The wind beneath the ancient oak carried no scent, no chill – just a subtle stirring of the leaves. Hours. It had already been hours.
Kael sat within the tree's long shadow, his gaze fixed on the slow creep of darkness along its gnarled roots. Nothing stirred. No masked figures materialized. No sound broke the oppressive stillness. Only the profound weight of silence settled over him, a suffocating blanket.
But beneath it all...
But a wrongness pulsed beneath this place, a silent hum vibrating through the cobblestones like immense pressure held behind a dam. He could feel it in his bones, a deep unease that resonated with the unnatural quiet. Something's terribly wrong here.
Just after midnight, his fingers brushed against something unexpected. A hatch.
It wasn't concealed by illusion or cleverly hidden. Instead, a heavy iron ring was set directly into a thick, knotted root, as if a trapdoor had grown organically from the oak's base. No lock. No warning. Simply there – waiting to be opened.
'Not creepy at all.'
He hesitated for a heartbeat, a knot of apprehension tightening in his gut, before wrenching it upward.
A breath of frigid air whispered from below, carrying the faint, unsettling odors of damp earth and something ancient – the ghost of burned incense mingled with ash.
This can't be good.
"..."
A sigh escaped him as he gazed into the darkness. A month ago, he wouldn't have been caught dead going down there. Yet now, he was about to do so willingly.
How quickly things changed.
He lowered himself into the blackness.
The tunnel was narrow and twisting, crudely carved from stone and long disused. Patches of moss clung to the damp walls, and the softest shift of his weight echoed in the suffocating silence. A fragile thread of bioluminescent moss snaked along the ceiling, casting a meager, ethereal glow. Barely enough to see.
He followed the faint light deeper into the earth.
Minutes bled into an indistinguishable stretch of time. Each step feels like a descent into something unknown.
The silence began to shift.
At first, it had mirrored the town's eerie hush – thick and suffocating. But here, underground, it felt different. Alive. As if the very stone was listening, holding its breath. it isn't just quiet. It's… expectant.
The tunnel opened abruptly into a domed chamber, its circular walls covered in the faded remnants of decayed murals. At the center, carved into the stone floor, lay a pool of water, impossibly still. Its surface didn't ripple, didn't reflect the faint light. Like glass. Unnatural.
'Okay what now.'
Kael stepped closer, drawn by an unseen force, a morbid curiosity overriding his caution.
And the water began to move as though expecting him.
Not outward in rings, but upward, defying gravity. Like smoke in reverse, a thin mist rose from the surface, swirling and coalescing into ephemeral shapes. Almost like a mirror.
Images flickered into being – images of people.
People from the town
'What the heck.'
He saw Oakhaven vibrant and alive. People danced with unrestrained joy, their laughter echoing in the square. Melodies spilled from open doorways as children played forgotten instruments in the streets. Once, this town had been a symphony of life.
'Are these memories?'
Because this here looks nothing like what's up there.
Focusing back on the images, he saw they were in the middle of something like a festival of some sort, there was music, dancing, food and a really large bonfire. They were all around the oak tree.
Then the music twisted, the joyous sounds warping into something else.
He witnessed the gathering beneath the oak: townsfolk in matching robes formed a circle around the ancient tree, their voices rising in unison, chanting an unknown song. The resonant harmony created a ritualistic wave of sound. It seemed innocent, perhaps even joyful. But then, something terrible answered from the unseen.
A shape bled into the vision, vast and amorphous – a nightmarish entity of mouths, devoid of eyes. It wasn't seen so much as felt, a vibration in the very air, a primal dread.
'What the heck is that.'
A Sibilant being.
Born of resonance, nourished by emotion, summoned by beauty, and ultimately, consuming grief.
The vision fractured, the idyllic scenes shattering into a panorama of horror. People screamed – the raw sound tearing from their throats, abruptly cut short mid-note. Buildings warped and melted like candle wax. Children froze mid-laugh, their open mouths silent voids. The being didn't devour flesh; it consumed essence, the very act of expression, the meaning behind sound. It fed on their voices.
Causing it to grown stronger.
And with that began it's slaughter.
Every time a sound was made, i grew more powerful, and every time it grew more powerful someone dies.
A real horror.
The final image solidified: the townsfolk standing once more beneath the oak. Silent. Their faces blank and stone-like. A visible inscription, a dark spell, was etched into their skin, sealing their mouths shut. A voluntary sacrifice of voice.
They did this to themselves?
They had silenced themselves to imprison it.
But with the silence they had also lost who they were and what made them people, almost like puppets.
Kael stumbled back from the pool, gasping for breath in the stale air, his mind reeling. This was insane.
This wasn't folklore.
It was a cage. Oakhaven was actively containing something monstrous.
Reeling from the revelation, Kael turned to flee the chamber – but he was no longer alone. Two-Tap? How...?
Two-Tap stood silently in the tunnel behind him, barefoot and wide-eyed. She held his notebook open in her hands, a fresh page facing him.
She presented it.
"It hears you now."
Kael stared at her, a chill tracing his spine. "How did you find me?" She couldn't have followed me silently down here...
She pointed a small finger to her ear, then pressed her hand against her chest – felt him.
Then she began to draw again, her charcoal scratching urgently against the paper.
A crude spiral. Then, within its center, a small stick figure – a child.
Kael frowned, a dawning understanding in his eyes. "That's… you?" She remembers? Feels it somehow?
She nodded once, her gaze unwavering.
He knelt, trying to steady the tremor in his hands. "Why you? Why can you still feel this… wrongness? Still think freely?" What makes her different?
She hesitated, her small hand hovering over the page before she wrote:
"Born after. Not bound."
Born after the silence fell. A generation untouched by the ancient pact, unsealed by the ritual. A new generation… untouched.
A cold realization washed over Kael.
Firstly, that means this didn't happen too long ago.
Secondly, the spell or ritual that silences them doesn't work on the next generation.
'But two-tap is the only kid I've seen who has a little bit of personality. But now that i think about she's the youngest kid I've seen, so that means she's the only one who was born after the spell... So there have been no births in almost a decade? That's messed up.'
But that mean she can speak. Truly speak.
She could speak. Not just mimic the gestures, not just hum tunelessly. Truly speak, with her own voice.
She just hasn't been taught how.
She was more than just an observer; she was a key.
They returned to the surface in a shared silence, the girl's small hand a reassuring weight gripping his sleeve. The town above was unnervingly still. Even the birds had vanished, leaving the air empty. The colors seemed muted, leached of their vibrancy.
At the edge of the square, a figure stood motionless.
One of the masked ones.
But this one was closer than any he'd seen before. Different. A jagged crack split its mask down the center, a faint, unsettling glow seeping through the fissure. It raised a hand, a silent command.
'What does it want now?'
It beckoned.
Instinctively, Kael stepped in front of the girl, shielding her from the unknown threat.
The figure made no move to attack.
It simply pointed a gloved finger toward the ancient oak – toward the hidden Dreamwell below.
Then, it raised two fingers, a silent offering.
Two choices.
Kael stared back at the enigmatic figure, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. "Yeah," he whispered, his voice raspy in the dead air. "I'm starting to get the damn message." And I don't like it one bit.
The figure dissolved into the stillness, leaving Kael and the girl alone in the silent square, the weight of their discoveries pressing down on them.