("I do not scream. I remember. And remembering is how I burn you.")
They thought she would stay broken.
That the girl who couldn't speak couldn't fight.
Couldn't name them.
Couldn't haunt them.
But silence is not safety.
Silence is what a storm becomes before it devours a village.
Lucia had not screamed that night—
But now, she was learning to echo.
And it began with a name.
> Deren Vell.
The first.
The loudest.
The one who grinned when he pressed her into the mud and said,
"You'll remember me every time you try to forget."
He was right.
She remembered.
---
She waited until moonlight cracked the sky open like a bone.
Deren staggered home from the tavern, drunk and mumbling to himself. He nearly tripped over his own doorstep.
Lucia watched from the shadows, barefoot, bareheaded, white shift soaked in mist.
She wasn't a woman that night.
She was every scream that never escaped her throat.
---
Inside, he lit a single candle.
His shack was a mess of rotting meat and bottles.
She stepped through the doorway like a ghost.
He didn't hear her until the floorboard creaked.
He turned.
Saw her.
And smiled.
> "Well, well…"
The smile froze.
Because she didn't flinch. Didn't blink. Didn't tremble.
And behind her eyes, he saw it—
The reckoning.
> "You come to finish what I started?" he sneered, bravado cracking like old wood.
She took one step.
Then another.
Then, in a voice raw as torn silk, she answered:
> "No. I came to finish you."
He ran.
She moved faster.
---
Deren screamed once.
Just once.
Before she was on him—
Tying his hands.
Binding his mouth.
Pressing his own hunting knife against his skin.
Not to kill. Not yet.
To carve a memory.
---
She didn't shout.
She whispered.
Every word a splinter of her soul shoved back into his skull.
> "Do you remember my hands shaking?"
"Do you remember your laughter in my ear?"
"Do you remember what you called me?"
He whimpered.
She cut.
Not flesh.
Not skin.
Just his hair. A lock from behind his ear.
A piece of him, like the piece he stole from her.
Then she leaned in. So close her breath touched his cheek.
> "You wanted me silent."
She paused.
Then whispered:
> "Now you will be."
---
When morning came, the townspeople found Deren Vell outside the chapel.
Naked from the waist up. Kneeling in the dirt.
Lips sewn shut with fishing wire.
His eyes wide, unfocused.
No blood. No bruises. Just terror.
Pinned to his chest: a black feather.
And one word carved into the wood behind him:
LISTEN.
---
Lucia stood at the edge of the woods, watching.
She didn't smile.
She didn't weep.
But the wind around her whispered like it had heard her voice for the first time.
And it was hungry for more.