Kiran's boots hit stone and the world narrowed to the sound of wind through cracks.
The bridge's span curved above a canyon that smelled of old dust and dried water.
Elias tightened a strap on the mule and looked at Kiran with something like a map's margin note: purposeful, unreadable.
"This is the Bridge of the Forgotten," Elias said, voice low. "Legends stick to places that keep weight."
Kiran stepped forward and the bridge answered with a thin, hollow whine.
The stones had ridges where many feet had worn out the original polish.
The rope rail shivered under his hand.
"Do people really leave things?" Kiran asked, turning toward a pile of stones at the bridge's base.
Cloth ribbons, faded and frayed, trailed like small flags.
A wooden token stuck out from the pile like a knucklebone.
"Pilgrims leave bones of the self," Elias replied. "A thank-you or a plea. Old places collect old debts."
Kiran crouched and picked up a smooth, river-polished stone.
It fit his palm as if it had been waiting for that exact pressure.
He wiped a thin film of dust with his thumb and set the stone on the pile.
The sound of it landing felt right—small and decisive.
A child of a memory came up uninvited: Kael's bundle of bread in the gate's prelight.
The coin he had given Meira.
The amulet's seam at his chest.
Each small promise stacked into the present like the stones under his palm.
He closed his fingers and rose.
Elias watched him arrange the offerings.
"A man who piles stones keeps routes clean," Elias said. "Leave a weight, keep one to carry with you."
Kiran nodded and stepped onto the bridge.
The stone underfoot made a low, almost musical pipe.
The wind found holes in the bridge and whistled through them, making the span hum like a giant reed.
"Listen," Elias said, pausing with the mule. "The bridge remembers the builders. Some cartographers swear the stones sing back what was sung into the mortar."
Kiran stopped and tilted his head.
The whistling was not words but moods—undertones that threaded with the canyon's depth: fatigue, a blunt ache of homesickness, a stubborn resolve.
A note of something like hope snagged at the edge and unrolled like a banner.
"You hear it too," Elias said.
He did not sound surprised.
"Not words. Echo-emotions. Folks used to read such things as warnings. We read them for bearings."
They walked.
The mule's hooves kept a steady click.
The wind threaded their clothes into slow flags.
The bridge's hum folded with each step into a layered chorus that made Kiran's ribs tighten in a way that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the wrongness of hearing people you had never met in a place that should not remember them.
"Who built this?" Kiran asked, eyes on the rail as if it might offer a map scribbled into stone.
Elias rubbed the rail with a thumb.
"Prisoners, maybe. Or soldiers. Or the hungry. The exact truth is less useful than the fact they left a signature—grief laced with instruction. The song warns those who listen poorly and comforts those who read it right."
Kiran glanced back once.
The Terraplaneta rolled behind them with indifferent green.
Meira's absence at the gate folded into his chest like a missing coin.
He did not say it aloud.
He kept the silence like a functional thing and moved forward.
A small altar crouched at the bridge's midpoint—stones stacked higher than the rest and a few dry offerings tucked between them.
A faded ribbon had a coin tied into its knot.
Elias unshouldered a small shard of crystal and placed it precisely among the gifts.
"For luck," Elias said without ceremony. "For safe crossing."
Kiran laid his hand on the pile and felt the scrape of older hands in the stones.
He retrieved the amulet from under his shirt and tied it briefly in the knot he'd made at the sword's hilt, then loosened it and slipped the amulet back over his head.
The motion was private; it felt like anchoring a route with a fingertip.
"Why here?" Kiran asked. "Why leave things to a bridge?"
Elias kept his eyes on the canyon.
"People leave things where the world has taken things from them. It is a barter system older than coin."
He paused.
"And now we must cross."
They moved onto the center of the span.
Wind found new holes and the bridge sang in a key that pressed against bones rather than ears.
Kiran's breath found a matching rhythm and his fingers tapped the rail once, twice, counting.
"Cartographers call it a lament turned map," Elias said. "Listen for repetition. When a note returns, that's a corridor's echo; it points where to set a compass. But stay light with your mind. The bridge will borrow whatever you feed it."
Kiran kept his eyes forward and the meter at his shoulder quiet.
The stone's song shifted—less general now, with phrases that could have been translated into memory: the grit of hands, the bite of cold, the smell of mothering bread.
A small line of melody tugged at the edge like something familiar but worn smooth by time.
"Could it sing my parents?" Kiran asked.
The words left bare and raw.
"It will sing whatever you let it have," Elias replied.
His voice did not carry comfort or harm—only ledger-like honesty.
"You may not like the chorus."
The bridge's whistle tightened.
Kiran paused and placed a hand on the rail.
The whine resolved into something that felt like two sentences—one saying endurance, the other saying loss.
The endurance felt almost proud.
The loss tasted like dry bread, the same bread Kael had wrapped in a parcel.
The synergy made Kiran's throat stutter.
"Keep to the center," Elias ordered when a higher wind sliced across the span. "Edges bite with feedback."
They reached the middle where a thin bench of stone jutted out like a throat.
A figure sat there: a man with clothes patched into a thousand maps, eyes pale as dust.
He rocked a canteen in his hands as if counting drops.
"Good day," the man said without looking up.
His voice folded like old cloth.
"Travelers."
Kiran's mouth opened for the practiced courtesy and a second later the man looked up.
He had the kind of transparency in his face that made you think he had worn the world like a cloak until it thinned.
"My name is Garam," the man said, offering the canteen with a careful hand. "Collector of silences. If you'd like, a sip."
Elias inclined his head the way one man respects another's trade.
"We take nothing without purpose. We thank you, Garam."
He lifted a hand in small acknowledgment and kept his other hand near the mule's flank.
Kiran accepted a single sip.
The water tasted of metal and old rain; it steadied like a small bridge for his tongue.
Garam's eyes slid to the sword at Kiran's hip, then to the amulet when Kiran's fingers brushed its cord.
"You carry odd company," Garam observed, voice thin and amused. "Two artifacts in one pack."
"One is mine," Kiran said, neutral.
He kept the sentence short enough to be inventory.
Garam's gaze traveled over him and paused.
"You carry a different silence, young one."
His voice softened.
"Not an empty silence. A silence... famished."
Kiran's palm closed once on the leather at his hip; the motion was quick and automatic.
The amulet pressed hard against his sternum through shirt.
The phrase landed like a pebble into still water—an invitation and a warning.
"Why famished?" Kiran managed.
Garam's lips turned up as if tasting memory.
"When silence denies, it eats the echoes that feed others. Hunger follows denial. Some silences are protective; some are predatory. Yours seems to want."
Elias's eyes narrowed a fraction and the canteen clinked against Garam's knee.
"We are passing through. No sermons."
"A sermon isn't what I offer."
Garam's stare sharpened like a needle.
"I collect what the world refuses to speak. Keep your hand off raising what you don't yet read."
Kiran's mouth opened.
He could reply with the Test of Silence, with the festival lantern dying against his blade, with the Redemoinho in the canyon fracturing near him.
He did not—because answers carry weight and weight sinks bridges.
Before the words could form, a deep crash cut across the canyon.
Stone groaned.
Dust shot up at the far end of the bridge like a lung emptied.
Travelers ahead stumbled; a shout folded and then broke.
Elias's hand went to Kiran's shoulder and pulled him back.
The mule pulled against its rein and reared.
They all turned.
A section of the bridge further forward sagged and then gave, a chunk of old masonry tumbling into the canyon with a roar that shook grit down the span.
Screams slipped and died as people scrambled for a waistband of safe stone.
Garam's canteen hit the bench and rolled then stopped at Elias's boot.
He looked at Kiran with the same tired clarity as before and smiled without warmth.
Garam looks at Kiran, his old, clear eyes seeming to see beyond the surface.
"You carry a different silence, young one. Not an empty silence. A silence... famished."
Before Kiran can answer, a boom from the opposite end of the bridge makes them jump.
A section of the bridge, further ahead, partially collapses, blocking the passage.