✧ Chapter Twenty-Three ✧
The Whispering Trail
fromHave You Someone to Protect?
©Amer
The quiet rustle of pages and dust motes dancing in sunbeams gave no sign of the storm slowly building in the heart of the bookshop.
And yet—Lhady could feel it.
It was not in the air, not exactly. It was something deeper.
Beneath her fingertips.
Beneath her skin.
She sat alone in the back room of the shop, the sigil fragment resting coldly on a velvet cloth before her.
It had once hummed faintly, like a thread tied to her pulse.
But now...
Now it repelled her.
She reached for it, slow and hesitant, fingertips grazing its surface—
Snap.
Like a static pop, the air between them cracked, and a whisper fluttered in the back of her mind.
A voice not hers. Or maybe it was.
Like memory.
Like dream.
"This isn't it," she whispered aloud. "This isn't the real one."
And the sigil pulsed, ever so faintly—
like a shiver of rejection.
⋯
Upstairs Reading Alcove, Late Afternoon
The smell of parchment and dried herbs always clung to this part of the bookshop,
but since Elias had moved in, the air carried something else—
like warm ozone and flickering ink.
Books floated gently around him now, circling slowly as he leaned back in a creaking wooden chair.
His eyes were closed, a slight smile at his lips.
Lhady stood at the threshold, one hand brushing the railing.
Lhady(quietly):
"You've noticed it too, haven't you? The fragment. It's false."
The books paused mid-air. One drifted downward and closed itself.
Elias opened his eyes slowly.
They were not tired eyes—but old ones.
Studying.
Elias:
"I notice many things, Lhady Amer. Most don't speak them aloud."
Lhady:
"You don't deny it."
Elias:
"Would you believe me if I did?"
She stepped further into the room.
The light caught the edges of her hair, casting soft shadows across the old rug.
Lhady:
"You said I was attuned to it. That I could find the real one."
Elias tilted his head, amused.
Elias:
"I also said you weren't ready for the cost of it."
Lhady:
"What good is ready when it keeps me blind?"
He gave a soft huff of breath—almost a laugh.
He stood and began tracing his fingers across the spines of books on the shelf,
speaking more to the room than to her.
Elias:
"The truth of the sigil isn't just in its shape. It calls. It chooses.
What you touched downstairs? It was made to deceive.
A placeholder, a symbol.
But the real one—" (he turned back to her)
"—the real one is woven with memory and blood."
Lhady(quietly):
"And where is it?"
A pause.
Elias:
"North of the shop. Beyond the trees where the wind forgets how to move.
Past the veil."
Lhady:
"I want to go."
Elias:
"Caelum will riot if you do."
She didn't flinch.
She looked down, then back up.
Lhady:
"He'll forgive me. Or he won't. Either way, this isn't his burden to carry."
Elias regarded her for a long time,
then whispered like a spell being sealed—
Elias:
"Where silence weighs the heaviest…
where time stutters and the wind remembers.
That's where it waits."
Her feet didn't want to move.
But her heart did.
He didn't stop her as she left.
⋯
In the Forest – A Hidden Hollow
Caelum knelt beside a tree whose roots wrapped around a half-buried stone.
In the crook of those roots, he reached into the earth and pulled free a small scroll tube.
He opened it slowly.
The parchment inside smelled faintly of pine.
"Are you certain we should not meet yet?
The longer we wait, the more the pieces shift."
He read it twice, jaw tightening.
No mention of Lhady, thank the stars.
This correspondent—whoever they truly were—was not tracking her. Yet.
Still, it was time.
He pulled out a fresh parchment and began to write.
"If they are shifting, perhaps it's time we met.
The one who holds the key is near.
I'll come soon."
He rolled the message tight and slipped it into the hollow.
And then paused.
Should I bring her into this now?
No… not yet. If she's already—
No.
She's safe. That's all that matters.
Something about the wind felt off,
like it carried a message he couldn't quite hear.
He stood and made his way back toward the bookshop.
⋯
Back to the shop at the evening.
Dusk painted the windows violet and gold.
The stillness of the shop struck him the moment he stepped inside.
Too still.
"Lhady?" he called gently, expecting a response.
None came.
He found Elias in the sunroom, perched near the window with a porcelain cup in hand.
His posture was casual.
Too casual.
Caelum:
"She's not here."
Elias turned his head, eyes twinkling.
Elias:
"You noticed."
Caelum:
"You know where she went."
Elias:
"I do."
A pause.
Caelum(restrained):
"I want to ask you something else. About the sigil fragment. Ways to find it."
Elias blinked slowly.
Elias:
"Ah. So you've decided to chase echoes."
Caelum:
"Call it what you like. Just tell me how."
Elias set down the teacup.
It didn't make a sound when it touched the table.
Elias:
"There's no map, Caelum. No compass.
But if you truly want to find the sigil fragment…"
"Find her. And you'll find it."
Caelum froze.
The implication burned slow through his chest.
Caelum(barely a whisper):
"What do you mean, find her?"
Elias didn't answer.
He only smiled—that maddening, knowing smile—
and then, with a faint shimmer in the air, he was gone.
No rustle of fabric. No breath displaced.
One moment the room held him like a fixed point in space, and the next… it didn't.
Caelum's chest tightened.
He stepped forward instinctively, hand outstretched to where Elias had been, but touched only air.
Warm a second ago—now cold.
Even the teacup on the table was empty, dry,
as if it had never been used.
"Always gone when it matters most," Caelum muttered under his breath—
but the bitterness in his voice didn't quite cover the worry beneath.
Caelum stood frozen for a beat,
then bolted out the door,
his boots striking earth with rapid, urgent force.
The forest ahead loomed dark,
branches twisting like question marks.
The moon had begun to rise,
cold and sharp.
And then—
A shimmer of light.
A brief, flickering pulse.
A cry. Or a whisper?
Only he could hear.
Lhady.
A crash.
Then silence.
Caelum(breathless, panicked):
"Lhady—?!"
He sprinted into the dark,
past the edge of what was safe,
into a place where the wind no longer remembered how to blow.
The veil was open.
And she was already too far beyond it.