lips cracked, and though she could feel the panic rising in her chest, no sound came. It was as though the very air around her had thickened, turning to molasses, trapping her words inside. The emptiness pressed against her so violently that she could almost taste it—a bitter, metallic tang that lingered, that burned.

Her throat felt raw like it had been scraped clean, the muscles in her neck tight and strained. It wasn't just that she couldn't speak—it was that she wouldn't want to. Every thought of breaking free, every impulse to shout, was smothered before it could form. The absence of sound was so complete, so total, that it had left a scar, invisible but deep, carved into the very core of her.

And that scar burned. Not in the way a physical wound might sting, but with the slow, persistent ache of something too long denied, something violently taken away. Every inch of her body screamed for release, for the ability to speak—but the silence was like a heavy blanket, and no matter how much she struggled, it refused to lift.

It was as if her voice was trapped in a prison of her own making, and yet, she knew it wasn't her doing at all. The man in the black mask had stolen it. Not just her ability to speak, but the very essence of her, the thing that made her human.

And it burned.

Now, as the light of morning stretched lazily across the sky, Lyra still couldn't quite make sense of it all. The quiet was maddening, a reminder of the unnatural stillness that had plagued her. Her fingers twitched at her sides, the only sign of life in a body that felt like it belonged to someone else. She still had her arms wrapped around herself, as though trying to hold her fragile soul in place. But it didn't feel like enough.

From the corner of her eye, she saw movement.

Luell. She was sitting at the edge of the cage, playing in the dirt. Her small hands, dirty and trembling, traced absent patterns on the ground. He hadn't noticed she was awake. She looked... detached, her face pale but somehow older than she remembered.

She couldn't help but watch her for a moment, caught between the fragile hope that she would somehow be okay and the creeping dread that she would never escape this place. Her throat tightened, and she wanted so desperately to speak, to reassure her, to tell her that things would be different. But she couldn't. Not yet.

Her attention snapped back to the camp, to the masked man.

He was surrounded by two soldiers. Lyra couldn't hear the words they were speaking, but the tone was sharp, urgent. They were giving him orders. It didn't take much to understand that they were instructing him to return to his post. Their voices were commanding as if used to tell him what to do, as if it was no surprise. He was nothing more than a tool in their eyes—useful, disposable.

She hated him. She hated the way he stood there, too casual, too unbothered as if none of this concerned him. He nodded lazily at their words, a slight tilt of his head that almost seemed bored. It was the kind of gesture that spoke volumes to her. He wasn't worried about anything. Certainly not about her, or what he'd done to her.

He turned to leave, and it was then, just as his back was to her, that he did something she wasn't expecting.

His gaze flickered over her, and for a brief, heart-stopping moment, Lyra thought he might ignore her, walk away and leave her in her silence. But then, his lips parted, and though no words reached her ears, she felt something shift within her.

A sudden, sharp relief.

Her tongue. It wasn't heavy anymore. The chain that had coiled around her ability to speak had snapped. She could feel it, the weight lifting from her like a cloud breaking apart. The pressure in her chest loosened, and the overwhelming need to speak flooded her, stronger than it had ever been.

I can speak again.

It was almost too much. The floodgates opened, and the words she had been dying to say—the screams, the pleas—rushed to her lips, but she held back. She had no voice yet to shape those feelings, no means to break the flood. It felt like she was standing at the edge of a cliff, and the moment she stepped off, she would plunge into a sea of words that could never come out fast enough.

But now—now she could.

Her fingers trembled as they slowly unclasped from her arms, and she flexed them, almost in disbelief at the movement, the life in them. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. She didn't care.

She wanted to speak, wanted to scream and shout, to ask him why he had done this to her. Why had he taken her voice? What was it that made him think she was nothing more than a puppet to be controlled?

For a moment, Lyra sat there, frozen, absorbing the weight of what had just happened. It was a small thing—a flick of the masked man's attention, a gesture that, to anyone else, might have seemed insignificant. But to her, it was everything.