The path led them into the mountain.
Not under it.
Not around it.
Into it.
The stone didn't feel dead. It hummed. Like it was remembering something far too old to explain.
Every few steps, Elira glanced back.
"Are we still ourselves?" she asked.
Flick nodded, but slower than usual.
"I think the mountain's listening," he whispered.
"And what if it doesn't like what it hears?" Solin muttered.
They reached a cave that opened like a yawning mouth.
Its walls were lined with mouths.
Not moving. Not speaking.
Just carved, hundreds, thousands, each frozen in mid-scream, mid-song, mid-laugh.
The silence was so loud, it hurt.
Then Sera stepped forward.
And the silence grew teeth.
A voice, not from any of the mouths, filled the space.
"Who speaks in the place where voices died?"
No one answered.
The voice repeated.
Louder. Sadder.
"Who speaks in the place where voices died?"
Elira stepped forward. "I do."
The silence peeled away like old bark.
From the stone rose a woman.
Or what was left of one.
Her mouth was sewn shut with silver thread. Her eyes shimmered with moon-milk tears.
Flick whispered, "Is she a ghost?"
Varn shook his head. "Worse. She's a memory that forgot how to fade."
The woman raised one hand.
A ripple of stillness spread out.
Sera dropped to her knees.
"I can't hear my own thoughts," she said.
"It's the Silencekeeper," Amaryn whispered. "She guards the Soundless Tomb."
The Silencekeeper gestured to six stone chairs.
No one moved.
Then Elira sat.
One by one, the others followed.
The woman pressed her fingers together, and suddenly, they were elsewhere.
Elira stood in her old home.
Only she wasn't really there.
Everything was ash-grey.
Faded.
She saw a man shouting, red-faced. Her father.
A woman screaming, clutching a little girl.
Her.
She reached out.
The image flinched.
The scene played again.
And again.
The screams silent each time.
Until she said, "Stop."
And it did.
One by one, they each saw their first silence.
The moment they'd swallowed pain instead of speaking it.
For Solin, it was the day he didn't ask for help and nearly drowned.
For Amaryn, the night she pretended she didn't miss her brother.
For Varn, the scream he buried the day his friend died.
Flick cried.
Not because he remembered, but because he didn't.
Even his silence had been taken.
Only Sera didn't move.
She stayed frozen in the chair.
The Silencekeeper hovered near her.
But Sera's image didn't fade in.
It crashed in.
Fire. Smoke. A child screaming through a broken door. Her.
She hadn't swallowed silence.
She'd shoved it down until it turned sharp.
Elira knelt beside her.
"It's okay," she said.
"No," Sera whispered. "It was okay. That's what I told myself. That's what I made myself believe."
She looked up.
"I let them hurt me."
And the room cracked.
The Silencekeeper touched Sera's face.
And the threads in her mouth—snapped.
She opened her mouth.
No sound came.
But the mountain shook.
And the mouths on the walls?
They began to whisper.
One by one.
Words.
Names.
Songs.
Not all joyful.
But all real.
The test was over.
And the path opened.
A trail of soft echoes leading them deeper.
Elira lit the lantern.
"I'm not afraid of silence," she said.
"Me neither," said Sera, softly.
Varn grinned. "Still don't like caves, though."
And Flick?
He held a single tear in his hand.
It sparkled.
Maybe, just maybe, it remembered a voice once lost.
And wanted to find it again..