The Quiet Weight
They stood before the gate of Delrest, the blackened road behind them offering no comfort, and the silence ahead pressing like a weight against their lungs. The gates were old stone, veined with faint runes once designed to flare with protective magic.
They were cold now. Inert.
Ajar.
Just enough to beckon.
Koda stepped forward.
The others tensed, but he didn't hesitate.
His hands gripped the massive doors, and with the slow grind of earth-shifted weight, he pushed. The stone groaned beneath his palms, the sound like ribs cracking beneath too much pressure. His unnatural strength made short work of what should have been a struggle.
The gates opened.
And Delrest swallowed them whole.
—
The city streets stretched out in unnerving perfection.
Stone-paved roads clean of debris. Market stalls stood intact. Flags still hung in their brackets. Empty carts rested mid-route. A broom leaned against a doorway.
But there was no sound.
No breath of wind.
No living soul.
The hooves of their horses clopped softly against the stone, too loud, too sharp. Each step echoed like a shout in a cathedral.
Maia glanced toward the rooftops. "Maybe they evacuated."
Thessa, walking beside her, nodded slowly. "Maybe. We should head for the central square. There might be signs—"
But her voice trailed off.
It wasn't just silence.
It was… weight.
As they moved deeper, the exhaustion began to creep in.
At first it was subtle. A tightening in the shoulders. A desire to speak, then not bother. A blink that lingered a little too long.
Koda felt it too.
He shifted in place, cracking his neck, forcing breath in through his nose.
No one had spoken in several minutes.
Even Terron, who usually filled silence with muttered grumbling, was quiet.
The city wasn't just still.
It was sapping them.
Not magically. Not like a curse with teeth. This was deeper. Older.
It was as though the very air whispered, why bother?
By the time they reached the third block, Wren stumbled slightly, caught herself, and muttered, "Sorry… tired."
Deker didn't respond.
He was squinting at the windows now. Every one dark. Every one shut.
Until—
Junen raised a hand.
"Wait," she said.
They stopped.
Across the road stood a narrow brick home with an upstairs window still cracked open. Behind the glass—
A figure.
Seated. Upright. A woman, arms folded in her lap, head tilted slightly downward.
Asleep.
Or—
"Someone's there," Maia whispered, already stepping forward.
They approached carefully.
No movement.
Junen knocked once on the wooden door.
No response.
She knocked again, louder.
Nothing.
Koda stepped forward, placed his hand on the knob, and found it locked. A second later, he drove his shoulder into the wood with enough force to splinter the frame.
The door flew open.
The room inside was quiet. Warm. A fire burned low in the hearth, but gave off no heat. A kettle sat on the stove. Books open on a nearby table. Toys scattered on the floor.
And in the center of the room—
A family.
Four of them.
A young mother in a chair, a boy at her feet with a wooden horse. An older man seated at the table. A toddler on a rug.
All still.
All… whole.
No blood.
No wounds.
No decay.
Koda stepped forward, kneeling by the boy.
No breath. No pulse.
Maia's voice broke in a whisper. "They're… dead."
"But they look like they just—" Wren couldn't finish.
There were no signs of struggle. No shattered dishes. No violence.
Just stillness.
As if life had simply stopped.
Like they'd all closed their eyes in unison and decided not to open them again.
And worse—
Koda could still feel the weight in his own bones.
That pull toward stillness. Toward sleep.
Toward surrender.
He stood slowly, jaw tight, and whispered the only words that could be spoken in such a place.
"This city didn't fall."
He turned, eyes dark, voice steady.
"It gave up."
The house left them shaken.
They stepped back into the street without a word, the doorframe hanging loose behind them, the family inside still frozen in peace. Or something made to look like it.
Koda took the lead again, pace faster now. The pressure of the city—of that pull—hadn't vanished, but adrenaline began to burn through it. The others followed with tight grips on their weapons, jaws clenched. No one had spoken in minutes.
They moved like intruders through a dream.
The silence was not emptiness.
It was absolute.
Each step they took scraped the stone louder than the last, not because the sound was louder, but because it had nothing to compete with. No foot traffic. No laughter behind shutters. No sweeping brooms or scolding vendors. No crows on rooftops or cats in alleyways.
Only their breathing.
Only the creak of armor straps and the dull rhythm of hooves on stone.
A bakery on their left still had rolls in the display window. One had been halfway eaten.
A barber's shop sat open, chairs arranged, combs laid out in neat rows. The apron still hung on the wall.
A blacksmith's forge had started to cool—iron left halfway between shaping, the hammer still resting on the anvil.
Books still sat stacked on the counter of the local guildhall, paper orders clipped to the wall behind a desk where no one sat. A half-finished note lay on the floor. A wax seal beside it. One of the pages stirred slightly as they passed… but only because of the breeze they brought with them.
Wren whispered, "It's like the city exhaled… and never inhaled again."
Every building was filled with the evidence of being—but none of life.
The deeper they walked, the heavier it pressed.
A tavern's door hung slightly open, the inside quiet, mugs still on the tables. A lute rested against the corner stage. Every seat filled with still forms. Heads resting on their hands. Eyes shut.
No decay.
No rot.
Just… stillness.
Each block was the same.
A story paused at its climax.
A breath that never finished.
As they approached the city center, the streets grew wider, but the air grew thinner.
Even breathing became a conscious effort. Every inhale a task. Every blink a reminder that they were not meant to sleep here.
Junen muttered a prayer under her breath, voice cracking.
Thessa walked with fingers clenched into her palms.
Terron said nothing. But his face had gone pale.
They passed a school with chalk still on the board. A library with open ledgers. A church with its doors flung open and not a single soul inside, though the candles were melted to the base and the pews still warm from use.
And then—
At last—
They turned a corner and saw it.
The capital building of Delrest.
Its black stone walls rose like a monument at the city's heart, grand yet silent. The steps leading to the high-arched entry were dustless, undisturbed. Its great doors closed. No guards. No signs of struggle.
Only the dead silence of decision.
The kind of silence that does not follow death…
But precedes it.
The doors groaned open with a reluctant creak.
Koda stepped in first, followed closely by Maia and Junen, then the rest of the party in a tight half-circle. Their weapons were drawn now—not in reaction, but instinct. Not because they sensed movement, but because they sensed something.
The interior of the capital building stretched high, grand arches vaulting into a ceiling etched with civic pride—murals of Delrest's history, its rulers, its victories.
But the banners were faded.
The light from the stained-glass windows fell muted, as though the colors themselves had given up shining.
And the stillness… had changed.
It wasn't simply the absence of life anymore.
It was the presence of something else.
Something wrong.
They walked carefully across the long welcome hall, the stone floor beneath them cool and dry. Their footsteps echoed once. Then twice.
Then stopped echoing altogether.
Junen noticed it first. "The sound's gone…"
And then they saw it.
At the far end of the hall, where the high stone dais once held the city's crest and council seats, something else now pulsed.
A scar.
Split directly into the air.
Not a tear leading to some twisted dimension or chasm of decay.
No—
This one opened straight into a void of blood and pulse.
A massive, open heart, suspended behind the tear—beating slowly.
Sluggishly.
Its surface was slick and blackened, not with rot, but with an oil-slick sheen. Veins like cracks in ancient stone pulsed through it with each slow thrum, and the sound…
Thoom…
Thoom…
It was low. Subsonic. It didn't vibrate in the chest—it dragged at the soul.
And resting at the base of the scar—just within the boundary of the tear—was the first thing that moved.
Or rather, didn't.
A creature. Humanoid in shape. Drenched in shadow and the color of forgotten dreams. Its skin was pale and gray-blue, like something long submerged. Hair tangled and lifeless. Its limbs folded beneath it in what might have once been a cross-legged sit, but had since collapsed into a half-sprawl.
Its arms hung loosely over its knees.
Its eyes—what could be seen of them—were open.
But empty.
Not glassy like death. Not glowing like a threat.
Just dull.
As though even seeing required too much effort.
The creature didn't look at them.
Didn't twitch.
Didn't care.
The Dreamspawn.
It radiated a pressure unlike anything they had felt before—not crushing, not violent, not even oppressive in the traditional sense.
It was the pressure of nothing.
The will not to move.
The energy of a thousand excuses.
The decay of discipline. The rot of routine.
Even the heart behind it beat slower the longer they stared.
Thoom…
Thoooom…
Koda blinked hard, realizing his shoulders had slouched, one hand resting slack on the hilt of his blade.
Maia clutched her staff tighter.
Deker's eyes had started to droop without realizing it.
And the Dreamspawn?
It didn't smile.
It didn't threaten.
It simply existed.
And its existence alone—
Was enough to suffocate a city.