Chapter Four: Waterfall of the Unspoken
Part Ten – The Water No Longer Waits
Location: Pulsefall Glade – Veilmark Threshold
The water was no longer suspended.
It fell like it remembered gravity again—but not in surrender.
In decision.
Every drop carved the air like punctuation.
Each ripple beneath their feet curved outward like a message echoing across the Veil.
The Pulsefall had finished watching.
Now it moved.
—
Zephryn stood still, arm lit faintly by the fading glyph Solara had passed to him.
Selka stood beside him, her mark whole now—no longer ripple, no longer silent. A living thread between her breath and the Veil itself.
Neither spoke.
Because the hum had not yet stopped.
It wasn't music.
It wasn't memory.
It was movement.
And it came from beneath.
—
The ground didn't shake.
It tightened.
As if the earth had been exhaling for years, and only now remembered how to hold something.
The basin beneath the cliff twisted. The pool at the base of the fall retracted.
Not into the soil.
Into glyphlines.
Drawn across the land like veins.
Selka whispered:
"They're not buried."
Zephryn: "They were waiting."
—
In the distance, a second hum began.
It didn't belong to them.
Didn't belong to the Doctrine.
Didn't belong to Solara.
It came from beyond the glade—beyond the ridge.
From someone—or something—that heard the Vault open.
And started walking.
—
Zephryn turned to Selka.
"It's not just us anymore."
Selka nodded, wind brushing her hair like it had waited years to move again.
"It never was."
She stepped forward to the edge of the now-glowing glyphfield.
The water no longer hid the path.
The Vault no longer sealed the hum.
The world had shifted.
And the Veil?
It sang one last line across the fall:
"Remember her before they remember you."
—
Bubbalor screeched from the tree line—louder than ever before.
And the air broke open with the smell of burning memory.
Something was coming.
The water no longer waited.
And neither could they.