Chapter 2 - Part 1: A Whisper Too Loud
Kaltrava, late afternoon
Tavian didn't return to the village. Not right away.
His feet drifted along the ridgeline trail, a narrow curve etched above the treeline where the whisper-bark grove thinned. Below, Kaltrava spread in muted layers: roof-thatch and garden smoke, beast trails winding between memory-stones. He watched it from above like a stranger gazing at a life they hadn't yet lived.
Raijara pulsed within him. Quiet, but not resting.
"She is watching again," she murmured.
"The Veil?" Tavian asked.
"No," Raijara said. "The one behind it."
Tavian didn't ask what she meant. Part of him didn't want to know.
He pressed a hand to the bondmark at his wrist. The Pulse inside still felt like stormlight trapped beneath skin. A waiting. A pressure.
A chirp interrupted him.
The Whisperkin, tail curled like a question mark, had followed him up the ridge and now trotted ahead, ears perked.
"You're not subtle, you know," Tavian muttered.
The creature gave no apology. It paused instead, sniffing the air, then stepped back with a low whine.
Tavian frowned. "What is it?"
The breeze shifted. It was slight, barely a thread, but enough to carry a taste Tavian didn't recognize. Not rot. Not decay. Something more hollow. Like a scent that remembered what it used to be.
Raijara's tone sharpened. "We are not alone."
Tavian turned slowly, but saw nothing.
At first.
Then the air in the clearing below the ridge wavered. Just a ripple. Like heat on stone. But the Whisperkin hissed and darted behind Tavian's leg, pressing its face into his calf.
Tavian's pulse spiked. "Is it another beast?"
"No," Raijara said. "Not a beast. Not alive. Not supposed to be here."
The ripple thickened. Coalesced.
It peeled itself from the air like damp parchment from stone. First a limb, then a hunched form, then nothing again. Then it came fully.
The creature was small, malformed. Its body flickered between shapes. Bones where there shouldn't be bones. Skin where there shouldn't be skin. Its mouth moved, but no words came. Just broken syllables, fractured sounds from languages Tavian had never learned but somehow remembered.
A Daemon.
Raijara's voice cut through his fear. "Do not run. Not unless it hungers."
"What does it want?" Tavian whispered.
"It wants what it always wants. Memory. Shape. Meaning."
The Daemon staggered forward. Its limbs moved wrong. As if unsure what shape they were supposed to keep.
Tavian backed up.
The Whisperkin didn't flee. It chirped again, louder now. Defiant.
The Daemon paused.
Then spoke.
Not in a voice, but in a cough. A choke. A half-swallowed thought.
"…She… opened…"
Raijara flared hot inside Tavian. "It's echoing you. Or her. Either way, it knows too much."