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Rhyka drifted through the quiet streets of Darren under a sky dimmed by twilight, the last traces of sun clinging stubbornly to the edge of the horizon like fingers that refused to let go. The light was low and colorless, casting long shadows across the rooftops and painting the cobbled paths in pale grey.
The village had already begun to settle. The market stalls were shuttered, their cloth canopies tied down against the coming night breeze. The bakers' fires had cooled, their chimney smoke thinned to nothing. Here and there, the clatter of a closing gate or the bark of a dog broke the stillness, but even those were swallowed quickly by the evening air. Only the insects kept their chorus steady—shrill, constant, filling the gaps in the silence.
Rhyka moved through all of it like a ghost.
Not a figure of legend or fear, but something quieter. A child-shaped shadow that slipped past doorframes and under hanging laundry without notice. The kind of presence that people forgot moments after passing.
Unseen Unremarkable Uninvited
His steps made no sound on the path, though he wasn't trying to be quiet. It just happened that way. People never really noticed when he passed. They didn't greet him. They didn't glance over. They didn't stop their conversations when he walked by.
And he had learned not to expect them to.
The apartment complex where he lived wasn't far from the temple school—tucked behind a crooked row of stone fences and narrow gardens, nestled just at the edge of the school grounds where the temple caretakers rarely walked. It was a squat, aging structure, built from timber that had long since grayed, its paint peeling like sunburned skin. Moss crawled up the base of its foundation. The roof had dipped slightly in the middle.
It wasn't meant for students. Not officially.
But rules in Darren weren't always spoken aloud. And some exceptions were made—for the forgotten. For the orphans. For the ones who had no parents to go home to. No guardians to pick them up after lessons. No place else to sleep.
Rhyka had never asked for permission to live there.
And no one had ever told him to leave.
A dorm mother managed the building. Her name was Maeryn, though no one ever used it to her face. She was middle-aged, iron-backed, and carried herself like a soldier who had survived too many winters to suffer nonsense. Her voice rasped like metal drawn across stone, and her eyes were sharp with the constant suspicion of someone who had seen too much.
But she never asked questions. Not of Rhyka.
Their understanding was silent and absolute: Stay quiet Cause no trouble Be invisible
And in return, he would be left alone.
Rhyka liked it that way.
He reached the steps to the second floor and climbed them two at a time, careful not to disturb the wood too much. The bannister creaked in the same spot it always did—third spindle from the top—but he had long since learned to move around it. His fingers brushed the key in his coat pocket. The brass was warm from the heat of his palm.
He let himself into the unit. The lock clicked shut behind him.
The air inside was still and close. Not stale in the way of rot or unclean living—but untouched. Like no one had opened the window in days. Dust floated in the shafts of evening light that bled through the crooked blinds, casting long, thin shadows across the hardwood floor.
The room itself was small. One main space, a low cot pushed to the wall, a chest at the foot of it, a desk with no chair, a cracked mirror leaning against the far corner. The only decoration was a faded wall hanging depicting one of the old glyphs of the Threads—frayed now, the ink barely visible.
He didn't bother turning on the lamp.
Darkness suited him.
Silence wrapped around him like a blanket. Heavy, comforting. It filled his lungs when he breathed in, clean and cold. He exhaled, slow and deep. The tightness in his shoulders eased slightly.
Home.
He crossed the room in a few quiet strides and picked up a ceramic jug from the floor. The water inside was tepid, but clean. He drank deeply, each gulp washing dust from his throat. His mouth had been dry since midday, but he hadn't noticed until now.
When he finished, he set the jug down slowly, deliberately, as if not to wake something.
Then he stood there, motionless.
His eyes drifted across the room—not in boredom, but in awareness. They traced the corners, the cracks between floorboards, the shadows beneath the cot. His ears strained, not for sounds, but for the absence of them. A shift. A change.
Nothing.
Still, he crossed to the window and pulled the blinds shut in one smooth, practiced motion. The last of the light vanished. The room became shadow.
And in that perfect dark, he knelt.
No cushion no mat. Just the bare floor beneath him
He didn't light incense. Didn't draw a circle. Didn't chant the verses he'd memorized alongside the other children at the temple school. He didn't bow to the cardinal points or wash his hands in blessed water.
He only bowed his head.
Closed his eyes.
And pressed his forehead to the wood.
From within his chest, he reached out not with hands, not with voice, but with something deeper. Something raw and silent and full of need.
To the Goddess of Magic.
The great source. The one whose breath was said to fill all living things. Whose threads wove through every blade of grass, every drop of rain, every creature born beneath the moon.
The one who had never spoken to him.
Not once.
She had answered others. Blessed them. Touched them with power. With purpose. Even the smallest child in the village carried some flicker of her thread. Even insects shimmered with the faint echo of her presence.
But not him.
Never him.
He didn't know why he still prayed.
Habit, maybe. Desperation. Or a kind of stubbornness that refused to die, even when logic begged it to. Maybe it was hope. Not bright, shining hope, but something duller. Heavier. A shard buried too deep to dig out.
"I don't know what I did wrong," he thought, the words silent in his mind, pulsing behind his eyes.
"But I'll fix it. Please. Just… let me fix it."
His breath caught. His chest tightened.
He begged her.
He begged without words, without tears. Just the stillness of a boy pressing his soul into the floor of a room no one else would enter.
And the silence stayed.
Heavy. Eternal. Unchanged.
When the answer failed to come as it always did he pulled himself upright.
The weight in his chest didn't lift. It just settled deeper, like stone sinking into water.
Disappointment dulled the edge of the moment. It spread slowly through his ribs, hollowing out everything else.
And beneath it worse than the silence was shame.
Shame that he had dared to kneel here and ask for something he didn't deserve.
Shame that he still had enough pride left to hope.
Shame that he remained at a school of magic among the chosen, the gifted, the sacred as if he belonged.
When he knew he didn't.
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