The march back from the battlefield was no triumph. No songs, no banners, no shouts of victory. Only the drag of boots through ash, the hiss of cooling steel, and above all the silence that clung to Sorin like a shroud.
Wherever he walked, soldiers parted. Not with reverence, but with unease, as though the very air around him carried something poisonous.
Even those who owed their lives to his power could not hold his gaze for long.
Some crossed themselves with gestures of warding.
Others whispered prayers beneath their breath, hoping the Silence would not hear.
Sorin felt every flicker of fear, every sideways glance. The Silence made it impossible not to. It magnified what was hidden, dredging unspoken truths to the surface.
And what he felt was rejection, suspicion, dread. They feared him more than the enemy he had destroyed.
His hand pressed against his chest as if to cage his heart, but all he found was the second pulse the unyielding thrum of Silence, alive beneath his skin. With each beat it whispered: Why pretend? Why cling to them?
Zira walked at his side, her presence a fragile shield against the tide of doubt. Yet even she, steady as stone, carried questions in her eyes that she dared not voice.
He longed for her words, to be anchored in something human, yet feared the truth she might give him. Would she call him savior or monster? Their gazes locked once, and in that instant the air between them thickened, humming with something unspoken.
A tether stretched thin but unbroken, as though both sensed how close they stood to a precipice neither dared name.
By dusk, they reached the encampment. Torches burned, but their glow was brittle, swallowed by shadows. Commanders huddled in hushed circles, their voices dropping when Sorin drew near. Reports had already spread like wildfire.
"Silent magic," one muttered. "No natural gift."
"A boy wielding power like that? Something else touched him."
"They'll want to study him. Or use him."
The whispers pressed into Sorin's mind, sharp as blades. His breath hitched, ragged, until he stumbled into his tent, dragging the silence with him. The thin canvas could not keep the voices out. They bled through like smoke, dissecting, condemning, stripping him of his humanity thread by thread.
He sank to his knees. His hands shook not from battle, but from the slow unraveling of himself. What am I becoming?
The Silence rippled in answer, cold and unyielding. Not boy. Not theirs.
And then something shifted.
The air thickened, damp and heavy. The temperature plummeted, a sudden chill that crawled beneath his skin. The torch outside guttered, its flame strangled by unseen fingers.
Shadows warped unnaturally across the canvas, lengthening, reaching for him like claws. Sorin's breath fogged pale, each exhale thunderous against the suffocating stillness. Even his heartbeat dulled, smothered beneath layers of silence.
Then came the voice.
It slid through the air like a blade, low and distant, not carried by sound but etched into his bones.
"You have touched the threshold, Sorin. But thresholds are meant to be crossed."
His head snapped up, eyes wide. This was not his Silence it was something older, heavier, vast.
The canvas quivered as though a presence leaned against it from outside.
He felt again the unseen figure from the ridge, closer now. Watching. Waiting.
The Silence around him fractured.
And through the fracture something stepped in.