The night was thick, as if the forest had closed its eyelids over the world.
Luin sat alone inside the stone chamber carved by time beneath a dead tree's trunk.
No windows. No flame. Just the silence of earth, and his breathing.
Everything about this place suggested someone had lived here before...
Or perhaps died.
He brushed his hand across the dirt floor beside him and touched something small and metallic—a disc the size of his palm, rusted.
He lifted it to his eyes but didn't recognize it.
Circular engravings, like ancient letters coiling on themselves.
But he didn't think much of it.
He returned the disc to the ground...
Then closed his eyes.
...But didn't sleep.
⸻
Sounds.
Whispers, unlike anything human.
Coming from above, or below? He wasn't sure.
Then a very faint voice, feminine, like wind speaking:
"How many seals do you carry now...?"
Luin's eyes snapped open.
The room unchanged. No one there.
But he felt his skin grow tighter, as if something was moving beneath it.
He rose slowly to his feet and touched the wall.
The wall was cold... but pulsing.
He struck it once with his hand.
Then felt the old scar on his chest—the one that hadn't healed in years—suddenly heating up.
He stepped back.
His breathing quickened.
"Stay alive."
William's words echoed in his head, but their meaning felt strange now...
Like a warning.
He sat down again.
Tried not to think.
But his soul was bleeding silence.
This wasn't a place for sleeping...
But for remembering.
⸻
When the whispers faded, he fell into exhausted sleep.
And saw.
A child with white eyes standing before a broken mirror.
His voice without a mouth, yet the words reached him.
"You won't become yourself until you're forgotten."
Then the scene reversed.
Luin saw himself, as he was now, knocking on a stone wall,
And a voice from within answering:
"Finally... you've returned."
He woke panting.
Dawn hadn't come yet.
And the wall was still there.
Silent.
⸻
But above the door, a carving appeared that hadn't been there before.
A symbol resembling an eye inside a closed circle...
And the scar on his chest was bleeding a small drop of black.
⸻
When William returned, dawn still hadn't broken,
But the dampness on his clothes, the mud on his boots—they said he'd crossed half the forest on foot.
He opened the stone door and looked at Luin in silence.
"You're up early."
He said it, then stopped...
Looked at the ground.
Saw the metal disc.
He went quiet for a moment, then muttered:
"You didn't touch it, did you?"
Luin didn't answer, just looked at him.
Then said:
"It was here. I found it."
William approached, lifted the disc carefully, as if picking up a piece of the past.
He looked at the engravings, then hid it in his cloak.
"This... isn't something to leave within reach."
He sat on one of the carved stones.
His expression was tense in a way Luin wasn't used to.
"I had a dream."
Luin said it.
"Your dreams aren't yours."
William replied without looking at him.
Then added after a long silence:
"Was it about you... or about something else living inside you?"
Luin lowered his gaze.
The scar on his chest still hurt, but it wasn't bleeding now.
William said:
"If I were you, I wouldn't stay here another night. They'll start sweeping the city's edges soon."
"Where will we go?"
He answered:
"To a place... where we need friends."
⸻
On the road, the forest grew smaller, the fog lighter.
Luin asked:
"Who are they?"
"Two commoners, like us... but they've lived long enough to stop believing. And that's where the danger begins."
"What do we want from them?"
William smiled this time—a sideways smile carrying no warmth.
"Trust. And maybe... betrayal."
⸻
Before they left the forest, William stopped suddenly.
Looked behind him, then at Luin.
"Celine."
He said the word as if it wasn't a name, but an approaching wall.
Luin frowned.
"Who?"
"You'll see. Just don't ask too much, and don't let her know you're watching."
"I don't understand."
Luin said it, but William kept walking without answering.
⸻
When they emerged from the forest, the land stretched before them like a carpet of mud and fog.
And on the horizon, an old dilapidated village, surrounded by half-ruined walls and a burned wooden fence.
"That's where we'll find them."
William said.
Luin stared at the village.
It wasn't a place where anyone would find "friends."
But something in his chest...
Stirred.
⸻
The village looked dead from a distance, but as they drew closer, details began revealing themselves.
Half-closed doors, windows with nothing visible behind them, gray smoke rising from some old chimneys as if breathing with difficulty. There was no one in the streets... but eyes were watching from behind wood and darkened glass.
"Do we knock?" Luin asked.
William didn't answer, just headed toward a wooden house with a worn door and knocked three times in a strange pattern:
One strike... then a pause... then two consecutive strikes.
He waited.
Then the door opened with a sound like an ancient groan, and a tall man appeared, thin-bodied, with wide gray eyes.
"You're late, William." The man said in a low voice.
"And you're still surviving, Duma. Let us in before the air freezes."
⸻
Inside the house, the warmth was better, but the atmosphere was charged.
They sat around a round wooden table while the strange man prepared dark-colored tea. Beside him appeared a young woman with wide eyes, her hair braided back, her face covered in old bruises that hadn't fully healed.
"Luin, this is Duma. And his companion, Eileen." William said.
Luin nodded.
But Duma didn't return the greeting.
He said instead:
"Why'd you bring him?"
"Because he carries a seal. And because... he needs a place where he won't be killed for being alive."
Eileen looked at Luin with a long gaze, then said:
"How many seals in you?"
"One." Luin answered.
"Just one?" She smiled a sad smile. "Then you're still at the beginning... that's good."
Duma took a sip of tea, then said:
"The Church reached here two days ago. They didn't enter the village, but they watched the fence. If they're looking for him, we won't have much time."
William said:
"That's why we're here. I'm not asking you to protect him... I'm asking that we rearrange the game."
Eileen asked: "At what cost?"
William replied, slowly:
"That we betray who needs betraying... before they betray us first."
⸻
In the evening, Luin went out to the back yard. The air here was suffocating, different from the city or the forest.
Duma stood beside him without a sound.
"Think you're the center of everything?" He said suddenly.
Luin didn't answer.
Duma continued:
"Sometimes, the person who survives isn't the most important... he's the witness. And witnesses... get killed first if they speak."
"I don't even know what I saw." Luin said.
Duma smiled, half pity and half caution:
"You'll know soon. And you'd better not like the answer."
Then he went back inside, leaving Luin alone.
But before following him... Luin glimpsed from the corner of his eye a girl standing in the shadows, at the edge of the house across.
It wasn't Eileen.
She was watching.
And he heard a voice from the wind, not from a mouth:
"Celine..."
Then she vanished.
⸻
End of Chapter Twelve