The stars were full tonight.
Not the sharp, ice-edged constellations of Karnox, but warm, wandering ones—amber-gold and slow, like drifting embers from a fire no one dared name. Casamir sat alone at the arch's edge, where the moss curled down toward moonlit pools. The wind had stopped. Even the fireflies pulsed more slowly.
Casamir shifted slightly, knees tucked against his chest. The warmth of the stars didn't quite reach him. He traced a fingertip along the moss's edge, listening for the hum beneath the soil, but tonight—even that pulse was absent.
It wasn't fear that tightened in his chest. It was expectation. The sense that the world had paused for something, and he didn't know if he was its reason or its mistake.
On Karnox, the sky had always been a ceiling—cracked, rusted, and distant. Here, it felt like a lake too wide to cross. He found himself wondering, not for the first time, if he'd fallen between realms instead of arriving in one.
His body was still healing. But his soul? It hovered. Like the moths he sometimes saw circling the lanternroots—drawn to something that might burn them, or name them.
He should have felt peace.
But stillness, too complete, can bruise a restless soul.
No breeze. No frogsong. Even the Threads beneath his fingers had gone quiet—like breath held too long. Like the whole forest was listening for something it did not trust to speak.
Then—
A voice, behind him.
"You keep looking up, Casamir," it said, low and dry as mist over ash. "But the sky already let you fall."
Casamir didn't move. Not at first. He knew better than to flinch at voices that knew his name.
But he turned—slowly.
A figure stood beyond the moss. Draped in shadow-woven robes that shimmered like veiled ink. No face. No features. Just two pale lights where eyes might be, blinking slowly from beneath a hood that breathed instead of resting.
The air did not grow cold.
But the world stepped back.
"Who are you?" Casamir asked, steady.
"An old admirer," the figure said. "Or perhaps: a witness that never closed its eyes."
The voice was neither male nor female—only deliberate. Smooth. A smile folded into syllables, shaped by patience too old for names.
Casamir didn't rise. "I didn't come here for you."
"No," the figure agreed. "But you came. And that's enough."
A pause. The stars above felt more distant now.
"You're not part of this forest," Casamir said.
"Neither are you," came the answer, soft and precise. "The difference is—I don't pretend to belong."
It gestured vaguely to the trees. "These woods… they permit your presence. But not forever. They press, don't they? You feel it. The hush. The weight."
Casamir frowned.
He did feel it. That subtle tension. Like something just beneath the surface, watching back.
"You're… pressure," he murmured.
The figure laughed—quiet, without humor.
"No. I'm what speaks when pressure breaks the shell."
"I know what falling feels like," Casamir said, slower now. "This wasn't it."
"No?" The figure's hood tilted, and the pale lights of its eyes flickered once. "Then what was it?"
Casamir hesitated. "I chose to live."
A silence passed—not judgmental, but weighing.
"And yet you come here like one waiting for permission."
"I came here to remember how not to burn."
"Then burn better," the figure said, softly.
They stood facing each other as if balancing a word between them. Casamir felt something old in that stare—not a person, but a pattern. Something that watched not with desire, but with anticipation.
"Do you know what they'll call you?" the figure asked. "If you keep walking without bowing?"
"No," Casamir said. "But I'm learning not to care."
"Good," the figure whispered. "Hold onto that. You'll need it when they call you god and traitor in the same breath."
It took a step closer. The moss didn't bend. The Threads didn't stir.
"Walk with me."
Casamir rose. Slowly. The fireflies didn't flinch.
They walked side by side into the treeline's breath, where the stars filtered like memories caught between branches. A path curved down toward a ridge lined with thorngrass and old stones. Casamir recognized none of it—but the Threads here felt older. Stilled. Sealed.
"Why now?" he asked.
"Because you're quiet," the figure replied. "Too quiet. All this peace. All this learning. I began to wonder if you'd forgotten who you were."
"I haven't," Casamir said.
The figure hummed. "Then why do you act like you were meant to stay small?"
They came to a shelf of stone where the trees thinned and a hollow pressed into the land—soft, round, and dark, as if the world had laid down a burden and never taken it back up again.
The hollow ahead wasn't just a dip in the land—it felt like a scar the world had grown around. The air shimmered slightly, like heat over stone, but the temperature was cold. Not biting—aching. Grief pressed into the soil here. Grief so old it had given up asking to be known.
Thread-veins in the ground flickered faintly—patterns too faded to name. Casamir caught the outline of a symbol in one of the stones, half-buried: a circle within a broken spiral.
He reached down instinctively. The stone was warm. Then cold. Then familiar.
"Don't touch that too long," the figure said softly behind him. "Some memories bleed backward."
Casamir withdrew his hand slowly. The moss where he'd touched had curled inward, like breath recoiling.
He froze.
Something below. Not alive—but not absent either. A presence, asleep beneath the hush.
"What is this place?"
The figure tilted its head.
"Somewhere the world buried what it wasn't ready to lose."
Casamir shivered. "Is it… dangerous?"
The pause that followed was too long.
"It is remembered," the voice finally said. "And some memories, boy, outlive the gods that feared them."
The wind picked up—not air, but motion in the Threads. A flicker of resonance in the roots beneath his boots. He felt—not knowledge, but awareness. Something under the soil brushing its knuckles against the veil.
"Why bring me here?" Casamir asked. "What do you want from me?"
The figure turned. Eyes dimming slightly, like thoughts being tucked behind other thoughts.
"Nothing," it said. "Not yet. Only this: when the silence returns—and it will—I want you to remember."
"Remember what?"
"That you were never meant to fit."
Casamir blinked.
"You mean I don't belong?"
The figure stepped closer. Its shadow didn't stretch—it folded.
"No," it whispered. "I mean you exceed. And those who exceed? They will name you wrong. Shape you to soften you. Maybe even love you—but never fully."
Casamir's throat tightened. "And you? What do you see?"
The figure didn't smile. But the air smiled for it.
"I see someone who hasn't begun to break yet."
It leaned in—too close—and for a heartbeat, Casamir smelled burning flowers and dust.
"And when you do," it murmured, "I'll be waiting."
Then, as if the Threads unspooled for its passage, the figure stepped sideways—and vanished.
No light. No trace. Only a faint tremble beneath the ridge. A pulse, like a heartbeat forgotten by time.
Casamir stood long after the figure left, trying to steady the drumbeat in his chest. The whisper still echoed in his bones—I see someone who hasn't begun to break yet. Not threat. Not promise. Just observation. Truth offered without cruelty.
He looked to the stars again, but they seemed farther now. As if whatever had spoken had stretched the sky between him and it. He exhaled slowly.
Then, from beneath his feet, a single note rose—not a voice, not a Thread, but a reminder. It sounded like a lullaby someone had forgotten to finish. Or a door half-closed.
"I hear you," Casamir whispered. And meant it.
When he turned back toward the village, he felt the hush follow—not like a shadow, but like something waiting to be named. Or perhaps: something that already had been, long ago—and was now waiting to be remembered.