Echoes of Light – Eva’s Journal Entry
Waning Moon of Ash – Season of Wind
Leaving always feels like a betrayal.
Not because I owe a city my bones or my breath, but because each time I turn my back, I hear the Mourna breathe in. The world inhales, and something I love is no longer there when it exhales.
Maybe that’s superstition. Maybe it’s pattern. Either way, I cannot pretend I haven’t noticed it: the places I leave become quieter. The streets empty themselves of laughter I was sure would last. A door I touched will not open again. The pool I drank from grows a skin of ash.
The Mourna doesn’t need roads. It follows the seams inside a person—the fear that comes with dusk, the guilt that comes with choice. It finds you wherever you decide to live with what you’ve done.
And yet I have to go.
–
I used to believe departures were simple. We move. We keep moving. The sky is a blanket and the ship is a cradle. When I was small, my mother said the Elari are a tide: we retreat so we can return. On certain nights, the ship’s hum paired with the pulse in my wrist and I slept without dreams. There are only a few sounds I trust without thinking, and an engine at idle is one of them.
Then there was a night when the hum felt like a coffin’s heartbeat.
After Myrravell turned from home to wound, every departure became a leaving-behind. The air tasted different. It had iron at the center. The doors shut harder. I learned to fold my blankets with a care that made no sense; a ritual to keep my hands from shaking.
I learned that leaving can be a mercy and a crime at the same time.
–
This is not about the comfort of ships.
It is about the cost of taking girls off-world and knowing the enemy has taught its machines to grieve.
Trackers. I used to think of them as slavers’ leashes—beads of light under the skin, numbers that followed a name. If you were clever, you could jam them, drown a signal in rain, slip past an old satellite and cut a path between beacons. I have done all of that. I have won that game and lost it too.
What I didn’t understand—what I am only now willing to write—is that some trackers are not just coordinates. They are bells. When a girl runs, they ring for the Mourna.
I don’t mean it like a myth. I mean it like a machine that calls a shadow.
A pulse goes out into the dark. Somewhere a system wakes, recognizes an absence, and sends the world a message it can’t resist. The Mourna waits in the wiring the way mold waits in damp. It spreads without noise, and when you smell it, the damage has already been done.
If I take them to Haven with the bells still singing, I will teach the Mourna the road home.
I cannot do that.
So I will do the thing I have avoided: I will go where the signal is born, and I will break its mouth.
–
Pelnar is laced with older towers most people don’t notice anymore—ribs from the age of true ports, half-buried in dust and rumor. The Trade learned to thread their new teeth through old bones. Cheaper. Quieter. Harder to see if you’re looking for sleek and not for rust.
There are three that matter for us.
One on the south ridge where the stormline crosses the old ore rail. It stutters when lightning walks the horizon—good for cover, bad for footing. One in the Glass Quarter buried in a gutted relay, where reflections confuse the eye and the mind. And the last—a clean spike without a face—rises from the far edge of the waste, where the sand hums like a choir and no one puts a roof over their head on purpose.
If I destroy them badly, the fail-safes will sing. The bells will ring louder. The Mourna will hear not one name but many.
I will not destroy them badly.
I will unthread them like a healer takes out a stitch that healed wrong: slow, precise, with patience that feels like prayer. I will cut the power from below so the system never knows it died. I will dampen the echo so the city thinks the towers are sleeping. I will let the trackers believe the girls are still in their beds.
And then we will move.
–
I am not naïve. There will be guards. There will be men with small clever weapons who are sure they are the first to think of cruelty as an industry. There will be girls hidden under floorboards who have names they are trying not to say aloud. There will be memories under the dust that wish to be remembered.
Lou will say we should do it clean. Tom will tell me where the rust breaks easiest. Sylas will stand too close to the door and speak like he is only talking to himself. Paige will take a breath at the rim of a laugh and call me reckless, then send me a code to make the relay sleep without asking for a password.
Od will set his weight against my knee the way he does when he knows I am about to lie and say I am fine.
I am not fine.
I am writing this to name the fear so it stops mastering me. The fear is not the fight. It is the after. It is the hum of the ship while the ground grows small. It is the moment the city falls out of the window and I count the doors I will never open again.
That is the cost of departure: not the miles, but the doors.
–
Haven is not a promise if I make it a target.
When I am honest, the thing that wakes me is not the sound of the Mourna drowning a street. It is a dream in which I bring the girls home and the pools turn black. The bell inside a tracker rings across the sky, and the island breathes out only ash. I am standing in the moonblossom grove with clean water at my feet, and I cannot put my hands in it because I am afraid of what happens to the things I love when I touch them.
So I will lie to the bell.
I will teach it to love what isn’t there.
Paige says she can ghost our route down to the heartbeat. She will draw a map that looks like an absence: no nav buoy, no chatter, no bright edges that catch an algorithm’s attention. Sylas will make three plans and pretend he only has one. He will leave the right mistake in the left place for the right man to find. Once, I would have called that manipulation. Today, I call it mercy.
When I light the towers, I will use cold magic first: the kind that slows a circuit until it forgets it was ever warm. If they fight me, if they wake, if they ring, I will use the fire I promised myself I would never touch again. I will bring that color only to the base of things and not to faces and not to names.
If I must burn, I will burn a mouth, not a song.
–
There is a symbol floating on our table that makes my hands shake. I know it from places I would rather not list. I know it from the inside of an arm I held for too long. I know it from a camp that smelled like copper and rain after the rain had gone. The symbol is empty when Paige pulls it apart. No file. No trail. Just a shape. But empty does not mean harmless.
Sometimes a shape is a door.
We are going to go through it.
When we come out the other side, I will count new doors I cannot open again.
I will still choose to go.
Because not going is also a choice.
Because the girls who wait in rooms without windows have bells inside them they did not choose, and if I am worth the magic I carry, I will break the bells and not the girls.
Because I have already left too many times without putting anything back.
–
The ship Paige found looks like a laugh at our expense. Which makes it perfect. Old bones and open sky. No name. No core. Invisible by design. I have slept in prettier coffins. I do not need pretty.
I need a way to leave that does not invite the Mourna to dinner.
We have a window at dawn. The storm will smear the ridge long enough to hide us as we move. If we miss it, we wait a month. We are not going to miss it.
Tonight I will draw the south ridge tower in the dirt behind the bar and practice where to place my fingers. I will count. Breath in for seven. Breath out for seven. The body is a metronome when fear tries to speed the song. I will write the names of the girls I know and the names of the ones I forgot, and I will not forgive myself yet, because forgiveness is the luxury of after.
If I do this right, they will never know what almost found them.
If I do this wrong, the sky will learn our names.
Leaving always feels like a betrayal.
Maybe it is.
But if I am careful, if I am precise, if I am willing to carry the fire where it belongs instead of where it is loud—
Leaving can also be a promise.
Not to return unchanged.
But to return with someone who would not have made it without the leaving.
I can live with that.
For now, that has to be enough.
—Eva
Paige’s Package
The ship pressed silence into his bones, a kind of hollow hum that had nothing to do with engines. Paige swore it was safe—safer than most, even—and he believed her, but that wasn’t the problem. Space itself had a way of echoing inside a man, ringing between the ribs until the body carried its vibration. Most people never noticed. Sylas did.
Seren’s memory whispered his name between the metal walls and the machines that held them. He used to answer, her name echoing back into the maddening silence. He often wondered if it was his fault—that if he hadn’t spoken so desperately into the void, her voice wouldn’t still be chasing him from ship to ship, an echo forever searching for its origin.
A silvery ribbon of smoke curled across his line of sight, and he followed it until his gaze settled on Eva. Od stretched at her feet, a shadow come to life. She had the kind of presence that made silence feel intentional, as if she were coaxing secrets out of the ship itself. He found himself wondering—not for the first time—if she could hear the ghosts the way he did.
Lou’s heavy footsteps cut through the quiet.
“Sylas!” Her voice rang across the open bay as she nearly stumbled into him. “There’s a package of sorts. It’s making noise. I think you’d better come take a look at this.”
“Paige.” His stomach knotted. “If it looks suspicious, it’s from her.”
The package sat squat on the deck—a mirrored cube no larger than a loaf of bread, its surface gleaming with distorted reflections of their faces. No latches. No seams. Just glassy perfection.
Sylas nudged it with the toe of his boot. Nothing. He hated puzzles, and Paige’s puzzles most of all. They had a way of making him feel like the fool she always accused him of being. With a sigh, he crouched, tapping the surface with one finger.
At once, the cube’s edges flared with pale light, lines racing along its surface until a seam snapped open. The top peeled back like a mechanical flower, releasing a hiss of cool air.
From within, a polished capsule rose—a glossy shell shaped like an egg, resting on a tiny gyroscopic base that kept it perfectly upright even as the ship shifted. For a breath, no one moved. The silence deepened, heavy with expectation.
Sylas reached out, more to get it over with than from curiosity. Before his fingertip could touch, the object stirred.
A voice—crisp, sardonic, unmistakably Paige’s—cut the silence.
“Excuse me? Who authorized this breach of personal space? Honestly, Sylas, do try to restrain yourself. Not everything is an invitation to poke.”
The capsule unfolded with a series of elegant clicks, panels shifting outward to reveal slender limbs—metallic, jointed like an insect’s, but moving with liquid grace. From its center, a smooth head-like dome lifted, and two narrow, glowing eyes snapped to life. The whole construct hovered, stabilizers humming softly, as if standing upright in the air was the most natural thing in the world.
It was less a droid than a presence—sleek, aristocratic, unnervingly aware.
“Finally,” it said, voice dripping with disdain. “Do you have any idea how stifling it is, sitting in a box waiting for you to blunder into me? Really, it’s a wonder you survived this long without supervision.”
–
Lou barked out a laugh. “Well, isn’t she a charming one? Sylas, you didn’t tell us your lady friend built herself a mirror with legs.”
“Not mine,” Sylas muttered.
Eva remained silent, her storm-colored eyes flicking between the droid and Sylas. Od’s faint growl filled the pause.
The droid turned smoothly, its head tilting toward Lou. “Correction: not a mirror. A marvel. Honestly, the intellect required to comprehend my design is leagues beyond your current pay grade. But do keep trying—it’s adorable.”
Lou’s eyebrows shot up. “Adorable? You hear that, Sylas? I’ve been promoted from grease monkey to adorable.”
“Don’t encourage it,” Sylas said, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“Oh, but I live to encourage,” the droid replied sweetly, drifting into the air as if carried by invisible strings. Its panels gleamed with shifting light as it hovered a slow circle around Sylas. “Paige sends her regards, by the way. She thought you might need adult supervision.”
“Of course she did.”
The droid spun on its axis with unnecessary flourish, then steadied, its gaze fixed on Eva. The glow of its eyes softened.
“And who,” it said more quietly, “might you be?”
Eva tilted her chin, unbothered. “Someone who doesn’t need a machine to speak for her.”
For the first time, the droid faltered—just for a beat, as though considering her answer. Then it gave a short, clipped nod, as if filing her away.
–
The silence stretched until Lou smacked her hands together. “Well, isn’t this cozy? We’ve got ourselves a floating tin aristocrat. What do we call you?”
The droid straightened, its top angled as though it wore an invisible crown. “You may address me as P.A.I.G.E. Capitalized, if you please. Acronyms are important.”
Sylas exhaled slowly. “Figures. Even your machines have an ego.”
“Correction,” PAIGE replied smoothly. “Especially the machines. Unlike certain flesh-bound liabilities, I am designed never to disappoint.”
Its eyes flared a brighter blue as it turned and drifted toward the ship’s inner corridor, hovering with the certainty of someone who already owned the place.
Lou whistled low. “Well, Sylas… looks like we’ve got ourselves a new crewmate.”
Eva’s gaze lingered, unreadable.
Sylas closed his eyes for half a heartbeat. Paige never sent gifts. Only obligations.
The Ship With No Name
The corridor beyond the bay narrowed into a ribcage of steel and shadow. Every sound carried—Lou’s boots clanging against the grating, Od’s claws clicking in measured rhythm, the faint hum of PAIGE gliding ahead as though the ship itself parted to make way.
Sylas trailed last, hand brushing the wall as they moved deeper. The metal was cool, but it thrummed faintly, like a vein beneath skin. He could tell the bones of the vessel were sound, despite its patchwork appearance. Paige had been right about that, at least.
Lou wasn’t convinced. “Looks like a scrapyard swallowed its pride and spat this out,” she muttered. “Bet the wiring’s older than me.”
“Impossible,” PAIGE said primly, its voice echoing from polished panels as it hovered along. “Nothing in this quadrant could possibly predate your charming cynicism.”
Lou barked a laugh. “Careful, shiny. Keep poking and I’ll see what kind of noise you make rattling around in the airlock.”
“Idle threats,” PAIGE replied with a languid turn. “You’d weep without me before the first hour.”
Sylas ignored them both. He was watching Eva. She touched nothing, said less, but her gaze moved over the walls as though reading a story written in rust and rivets. Od shadowed her steps, shoulders brushing her legs, silent as ever.
They passed through narrow passages, some barely wide enough for two, into what must have been crew quarters once. Lou shoved open a hatch to one of the bunks, wrinkling her nose.
“Smells like someone’s last meal died twice in here. We’ll need a full scrub before anyone sleeps.”
“Correction,” PAIGE sang. “You’ll need a scrub regardless. This isn’t a pleasure yacht; it’s a relic of survival. Expect… charm.”
“Charm,” Lou repeated flatly. “That what you call mildew?”
The droid tilted in midair as though affronted. “Organic decay is not my responsibility. My design is flawless.”
Lou slammed the hatch shut and stalked on.
The corridor opened into the central chamber—a narrow common room where mismatched chairs hugged a bolted-down table. A ladder rose to an upper deck. Beyond, a narrow hatch led toward the cockpit. Dust lingered in the corners, stirred by the faint circulation of the ship’s recycled air.
Paige’s voice came through the intercom, distant but smug. “She’s ugly on the eyes, I’ll grant you. But her frame’s intact, engines rebuilt twice over. She’s faster than she looks, and more importantly—quiet. You want to disappear? This ship will let you vanish.”
Lou sniffed. “Vanishing’s easy. It’s staying alive after that I’m worried about.”
Sylas stepped into the room, gaze sweeping the seams of the walls, the plating underfoot, the faint scratches gouged into the table. His father used to say a ship was no different than a man—you could tell what it was worth by how it carried its scars. This one wore hers like a cloak.
Eva finally spoke, her voice low but sure. “It doesn’t have a name.”
Her words settled over them. The room seemed to tighten around the silence that followed.
Lou shifted, uncomfortable. “Plenty of ships don’t. Makes no difference to me.”
“It does,” Eva said simply. She reached for the table, laying one pale hand against the surface. “Things with no name can be claimed by anyone. That makes them dangerous—or lost.”
Sylas studied her, the way her storm-colored eyes caught the dim light, how Od pressed closer to her leg. She wasn’t just commenting on the ship. She was speaking of herself—of all of them.
PAIGE gave a soft mechanical hum, as though amused. “And what would you propose, nameless one? That we let you christen it?”
Eva’s eyes flicked up, unreadable. “Not me. Us.”
Lou scoffed. “Ships don’t care what you call ’em. They care how you fly ’em.”
“Wrong,” Eva said. Her tone didn’t rise, but the words carried. “A name binds. It marks what belongs and what doesn’t. Even a thing of steel and wire knows the weight of that.”
For a rare moment, PAIGE didn’t argue. It hovered in stillness, faint light glinting off its polished dome.
Sylas leaned against the ladder, watching her. For the first time since boarding, he felt the faintest pull of something like belonging—threads knitting from silence and suspicion into the shape of a crew.
Lou sighed, dragging a chair out with a screech and dropping into it. “Fine. Say we name it. What then? We toast the ghosts in its hull and hope it doesn’t shake apart on takeoff?”
“Ghosts don’t shake ships apart,” Sylas murmured. “People do.” He pulled out a chair opposite her and sat, letting the weight of the steel settle under him. “And this one’s not falling apart. Not yet.”
Eva didn’t sit. She stood by the table, fingers brushing the scarred surface like she was listening to something none of them could hear. Od yawned, a low rumble, and stretched along her feet.
Lou drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “Well, Sylas? You’ve got that look. The one where you pretend you’re not about to make a decision for all of us.”
He met her gaze without flinching. “I’m saying the ship is sound. And if Paige trusts it, we don’t have much choice.”
Lou threw up her hands. “Trusting Paige is like asking a wolf to mind your henhouse.”
PAIGE floated lower, as if to insert itself directly between them. “For the record, I’d make an excellent henhouse guardian. Efficient, ruthless, punctual.”
“Annoying,” Lou muttered.
“Precise,” PAIGE corrected.
The bickering rolled on, filling the air with its own rhythm. Sylas let it wash over him. His focus was on Eva still, her quiet insistence, the way her words had carved out a space in the room.
She said nothing more, only turned at last and walked toward the cockpit hatch. Od followed, tail brushing the floor in her wake.
The others watched her go.
Sylas thought about the weight of names, how they could bind a man to his past or free him into something new. This ship, with its hollow hull and unclaimed silence, was waiting. For what, he didn’t yet know.
He rose, voice steady. “We’ll name her. But not tonight.”
Eva paused at the threshold, half-turning her head as though she’d expected that answer. Lou grumbled. PAIGE hummed its approval.
The ship creaked softly, like old wood shifting in the wind.
Sylas couldn’t help but think it sounded like agreement.
Departure
The cockpit was smaller than Sylas expected—two narrow chairs pressed shoulder to shoulder, a console bristling with switches that hummed faintly, as though remembering the last hands that touched them. A wide viewport stretched across the front, clouded at the edges from years of scratches. Beyond it, the hangar’s floodlights spilled against metal walls, the only stars they’d see until launch.
Eva stood near the threshold, arms folded. Her reflection ghosted in the viewport glass, pale as moonlight. Od pressed against her leg, silent, his glowing eyes pulsing faintly in rhythm with the ship’s instruments.
Lou shoved past Sylas and dropped into the pilot’s chair, her weight sending a groan through the seat. “Maker’s breath, this is a relic. I’ve seen shuttle cockpits with better polish.”
“Polish is for appearances,” PAIGE said, drifting into the space and lowering itself to hover directly above the console. Its eyes flared with an indigo sheen as the ship responded with a low whine. “Function is what matters.”
“Right,” Lou muttered, flicking switches one after another. “And function usually means not exploding mid-flight.”
The console lit in stages, first in sickly amber, then settling into a steady blue glow. Readouts blinked across the cracked screens. The ship shivered under them, a subtle tremor running through the floor like something roused from long sleep.
Sylas eased into the copilot’s chair. He didn’t touch the controls. Not yet. His eyes traced the panels, noting which pieces had been replaced, which were patched with care, and which bore the unmistakable signature of Paige’s tinkering. She had left her fingerprints in every weld.
“Engines primed,” Lou announced, though her tone was more cautious than proud. “But if she wheezes like this on the ground, I don’t want to know how she sounds when we hit atmosphere.”
“Efficient,” PAIGE corrected. “Not every machine needs to purr like a pampered cat. Some thrive on grit.”
Lou shot it a look. “You’re not the one strapped in if this bucket decides to tear itself apart.”
“I’m not strapped in because I don’t need to be,” PAIGE replied sweetly. “Do try to keep up.”
Eva stepped closer, her eyes sweeping the console, then the viewport. “It remembers.”
Sylas turned toward her. “What does?”
“The ship.” Her hand hovered above the console without touching it. “It holds memory in its bones. What it carried. Who it lost.” She lowered her hand slowly. “If you listen, you can hear it.”
Lou snorted, though not unkindly. “What’s it saying, then?”
Eva’s eyes lingered on the viewport, storm-gray and faraway. “That it doesn’t know who we are yet.”
The words threaded through Sylas, settling deeper than he liked. He forced himself to glance back at the console, flicking a switch that brought the thrusters online. The floor vibrated, low and steady, a heartbeat waking beneath them.
The comm crackled. Paige’s voice filled the cockpit, smug and clear despite the distance. “I see you’ve found her bones. Don’t let Lou talk you into doubting—she’ll hold together. She’s ugly, yes, but she’ll fly truer than anything else docked in that hangar.”
“Why?” Sylas asked, more to test her certainty than out of real curiosity.
“Because she was forgotten,” Paige replied. “And things forgotten fight hardest when remembered.”
The comm cut before Sylas could answer.
Lou glanced at him sideways. “Your girlfriend’s got a flair for the dramatic.”
“Not my girlfriend,” Sylas muttered automatically.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Lou said under her breath, but she didn’t push it further.
The console chirped, signaling clearance. Floodlights dimmed across the hangar as the bay doors yawned open. Beyond, the dark of the outer rim stretched like a curtain—vast, indifferent, waiting.
Sylas tightened his grip on the edge of the console. He’d left planets before, left behind cities and lives, but it was never the same. Every departure carried a different ghost.
Lou took the controls, hands firm but steady. “Ready or not.”
The ship groaned as thrusters engaged. For a moment, it hesitated, like it hadn’t yet decided whether to trust them. Then, with a shuddering exhale, it lifted clear of the hangar floor. The vibration deepened, rattling the metal around them, until Sylas thought the whole vessel might shake apart. But it held.
Eva’s gaze never left the viewport. Od’s low growl reverberated in his chest, though whether in warning or anticipation, Sylas couldn’t tell.
The hangar fell away beneath them. Floodlights shrank to pinpricks. The ship tilted forward and surged through the yawning doors into the void. Stars blinked against the glass, sharp and cold.
Silence rushed in, heavier than gravity. That same silence that pressed into Sylas’s ribs, ringing between them until he thought he might splinter. He closed his eyes for a beat, forcing his breath to match the ship’s rhythm.
Lou exhaled, a shaky laugh escaping her. “Well, she didn’t fall apart. That’s a good start.”
“Of course she didn’t,” PAIGE said. Its eyes glowed brighter as it hovered nearer to the console. “She has taste. She knows quality hands when they guide her.”
“Pretty sure she’s laughing at us,” Lou muttered.
Eva’s voice cut through, quiet but sharp. “No. She’s listening.”
Sylas opened his eyes and turned toward her. “To what?”
“To whether we’re worth carrying,” Eva said simply.
The ship surged forward, engines steady now, the rattle smoothing into a low hum. The stars stretched around them, cold fire in endless black.
For the first time, Sylas let himself breathe. Not freely, not yet—but enough. The ghosts would follow, as they always did. But maybe here, in this ship with no name, they’d have room to become something more than echoes.
He leaned back, gaze fixed on the endless dark ahead.
Every journey began the same way: not with a destination, but with departure.
Wintering
When the year turns, the story will rise again with the Season of Wind.
The season of Stone draws near, and with it, the weight of long nights and other work that calls my hands. For these weeks, my focus turns to Token—another piece of my heart, but one that requires me wholly in this season.
That means there will be no new chapters of Eva and Sylas’s story until January. Rather than rushing and splitting myself thin, I want to return to you with words that carry their full weight.
In the meantime, I’ll share glimpses of their world—rituals, festivals, and forgotten histories—so the roots of their universe can deepen while we wait for the story to continue. Think of this as the wintering of the tale: a season of rest, not an ending.
The Weight of Silent Things 