He woke up again crying.
There was no dignity in it. No control. Just sound tearing out of him as his body remembered everything at once. Pain flared from the stump of his arm, hot and nauseating, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. His throat burned, raw from screaming, or maybe from thirst. He couldn't tell.
His thoughts were wrong. Slippery. Refusing to line up.
He curled in on himself, pressing his shoulder against the stone, rocking slightly as tears soaked into dirt and old bones. Every breath hurt. Every movement reminded him of what was gone.
"I can't…" he whispered.
The word died there.
Because whether he could or not didn't matter.
He was dying.
Thirst crept in quietly, more insidious than pain. His mouth felt stuffed with ash. His lips cracked when he swallowed. He tried to remember the last time he had drunk water and failed because he was drinking beer and vodka before coming. Time had lost all shape.
And if it wasn't thirst, blood loss would finish him instead. Every reason was lining up to see which one would kill him first, and he really didn't appreciate the competition.
Survive.
The word surfaced from somewhere deep and ugly.
If he stayed here, he would join the others. Another skeleton slumped against the wall. Another warning carved too late.
Slowly, shaking, he forced himself to sit up.
The drawings stared back at him.
This time, one stood out.
It was crude but deliberate: a line of trees, then a cluster of rocks drawn larger than the rest, stacked like crooked teeth. From there, a jagged path sloped downward to a thin, winding line.
Water.
His heart jumped painfully.
But the drawing didn't end there.
Around the rocks, symbols had been carved again and again, deeper than the others. Circles crossed out. Eyes scratched over. A crescent shape—the moon—slashed violently through.
Next to it, in uneven Latin:
"AUDI, NON VIDE"Listen, do not see.
Below that, in something older, half-French, half something else:
"Les pierres chantent quand ils sont proches."The stones sing when they are near.
His skin crawled.
Warnings layered on warnings. Not don't go—never that. Just instructions on how not to die immediately.
"Of course," he muttered hoarsely. "Of course it's not simple."
He stood, legs trembling, vision swimming. The world tilted but didn't collapse. That felt like a victory. He tore a strip of cloth from one of the rotted garments—apologized under his breath to bones that didn't answer—and tightened the tourniquet again.
The pain spiked. He bit down hard, tasting blood.
One step at a time.
At the edge of the shelter, he stopped.
The forest waited.
Tall, burned, twisted trees stood like silhouettes frozen mid-scream. Shadows pooled between them, too thick, too deliberate. Somewhere far away, something shifted—slow, heavy, patient.
He listened.
Nothing sang.
Yet.
Clutching the drawing in his mind, he stepped outside.
Toward the rocks.Toward the stream.Toward whatever was worse than dying of thirst.
The walk to the stream was short.
That, more than anything else, terrified him.
Distance meant nothing here. Short paths had a way of stretching, folding, turning into traps. He moved slowly, every step measured, every breath shallow. His arm throbbed with each heartbeat, pain blooming and fading in nauseating waves.
Listen. Do not see.
He kept his eyes low.
Not on the trees. Not on the shadows between them. On the ground, ash, roots, broken bark. Even then, he flinched when something shifted in his peripheral vision. His skin crawled as if watched, weighed, measured.
The forest was not silent.
It breathed.
A low, constant whisper slid through the burned branches, not quite wind, not quite sound. Sometimes it rose into something sharper—a faint scraping, like stone against stone.
He froze.
The stones sing when they are near.
He closed his eyes and listened.
There it was.
A vibration more than a noise. A pressure in his ears, subtle and wrong, like standing too close to a speaker that wasn't playing music. The rocks ahead, jagged, uneven, looked harmless enough.
He did not look closer.
He passed them wide, heart hammering, sweat cold on his spine. The singing faded, reluctantly, like something disappointed.
His legs burned. His breath came ragged. Every few steps, black spots crept into his vision. He leaned against a tree once, immediately recoiling as bark shifted beneath his palm, not moving, not alive, just too soft.
"Don't think," he whispered. "Just walk."
When he heard the water, he almost cried.
The stream was narrow, shallow, winding through blackened stones. Steam rose faintly from its surface, warm against the cold air. He knelt carefully, keeping his eyes on the water only, nothing else.
No reflections.
That alone was enough to make his hands shake as he drank, cupping water clumsily, spilling more than he swallowed. The taste was metallic, bitter, but it was water. It slid down his throat like life itself.
He drank until his stomach cramped.
Then he stopped.
Because the forest had gone quiet.
Not peaceful quiet. Attention quiet.
He listened.
Far away, something heavy shifted its weight.
He didn't run.
The wall had taught him better than that.
Slowly, silently, he backed away from the stream, retracing his steps, keeping wide of the stones, eyes down, ears straining. His heart pounded so loudly he was sure it would give him away.
The singing returned, closer this time, but he did not look.
He did not look.
By the time he reached the shelter, his legs gave out beneath him. He collapsed inside, gasping, shaking, alive.
For now.