Day 9 – The Language of Violence
The village square was a circle of repetition—people gathered, dispersed, gathered again. Like breathing. Ren had grown accustomed to the patterns: the rhythm of feet on cobblestone, the chorus of shouting merchants, and the quiet space in which nothing changed.
Today broke that pattern.
Two men—farmhands by the look of them—stood chest to chest near the well, shouting.
Ren was seated on the same bench, drinking water from a wooden bowl a child had handed him that morning without explanation. He paused, listened.
The argument was intense, staccato. One of them shoved the other. Then the words sharpened.
"Garn kesh tullin!"
"Youna fa drakk, mernas!"
Ren's eyes flicked to his notes. The word kesh—"break" or "broken"—surfaced again. He quickly scratched down the phrase: "Garn kesh = break something? Threat?" Drakk... he'd heard that word associated with teeth and mouths.
Then the fist came.
A brutal, heavy hit—flesh on jawbone—and the younger man crumpled, bleeding from the mouth.
No one intervened.
Children watched, wide-eyed. Elders turned their backs. The older man spat, said something final—"Vel garn."—and walked off.
Ren's hand trembled slightly, but he didn't look away. He waited until the crowd thinned. Then, carefully, he walked to the blood-spattered stones, dipped his finger into a small pool, and drew a circle in his notebook beside the word drakk.
---
Day 10 – Paranoia
The lesson haunted him.
Lark had warned him once: "Don't just learn the language. Learn the silence around it."
Now Ren understood.
Violence here wasn't abnormal. It was regulated. Not by law—but by ritual, timing, audience. You were allowed to hurt someone, so long as no one thought it uncalled for.
And that was terrifying.
He began collecting words like weapons. Phrases he'd overheard:
"Tullin kren" – Back away.
"Vek nas" – I warn you.
"Mernas drakk vel" – You've gone too far.
He practiced their inflections in his head. No stuttering. No hesitation.
If someone attacked him, he would speak in their tongue.
---
Day 13 – A Different Kind of Test
It happened near dusk.
Ren had just finished copying a page of comparative grammar between Veltrenne dialects and Khorvayne slangs (a gift from Lark's mess of scrolls) when he heard boots behind him. Heavy, intentional. Not villagers.
He turned.
Three men.
Two were lean and sharp-eyed. The third was heavyset, with a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once. They weren't from Veylin Hollow. Their clothes were stitched in Delvaris style—simple, functional, padded for knife fights.
The leader smiled. "You're the new one. The quiet one."
Ren didn't respond.
"You write things. Watch things. Make notes. You got money, right?"
Still nothing.
"See, we were thinking," the man said, stepping forward, "you must be from somewhere soft. All neat and clean. Not from here. So maybe—"
Ren spoke.
"Tullin kren."
The man blinked.
"Say that again?"
Ren stood slowly, holding his pen between two fingers like a blade.
"Tullin kren. -Step back."
Laughter. "What, you gonna write me to death?"
Ren's voice was ice.
"Vek nas."
The heavy man's smile died.
"Mernas drakk vel." -You've gone too far.
That was when they moved.
---
The Pen Writes
The first punch grazed his ear.
The second he blocked with his forearm. Pain screamed down his arm like fire. He staggered but didn't fall.
He didn't scream. He watched.
Every movement, every shift, every hesitation.
The heavy man grabbed him by the collar.
"You listen here, scribbler. You don't get to—"
And that's when Ren wrote.
He shoved the pen against the man's shoulder and whispered a phrase:
"You fear weakness more than death."
The pen pulsed.
A shimmer of something passed from the pen into the man's flesh—like a breath of truth forced through skin.
The man recoiled like he'd been stabbed. Stumbled. Eyes wide. He dropped Ren and fell to his knees, shaking.
His companions froze.
"What the hell did you do?!"
Ren didn't know. But he looked them in the eye and said nothing.
The man on the ground muttered the same phrase Ren had whispered—over and over.
"You fear weakness more than death... you fear weakness more than death…"
And began to cry.
The man didn't understand Ren's words. Not fully. Not consciously. But when the pen's truth sank into him, he reacted like he'd heard a prophecy spoken in his mother's voice.
Fear didn't need translation.
---
Aftermath
Lark found him that night.
Ren sat under the old tree near the well, knuckles bruised, coat torn.
Lark knelt beside him. "What happened?"
Ren didn't answer. He opened his notebook, showed him the line he'd written in blood-spattered ink.
Lark paled.
"You used the pen."
Ren nodded. "They pushed."
"And the pen answered back?"
"It... found the truth inside him."
Lark whistled low. "You're lucky it didn't backfire. If your words had been wrong—"
"They weren't."
Lark sat back and muttered, "Gods. You're not here to judge with swords or law. You're here to mirror people."
Ren looked down at the pen.
Still. Silent.
But it felt heavier now.
Not like a weapon.
Like a verdict.