The days of Rimora's imprisonment stretched endlessly, folding into one another until time itself seemed to rot inside the damp stone walls. Silence became her most constant torment—not the absence of sound, but the way the world outside continued as if nothing were wrong. Through narrow cracks in the walls, she sometimes caught fragments of life: merchants arguing over prices, guards trading crude jokes, children laughing somewhere far away. Those ordinary sounds felt obscene to her. Beneath them all, she sensed another rhythm, darker and wrong, pulsing through the city like a concealed disease. Death was moving quietly now, without spectacle or announcement. Men in their thirties lay down on benches to rest and never rose again. Women collapsed mid-step, baskets still clutched in their hands. Infants went still in their mothers' arms, cries cut off as if an unseen hand had pressed against their chests. The carts carrying bodies passed more frequently each day, yet the people told themselves it was coincidence, bad air, weak blood—anything but the truth. Rimora wanted to tear her voice through the stone and tell them that this silence was not mercy. It was the pause before annihilation.
Each night, the visions returned with sharpened cruelty, as though the catastrophe itself was growing impatient with her confinement. They no longer drifted through her sleep—they seized her. She saw seas swelling with bodies, waves thick with the dead crashing against shores that could not hold them. She saw flames climbing the towers of wealth, gold melting and dripping like wax as the rich barricaded themselves inside, believing walls could save them from fate. She saw rivers poisoned into black veins, skies rusted and choking, and children playing in gray ash because they had never known snow. The dreams ripped her from sleep gasping, her skin slick with sweat, her hands clawing into the straw as if she could anchor herself to reality. Sometimes her mother's voice drifted through the darkness, soft and mournful. Sometimes Arin's cries echoed from somewhere unreachable, filled with urgency and grief. Sometimes Blue's laughter rang out—until it twisted suddenly into a scream. No matter the shape, the message never changed. The world was dying in stages, and the next stage would not be quiet.
Her captors believed hunger and isolation had broken her. They came to mock her certainty, to reassure themselves of their power. Guards kicked scraps of stale bread through the bars, sneering that prophets should learn to eat like the poor they claimed to defend. Their laughter echoed down the corridor, hollow and forced. One day the warden came himself, a heavy man with a thick neck and eyes polished smooth by indifference. He asked her why she insisted on spreading madness when the city was already strained by famine and unrest. Rimora lifted her chained hands, the metal biting into her wrists, and told him that famine was nothing more than a shadow cast by something far larger. She told him the true darkness was already breathing among them. The warden laughed, saying hunger and disease were the inheritance of the poor, while the elites possessed cures, comforts, and protections that bordered on divine. Yet as he turned to leave, Rimora saw his hand tremble when it reached for the door. That single moment of weakness told her everything. Even the powerful could feel the air changing.
Despite the council's attempts to bury her words, rumors leaked through the city like cracks in stone. Children whispered about the cursed girl who saw death before it came. Women warned one another to keep their babies away from her name, as if words themselves carried infection. Men shook their heads and said madness thrived among the desperate. But there were others—servants, beggars, men hollowed by sudden loss—who listened more closely. They had buried wives, children, brothers without explanation, and coincidence no longer satisfied them. At night, some crept near the prison walls, pressing their ears to the stone. When the guards slept, Rimora whispered through the cracks, her voice low but unwavering. She spoke of the second wave—of fire, plague, and collapse that would devour rich and poor alike. She told them unity was the only chance left. They listened, fear widening their eyes, but terror sealed their mouths. To believe her was to challenge the order that governed their survival, and rebellion carried its own swift death.
As unrest stirred, the council's patience thinned. One night, Rimora was dragged from her cell again, wrists bound, her body light with hunger. The hall she was taken to was stripped of splendor—no chandeliers, no laughter—only torchlight flickering against stone and faces carved with unease. They demanded she recant. They demanded she confess that her visions were lies meant to ignite rebellion. Rimora lifted her head, hair matted, voice raw, and told them she would rather be burned alive than betray the truth. Her words struck the chamber with a force that stunned even her captors. For a breath, the council sat in silence, as if something ancient had spoken through her. Then fury rose. They did not sentence her to death—that would turn her into a symbol. Instead, they condemned her to permanent imprisonment, her voice sealed away with her body, her truth entombed in darkness.
Back in her cell, despair reached for her throat but never closed its grip. She thought of her father suspended in endless sleep, of her mother's lifeless eyes, of the sibling she had never met. If she could not save the world, she would at least remember it honestly. She began to carve her visions into the stone using fragments of bone and sharpened debris. Day after day, she etched burning skies, collapsing towers, rivers thick with the dead. The walls transformed into a gallery of ruin—a record meant for whoever might one day stand where she stood. If her voice was erased, the scars would remain.
Years slipped by unnoticed, measured only by the growing maze of carvings around her. Five years passed, then more. The catastrophe continued its quiet harvest, subtle enough to keep the masses asleep. But Rimora felt the second wave drawing near—heavier, louder, impossible to disguise. Sometimes she pressed her ear to the stone and imagined she could hear the world itself groaning under the strain. In those moments, her thoughts always drifted to Arin. She wondered if he still fought, if he still carried fire in his blood, or if silence had swallowed him too. She whispered his name into the dark, knowing it would not reach him, yet needing to believe it mattered.
What hurt most was not the chains or the hunger or the laughter of her jailers. It was the knowledge that the truth had been spoken—and buried alive with her. She had screamed until her throat split, carved until her fingers bled, endured visions that tore at her sanity. Still, the world marched blindly toward its end. Her body weakened, her face hollowed by years of captivity, but her eyes burned unchanged. She understood now that perhaps this was the fate of those who saw too clearly—not to save the world, but to witness it honestly. And so Rimora waited. Not for rescue. Not for freedom. But for the sound she knew would one day shatter the silence—the roar of the second wave.