Chapter 14: Whispers Beneath the Skin
Zara's breath was steady, but her pulse was anything but.
The city wasn't quiet anymore.
Aeroth had spent years pretending it wasn't bleeding, silencing its own screams beneath layers of rewritten history. But now, that silence had cracked, and everything hiding beneath it was spilling out.
She felt it in the air.
In the streets.
In herself.
Noel hadn't spoken since the shadowed figure had disappeared, retreating into the depths of Aeroth's shattered skyline like it had only come to deliver its warning. But Zara knew better. It hadn't retreated.
It had left her with something.
Something she wasn't ready to name.
"We need to move," Noel finally muttered, his voice sharp, deliberate. "The Circle doesn't let witnesses live, and we just watched something we weren't supposed to."
Zara turned her gaze toward the ruins stretching ahead, the broken remnants of Aeroth's oldest district crumbling beneath the weight of forgotten time. She hadn't been here in years—had avoided it like the plague, like an abandoned memory she refused to unearth.
But now, the city itself was calling her back.
The ruins had never been just ruins.
They had been a graveyard.
A prison.
And maybe—just maybe—something worse.
"The Hollowed came from here," she murmured, half to herself, half to the city that was listening.
Noel frowned, shifting his stance. "We don't know that."
"I do," she replied.
He exhaled sharply, frustration flickering across his expression, but he didn't argue. Noel had stopped trying to question the things Zara knew without explanation.
She wished she could question them herself.
Zara pressed forward, stepping past the crumbling stone archway marking the entrance to Aeroth's oldest sector—the remains of the Arcanist Quarter, long abandoned, long erased from written records. The Circle had wiped it from history like a stain they didn't want anyone remembering.
Which meant whatever they had buried here was dangerous.
The ground shifted beneath her boots as she moved deeper, the buildings pressing closer, the alleyways narrowing unnaturally. The air was thick—too thick.
Something had made its home in this place.
Something old.
Something hungry.
Noel moved beside her, silent but tense, his twin blades drawn even though there was nothing visible to fight. He wasn't paranoid. He was careful.
And careful men survived Aeroth longer than the reckless.
Zara tightened her grip on her dagger as they passed beneath a shattered clock tower, its hands frozen, locked at a time long past.
Three minutes before midnight.
Before everything had been rewritten.
The mark on her forearm pulsed again—slow, deliberate.
Like it was listening.
Like it recognized something.
Then—
A sound.
Not footsteps.
Not voices.
A heartbeat.
No—many heartbeats.
Not human ones.
Not living ones.
Zara stiffened, stopping in her tracks. Noel felt it too—his stance shifted slightly, weight distributed evenly, ready to strike.
The ruins weren't abandoned.
They had never been abandoned.
Something was still here.
Waiting.
Watching.
Buried beneath the layers of time Aeroth had forced over its wounds.
Zara exhaled slowly.
And stepped forward.
Toward the sound.
Toward the unknown.
Toward the truth.
Even if it killed her.
***
The ruins stretched outward, swallowing every breath Zara took.
The heartbeats she had felt earlier—many, fragmented, unnatural—did not fade. They pulsed beneath the ground, threading through the cracked stone like something waiting to rise.
Noel kept close, his twin blades angled slightly, ready but restrained. His silence wasn't hesitation. It was calculation. He had fought enough horrors in Aeroth's back alleys to know when to hold still, when to listen.
Zara understood that logic.
But something about this place made it feel different.
Aeroth had always been layered—broken histories stacked atop each other like a kingdom built on rotting corpses. But this part of the city, the Arcanist Quarter, was not just decay.
It was buried.
Not forgotten, not abandoned—deliberately sealed beneath rewritten memories, locked beneath the Circle's ever-watching gaze.
And now she was standing in it.
Breathing in its echoes.
Feeling its hunger.
She stepped forward, pressing deeper into the shattered district, her dagger cool against her palm, humming faintly beneath her pulse. The marks on her skin burned again, slow and steady.
Something was watching.
Something alive.
Noel exhaled sharply. "You feel that?"
Zara didn't answer.
She did.
The air shifted—not in temperature, not in weight, but in presence. It remembered them. Every step she took sent a ripple through its bones, a vibration threading through the ruins like the warning signs of an earthquake waiting to break.
Her fingers tightened around the dagger.
Then—
A whisper.
Low. Crawling.
Not words.
Not voices.
Something older.
Something deeper.
Something inside the ruins.
Zara stopped.
Noel did too, muscles taut, his stance sharpening into something more combative.
The whisper wasn't distant.
It wasn't from the city itself.
It was beneath them.
A heartbeat.
No. Many heartbeats.
Rhythmic. Measured.
Waiting.
Zara's breathing slowed.
She knelt, fingers brushing against the fractured stone at her feet.
The heartbeat did not falter.
It was here.
The city was alive.
And it was waking up.
Noel cursed, gripping his blades tighter. "Zara, we need to leave."
She shook her head. "Not yet."
She didn't know why.
She should have listened to him. Should have turned around, should have run.
But this wasn't just instinct anymore.
It was recognition.
Zara pressed her palm against the stone.
The mark on her forearm burned hotter.
Then—
The ruins screamed.
A violent crack shattered through the district, the sound ripping through the night like a voice too long caged. The ground beneath them trembled, splitting wide—jagged edges tearing against each other, dust spiraling into the air as the street fractured.
Noel grabbed Zara's arm, pulling her back just in time as something surged upward from beneath the ruins, spilling out of the broken stone like ink bled into water.
Black veins.
Twisting.
Woven together like roots of a dying tree.
Not solid.
Not liquid.
Something between both, something unnatural.
Zara's heart slammed against her ribs.
The city had opened its mouth.
And it was speaking.
Noel cursed, stepping back, dragging Zara with him. "This is not normal—"
She knew.
But she couldn't move.
The veins spread across the fractured ground, curling upward, breathing like lungs formed from shadow. The whispering sounds deepened, threading through the ruins, growing louder, growing clearer.
They weren't just hearing it anymore.
They were understanding it.
It wasn't just noise.
It was words.
"Zara Lune."
Her dagger burned in her hand.
The voice wasn't human.
It wasn't spoken.
It was woven into her, braided through every piece of history she had ever fought against.
She staggered back, breath shallow.
Noel swore, pulling her further into the alleyway, putting space between them and the thing rising from the broken ground.
But it was too late.
Aeroth was awake now.
And it had been waiting for her.
The veins twisted upward, curling together, forming shapes—faces, hands, fragments of things lost.
Not Hollowed.
Not rewritten souls.
These were the erased before they had been rewritten.
Shadows of people who had been buried instead of consumed.
Unfinished echoes.
Ghosts of Aeroth's oldest sacrifice.
The Singing Grave had been a key.
But this place—
This was a door.
A gate.
The Gate of Echoes.
The truth slammed into Zara like an iron blade, the weight of realization pressing against her chest, curling into her breath, sinking beneath her pulse.
Her father had opened it.
Her mother had sealed it.
And she had unsealed it.
By remembering.
By existing.
Noel's grip tightened around her wrist. "Zara, move!"
She couldn't.
The ruins were pulling at her—whispers curling against her skin, the black veins breathing against the city's wounds, waiting for something, waiting for her.
The Gate wanted her.
It had always wanted her.
It had just been waiting.
For her to wake up.
For her to remember.
Noel yanked her harder, breaking her focus, forcing her away from the curling veins spreading across the ruins.
Zara sucked in air, forcing herself to ground her pulse, forcing herself to think.
They had to leave.
Not because she was afraid.
But because she wasn't ready.
Not yet.
She clenched her fists, forcing herself to move, pushing herself away from the gate, away from the city that had opened its jaws, away from the whispers that still curled against her ribs.
Aeroth had woken up.
And soon—
It was going to want more.