The bell in Briar Hollow never rang at night.
It wasn't a law written on parchment or nailed to the chapel door. It was older than the stones themselves, older than the first fencepost sunk into the mud. The bell rang for dawn, for weddings, for harvest—once, long ago, for war. But at night, when the wind came down from the black pines and the mist crept along the ground like a living thing, the bell stayed silent.
Tonight, it should have screamed.
A woman sat at the edge of a narrow bed, hands folded neatly in her lap, spine straight as if she were receiving a guest of honor. Her candle had burned down to a glossy pool, but she did not reach to trim the wick. The flame leaned, guttered, recovered, and she did not blink.
The bed beside her was empty.
The sheet was tucked tight. The pillow held a shallow dip where a head had rested, and there was a faint scent of lavender soap and the grassy sweetness of late summer—so ordinary it hurt to notice. At the foot of the bed, a small boot lay on its side like an animal that had died mid-step.
The woman's mouth curved in a polite, small smile.
Not a smile of relief. Not a smile of denial. A smile like a shopkeeper greeting a customer.
Outside the window, the chapel's bell tower was a dark finger against the clouded moon. The village lane was quiet. No running feet. No crying. No calling of names.
No grief.
A knock came at the door. Soft. Certain.
The woman rose with measured care, smoothing her dress as though for a festival. She crossed the room without hurry, lifted the latch, and opened the door.
A man stood there in a travel-worn cloak the color of old parchment. Snow-white thread stitched symbols along his collar, the kind that made village folk lower their eyes out of habit. His hair was tied back. His hands were clean. A small bell of silver hung at his throat, catching the candlelight like a pale star.
"Good evening," he said.
"Good evening," the woman replied. "You must be tired."
He nodded once, solemn as a priest. "May I come in?"
"Of course."
She stepped aside.
He entered the house with the careful grace of someone used to thresholds that meant more than wood and iron. His gaze drifted to the empty bed. It did not linger. He did not flinch. His expression did not sharpen with pity the way it should have.
Instead, he exhaled, slow and satisfied, as if confirming a measurement.
"She slept there," he said, voice gentle.
"Yes," the woman answered. "She did."
"What was her name?"
The woman opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
Her brows knitted, as if she'd been asked to recall the name of a distant cousin. She looked toward the bed again, toward the small boot, toward the dip in the pillow. Her smile faltered for the first time—not into sorrow, but into mild confusion.
The man's eyes softened. "It's all right. Names are heavy. Some are heavier than they should be."
The woman's smile returned, relieved by his permission to fail. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't… I don't remember."
"You don't need to," he assured her.
He unfastened the silver bell at his throat and held it between two fingers. Up close, the bell wasn't a simple charm. Its surface was etched with a lattice of tiny runes, each one biting into the metal like teeth marks. He lifted it slightly, and the candle flame trembled as if the air itself had inhaled.
"This village has been blessed," he said. "Not everyone is chosen to be lightened. Some carry weight their whole lives. But Briar Hollow…" His gaze slipped toward the window, toward the bell tower in the dark. "Briar Hollow has been granted mercy."
"Mercy," the woman repeated, as if tasting the word.
"Yes." He stepped toward the bed. "Do you feel pain?"
The woman considered the question. She pressed a hand to her chest, as though checking for a heartbeat. "No," she said. "I don't think I do."
"And do you feel fear?"
She shook her head. "No."
"Do you feel anger?"
"No."
"Do you feel—" His voice remained kind. "—that something precious has been taken from you?"
The woman looked around the room. Her eyes passed over the boot, the bed, the window. She paused, searching the corners as if expecting to find a misplaced shawl. Then she smiled again.
"No," she said, almost apologetic. "I don't."
The man's shoulders loosened, a quiet release of tension. He turned his bell once. It did not ring. There was no sound—only a faint pressure in the room, like the moment before thunder, and then a settling, as if dust had found the floor.
He reached to the wall beside the bed. A small wax seal had been pressed there, pale as bone, stamped with a sigil of three concentric circles. The woman hadn't noticed it before. Most people didn't.
He placed his fingertips against the seal and whispered something that was not quite a prayer.
The seal warmed beneath his touch.
The woman's gaze glazed gently, like a pond freezing over.
"Good," the man murmured. "Good."
He looked back at her. "Tell me," he said. "What happened tonight?"
The woman answered promptly, like reciting a recipe. "Nothing happened. I was getting ready for sleep. I sat down. You knocked."
"And before that?"
She tilted her head. "Before that, I—" She hesitated. "I made stew."
"And before that?"
"I swept."
"And before that?"
A pause. Her smile tightened. "I don't know."
The man nodded, satisfied with the boundary. "That is the edge," he said softly, as if to himself.
Outside, a faint rustle rose in the pines. Something moved in the night mist. For a heartbeat, the candle flame bent toward the window, drawn by a presence. The woman did not notice.
The man did.
He turned toward the doorway, where the night pressed in like dark water. His hand moved under his cloak, where something heavier than a bell might hang. His eyes sharpened—not with fear, but with calculation.
A shape stood beyond the threshold.
It was not a man. Not an animal. Not a shadow. It held the rough suggestion of a person—too tall, too straight, too still. Its face was smooth, like polished wood with no grain. Where eyes should be, there were shallow depressions that caught the candlelight and gave nothing back.
It did not step forward.
It did not attack.
It simply stood there, as if waiting to be invited.
The woman smiled politely toward it. "Do you need something?" she asked, voice bright, as if it were a neighbor come to borrow salt.
The man's throat worked once. His bell hand tightened until his knuckles went white.
"You shouldn't see that," he said, almost to himself.
The thing at the threshold tilted its head.
Then the air inside the room thickened.
Not with heat. With weight.
The candle flame shortened, crushed. The woman's smile faltered. She blinked for the first time in minutes, slow and confused, as if waking from a dream.
The man lifted his bell.
Still, it did not ring.
The pressure swelled—an invisible hand pressing down on the roof beams, on the bedframe, on the woman's lungs. The wax seal on the wall began to sweat, a pale smear sliding like tears.
The thing at the threshold took one step.
The floorboard creaked under it like a groan.
The woman's hands rose to her chest instinctively, fingers curling, searching for something inside that should have been there. Her eyes widened, not with fear—fear had been shaved away—but with the raw confusion of someone realizing they are missing an entire limb.
"What…?" she whispered.
The man's voice sharpened. "Stay behind me."
The thing took another step.
The candle went out.
Darkness flooded the room.
And then, impossibly, there was a glow—not from flame, but from the runes on the man's bell, which flared pale and cold. Lines of light traced themselves in the air, forming a thin lattice between him and the threshold.
A Bellwork barrier.
The thing's smooth face leaned close to the lattice, as if sniffing it. The barrier trembled.
The man whispered a word.
The lattice tightened.
The thing's head jerked back—not in pain, but in surprise. It stared into the room with its empty depressions, and for a moment the man saw something behind them: a depth like a well, a hunger like winter.
It opened its mouth.
No teeth. No tongue. Just a black gap that seemed too deep for its face.
And still there was no sound.
The man's bell hand shook.
"Not here," he hissed. "Not now."
The thing's mouth widened.
The pressure in the room spiked.
The woman fell to her knees with a soft thud, breath punching out of her. Her hands clawed at her own collar, eyes rolling back as if the air had turned to stone.
The man slammed his palm against the wax seal on the wall.
The seal burst into a glow.
A pulse rolled through the room like a wave.
The pressure eased, abruptly, as if a great weight had been lifted off the world.
The woman coughed, sucked in air, and then—just as quickly—her face smoothed out again. Her eyes unfocused. The confusion drained away like water from a cracked bowl.
Her smile returned.
The thing at the threshold recoiled half a step, not from pain but from something like disappointment.
The man's chest heaved.
He stared at the woman.
She looked up at him, placid. "Is everything all right?" she asked.
A silence stretched.
Then the man's shoulders sagged.
"Yes," he said, voice gentle again, as if switching masks. "Everything is all right."
The thing at the threshold tilted its head one last time.
Then it stepped backward into the mist and vanished.
The air pressure faded. The rune-glow on the bell dimmed.
The man stood very still in the candle-dark, then reached into his cloak and drew out a thin strip of black cloth. He tied it around his wrist—an old Warden habit, a ward against forgetting, a reminder of something he refused to let be shaved away.
The woman watched him calmly.
He swallowed. "You should sleep," he told her.
"Yes," she said brightly. "I should."
He turned to leave.
As he stepped into the night, the village remained quiet. No doors opened. No lanterns flared. No one ran to ask what the darkness had been. The bell tower stood still against the sky like a dead tree.
In the pines beyond the fields, something else moved.
Something that had smelled the seal and "mercy" and hunger.
The man looked toward the chapel. He could sense the village's Bellwork like a film stretched thin across the roofs and hearts of its people, a constant soft pressure, a lullaby that did not allow screaming.
He had been sent here to maintain it.
To keep the tax flowing.
To keep the weight manageable.
And for the first time in many years, he felt the edge of panic—distant, muted, as if someone had wrapped it in cloth.
He tightened the black ribbon on his wrist until his fingers tingled.
"Above," he whispered, eyes lifting toward the clouded heavens. "Please… not tonight."
But the sky offered no answer.
Only the distant drift of Aethergate, a pale shape beyond the clouds, like a floating cathedral carved from moonstone. From this far away it looked holy. Beautiful. Impossible.
And beneath it, unseen by the villagers below, the Lifting Psalm drank quietly, steadily, from a thousand small confessions.
Kairo Venn saw Aethergate for the first time at dawn.
He stood on a ridge above the old road, cloak pulled tight against the cold, his breath turning to fog. He was not tall in a way that demanded attention, not broad in a way that promised violence. His hands were callused, his boots worn, his pack modest. He looked like any other youth headed to a city for work, or pilgrimage, or foolish dreams.
But the air around him was strange.
Not visible. Not shimmering.
Just… heavy, in a way that made the grasses bend slightly as if under invisible rain.
Kairo didn't notice it. He'd lived with it too long to see it.
He watched the sky.
Aethergate floated above the clouds like a second horizon, vast enough to eclipse the morning light. Spires and walls and bridges hung in the air as if the world had forgotten gravity out of reverence. Sunlight caught rune-lantern chains and turned them into threads of gold. For a moment, it truly did look like a miracle.
Kairo's throat tightened.
Not with awe.
With something he couldn't name.
His fingers drifted, without thinking, to the small charm tied at his belt: a smooth stone etched with a simple circle. A keepsake from a man who had taught him how to breathe through panic, how to stand still when the world pressed down.
Master Oduro's mark.
Kairo exhaled slowly, and the heaviness around him shifted—subtle, like a sleeping beast resettling.
He started down the road toward the lift-gates where tethered sky-bridges reached up to meet the floating city.
As he walked, he passed a crossroads shrine. A Bell seal was nailed to it, pale wax stamped with three circles. A traveler knelt and pressed his forehead to the seal, whispering something Kairo couldn't hear.
When the traveler rose, his shoulders were lighter.
His smile was peaceful.
Too peaceful.
Kairo's stomach knotted.
He kept walking.
Above him, Aethergate drifted in perfect silence, as if listening.
And somewhere deep under its streets and stones, something drank.