- Shadows at the Threshold
- Echoes of Light
- An Od Introduction
- Before the Dust Settles
- The Shape of Kindness
- Into the Lake
- Echoes of Light
Shadows at the Threshold
When Sylas reached the bar, Eva was waiting. She didn’t speak—just motioned him down a side alley with a flick of her fingers. The sun hung low, spilling rust-colored light across the buildings. Shift workers had begun to trickle in, and Eva clearly didn’t want to be seen.
She met him at the back entrance.
“In here. Around the corner.”
Her voice was calm, but her eyes flicked toward the gathering dusk like a warning.
“I’ll fetch warm water for a bath and food. She’ll be hungry when she wakes.”
Sylas laid the girl onto the bed inside the dim, unused room. “What was that? What did you do to her? That… that wasn’t normal.”
Eva didn’t answer right away. She disappeared into the hallway and returned with clean linens folded in her arms. She gave him a hard look—one laced with curiosity, but sharpened by suspicion.
“How do you know the Oracle?” she asked, her tone low but edged with heat. “Who are you?”
Sylas straightened, caught off guard by her sudden shift.
“I’m no one,” he started, but she cut him off.
“No one passes through this place. You’ve been watching me. The Oracle knows you. You knew about the cave.”
She stepped closer, enough for him to feel the charge in the air around her.
“I want the truth. What do you want?”
Sylas hesitated, then sighed—part frustration, part surrender.
“I’m here on business. Gathering intelligence for a company looking at land near the east ridge. The girl… I didn’t plan any of this. I just found her. I panicked. I did what I thought was right.”
Eva crossed her arms, eyes narrowed.
“But why does the Oracle know you?”
“I grew up here,” he admitted.
“Our family had a house near the ridge. Summers, mostly. It’s gone now. But I used to climb that willow tree… I found the cave one day and never forgot it.”
He sat gently on the edge of the creaking bed, glancing at the sleeping girl.
“Look… I’ve been gone a long time. I don’t know what you’re wrapped up in, but I want to help. I know where she came from. I’ve seen what they do to girls like her. I couldn’t walk away.”
Eva didn’t speak. Her eyes lingered on the girl’s small form, tucked under the blanket. The silence between them stretched, weighted and raw.
Just then, Tom stepped in—startled, as if he hadn’t expected to find them there.
“Oy, ma’am. Sir,” he said, pausing at the sight of the girl. His voice softened. “What do we have here?”
“She came from the east ridge,” Eva replied flatly. “She’s been hurt. We found her in the Black Forest. Keep her safe, Tom. Don’t let anyone near her.”
Tom’s face crumpled with emotion. “The poor thing. Who would…” He shook his head, dabbing his eyes with a cloth from his apron. Then he straightened. “I’ll guard her like she’s my own.”
“Come for me the moment she wakes,” Eva added, already turning to go. “The very moment.”
Tom glanced at Sylas with a sad, knowing smile.
“Looks like you’ve fallen into some of Eva’s trouble.”
Sylas gave a dry laugh.
“She does things at night,” Tom said, quieter now. “Sometimes I stay late, clean the bar… she doesn’t sleep, that one. Whatever she’s doing, whatever you’re doing—if you need help, I’m here. Not prying. Just offering.”
Sylas studied him, seeing him for the first time—not just as another tired bartender, but as something more. There was a fire in him. Faint, but real. The same fire that burned in Eva’s veins. A quiet resistance. A shared rage.
Echoes of Light
New Moon of Ash – Season of The Wind
There was a songbird in the cave today.
A little thing, all bone and shadow, still carrying the dust of men on her skin.
She told me her name was Mari. But that name wasn’t hers. It was theirs. I asked her again. Not with words, but with silence. The kind that listens deeper than sound. She gave me Callaia.
It rang like water dropped in a well—old, pure, forgotten. I wonder who she was before they taught her to disappear.
The Oracle said she can’t stay. I know she’s right, but part of me wanted to beg.
I wanted to teach her—to show her what it means to make the earth bend beneath your will. To summon fire with a whisper. To walk unseen in the places where men rule.
But not all of us are born warriors. Some are born to heal. And some are born just to survive.
There was something in her eyes, though. A glint of the old blood. A knowing that doesn’t come from this life, or the last. She won’t remember me, not fully. But maybe something in her will stir one day, like a melody half-hummed in the dark.
Sylas has her now.
He doesn’t know it yet, but the forest still remembers him.
The Oracle speaks his name like a lullaby. Even I feel something ancient when I look at him. Something I don’t have the words for. Not yet.
I need to focus. There are still names on my list. Still doors that must be opened, and others that must be burned to the ground.
But tonight, under the thick arms of the willow, I let myself hope.
Maybe we’re not the last of us.
Maybe the sound that remains is a promise—one that says we’re coming back.
Not as victims.
As vengeance.
—Eva
An Od Introduction
Sylas lingered at the edge of the stairwell longer than he meant to. The low hum of voices downstairs faded into silence, save for the occasional scrape of a chair or clink of glass. The bar was settling in for the night—but he wasn’t.
He hesitated outside Eva’s door, hand raised to knock, when a low flicker of red light caught his eye beneath the frame. A gentle rustle followed—like wings brushing against stone.
He knocked anyway.
No answer.
He pushed the door open slightly, just enough to speak. “Eva?”
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of burning herbs and something older—ozone and smoke and steel. Eva stood with her back to him, her hair loose, the ends catching the red glow like embers. A blackened bowl sat at the center of a small altar, a sigil etched beneath it, burning softly in a faint red pulse.
She turned slightly. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“I was going to ask…” Sylas cleared his throat. “If you’d prefer I stay in the room next to Callaia. To keep watch.”
Eva didn’t answer right away. Her gaze drifted to the shadowed corner beside the altar, where something shifted in the dimness. A sleek form uncurled—tall, canine-shaped, ears long and feathered at the tips. Od. Its body looked like charred smoke given weight, flickering at the edges with half-light.
It blinked at Sylas with molten red eyes. Not aggressive, but not welcoming either.
“I already have a guardian,” she said. “But… thank you.”
Sylas nodded slowly, his eyes lingering on the creature. “That’s Od?”
Eva’s voice softened, almost reverent. “He’s part of me. Shadow given form. I feed him with what I don’t say, and charge him when the moon forgets how to shine.”
“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” Sylas said, already backing toward the door.
“You didn’t.” She turned fully now, her expression unreadable. “You just saw something you weren’t meant to. That tends to happen around me.”
Sylas lingered in the doorway, one hand still gripping the frame. Od’s red eyes tracked his every breath, but it was Eva who kept him frozen.
“You said I wasn’t meant to see it,” he said, voice low. “Why?”
Eva’s eyes didn’t leave the altar. She placed something small—dried herbs, perhaps bone—into the bowl, and the sigil beneath it flared once before fading. “Because it’s dangerous.”
“Od?”
“No.” Her voice was quiet, but the weight behind it was unmistakable. “The magic. The kind that lives in blood, passed down like a scar. The kind born of earth and bone. Real magic.”
She straightened, turning toward him. “People here don’t remember the old ways. The language. The rites. What they do know, they fear. And what they fear, they destroy.”
Sylas stepped further into the room, just inside the threshold. “Then why stay?”
A flicker of something crossed her face—sorrow, maybe, or rage veiled as silence. “Because they took everything from me. My people. My sister. My name. And I will not leave this place until they answer for what they’ve done.”
He said nothing for a while. The red light from the altar danced across the floor like spilled blood.
“This planet,” she said at last, “was once sacred. The trees used to whisper. The wind used to know your name. But now it’s all rust and ash and iron. They dug up its heart, poisoned its bones. And now it forgets. Just like its people.”
Her hand hovered briefly over Od’s head, fingers brushing against the smoke that made up his form. “I am what it remembers.”
Sylas let the silence settle, the truth of her words wrapping around them both like fog. Then, quietly, he said, “I won’t tell anyone. About him. About you.”
She nodded once. Not thanks—just acknowledgment. Trust was still a distant country.
As he turned to leave, she called softly after him.
“Sylas.”
He paused.
“If they ever find out what I am… don’t try to save me. Just run.”
Od stretched and yawned, a low ripple of red flickering behind its eyes. It sniffed the air, the tip of its snout twitching with curiosity. Then, without warning, the smoke-shape rippled and shrank, folding in on itself like shadows pulling tight.
In moments, the hound was gone.
What stood in its place was something smaller—ferret-like in shape, though not quite any beast Sylas recognized. It had the slick, dark sheen of spilled ink, its limbs long and nimble. Tufts of smoke-feathers crowned its ears and the tip of its tail, delicate as breath. It stretched, did a little jog in a tight circle, then nimbly scrambled up Eva’s leg and disappeared into the folds of her hood.
From beneath her hair, its tiny, coal-dark face peered at Sylas—watching.
Eva turned slightly, her lips brushing the edge of the creature’s head. She whispered something low and rhythmic, a tongue older than the stars, and Od slid back down her body, landing with a near-silent thud on the wooden floor. It darted into the shadows, its tail leaving a faint wisp of smoke trailing behind it as it vanished down the stairs.
Sylas stared after it.
“Od is a servitor of sorts,” Eva said. “It does what I will it to do, because it’s a part of me.”
He glanced at her, curious.
“It can’t harm anyone. Not really,” she added, eyes narrowing with some private thought. “Its purpose is to be my eyes when I can’t see, my ears when I cannot listen, my shadow when I must be light. It was born of grief and need. Molded with my own hands. It obeys because it is me.”
Sylas looked toward the stairs where the smoke had gone, a flicker of awe in his gaze.
“And what happens if someone tries to harm you?”
She met his eyes, calm and unblinking.
“Then it remembers.”
Before the Dust Settles
Tom retired to his quarters, wet with sweat and aching from the ride. He drifted off without a breath and slept deep.
In the morning, Sylas woke to the sound of rattling against his window. He thought it might be Eva—or maybe Tom—but no one was there. Not even a shadow. The rattling continued, steady and rhythmic.
He rose, reaching for the window just as a sharp gust pulled it open. The shutters slammed against the wall, curtains snapping wild in the sudden wind.
Sylas stiffened.
The wind here was usually gentle, but sometimes—when the storms shifted—it turned. Dust from the industrial graveyard would rise and swirl, carried on violent gusts that swept through the town, then settled at the foot of the East Ridge.
These dust storms were rare, but dangerous.
Toxic.
Chemicals, dried but still potent enough to sicken or kill were picked up by the dust. The town would come to a standstill. And those caught unprepared would be sitting ducks.
Sylas had planned a hot bath. Instead, he splashed a bucket of cold water over his shoulders, washed what he could, threw on a blue linen shirt, and pulled his cloak tight over his face.
The front door of the bar was locked.
The lights were dim. Dust slashed at his skin, clawing through the fabric. He ducked along the side of the building, wind howling around him, and slipped through the back entrance—heaving and coughing for clean air.
Dust clung to him like ash. He shook it off as he stepped into the quiet stillness of the main room.
From a dark corner, a soft voice called to him.
Eva sat at a table with Callaia. The girl looked distant, eyes unfocused, her face lit by a narrow shaft of sunlight cutting through the clouds.
Sylas slowed. Something about the two of them—together in silence, one fractured and one unreadable—struck him.
“I haven’t seen a storm like this in years,” he said. “Do they still run the sirens?”
“Only if it lingers,” Eva replied. “This one’s mild. It’ll pass by lunch.”
She brushed Callaia’s hand with her fingertips. “But we need to leave before the next one hits.”
Tom appeared just outside the doorway, lingering with a kind of reverent hesitation. Eva caught the shift in the air before he spoke.
“Callaia,” she said softly, squeezing the girl’s hand. “I’ve prepared a bath for you. It’s warm, steeped with herbs to help the bruising and swelling. Tom will bring you fresh water as needed.”
The girl nodded, still silent, her eyes dull with exhaustion.
Tom stepped forward, careful not to startle her. “Come now, little miss,” he said, offering a hand and a crooked smile. “We’ll get you cleaned up and wrapped in something soft. Maybe even a bit of honey tea, if you ask nicely.”
Callaia didn’t respond, but allowed herself to be led. As she passed Od, she paused, her fingers brushing his smoky pelt again. The creature gave a low, approving rumble, and Tom gave a wide-eyed glance.
“Now there’s a surprise,” he whispered. “The beast likes her.”
When Tom returned some time later, he was beaming. “She smiled,” he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “After everything… I made her smile.” He chuckled. “Told her we’d have her dancing in no time.”
Od huffed in the shadows—either amused or unimpressed.
Tom headed toward the linen closet and pulled out a fresh towel, draping it near the hearth to warm. “Laughter,” he said, half to himself, “is the start of healing. Gods know we all need a little of that.”
Eva and Sylas sat in the quiet that followed, mapping possibilities in low voices. A transport off-world was impossible—dust storms like this clogged engines, grounded flights. They had to move by land.
The next storm would come harder, and the men who’d lost Callaia would come looking. They’d want her silenced—by any means necessary.
“Most girls like her are fitted with micro-trackers,” Eva said, her voice clipped. “We’ll need to find it. Disable it. Remove it.”
Sylas nodded grimly. “The storm buys us time. Their hogs won’t track through it.”
“But if they suspect the bar,” she added, “dust won’t stop them.”
Their choice was clear. They would leave at first break, before the next wave struck. Eva would spell Callaia into sleep—travel would be easier that way. Tom would stay behind, keep up appearances, throw off suspicion.
It would take three days to reach the next starport.
Three days of watching the horizon.
Three days of dust, and silence, and whatever might follow them.
The Shape of Kindness
The rest of the afternoon was spent packing. Their destination wasn’t far, but they’d need to reach the South Pass before the wind picked up again—or risk walking straight into the storm’s path.
Callaia was quiet, shaken. She lingered in the bath longer than usual, letting the herbal tonic soak into her bruises. The earthy scent reminded her of the Oracle—of safety, of green things. She kept close to Eva, but the men still made her nervous. Kind or not, she never knew when their moods might turn.
The first wave of the storm passed as Eva had predicted. As the dust settled and light poured in hazily through the windows, a knock echoed from the front door. Tom had barely cracked it when it flew open with a bang, startling everyone.
There, framed in golden dust, stood the stout silhouette of a woman. Her white hair puffed around her head like a cloud, and she moved with a kind of electric confidence.
“Well now, Tom, lad—come give Aunt Lou a hug!”
Before Tom could react, he was yanked into her arms with such force he wheezed.
“Lou—I can’t breathe, Lou!”
She finally let go, beaming. “Still got lungs on you! Where’s that beautiful child? Let me see her.”
Tom blinked through the shock. “Eva’s preparing her. Gonna cast a spell to keep her calm for the trip.”
Lou’s voice rang out like a church bell. “Eva! Not yet! Bring me the child!”
Eva appeared moments later, guiding Callaia forward.
Lou shrieked loud enough to make Tom hit the floor. “My gods. An angel. Just a baby—an absolute angel!”
She rushed forward, scooping Callaia into her arms, rocking her gently and sobbing. “We’ll get you home safe, my sweet. Don’t you worry.”
Callaia stiffened, unused to affection. But Lou didn’t notice. She cradled her close, then pulled back, hands cupping the girl’s face. “Where we’re going, no one will find you. You’re safe now. You’re seen.”
A tear slipped from Callaia’s eye. For the first time in what felt like forever, she believed it. Warmth flooded her chest. Love—unconditional and overwhelming. Eva wove her spell into that feeling, and Callaia drifted into the softest sleep she’d ever known.
They packed everything into an old skimmer. Callaia lay curled on a cot beside Eva in the passenger hold. Sylas and Aunt Lou sat up front in the driver’s cage. Tom stood in the doorway, hand raised in farewell, trying not to cry.
The storm was building again—gusts picking up, spinning sand into tight devils that clawed at the sky.
While Callaia slept, Eva worked quietly. She’d located the tracker—buried beneath the skin behind the girl’s ear. A thin incision, a steady hand, and it was out. The device was no bigger than a grain of rice.
At the edge of town, they stopped to recharge the transport. A herd of sheep passed nearby, their hooves kicking dust into the air. Eva stepped out and slipped the tracker into the wool of one before it disappeared into the flock.
Their first stop: an abandoned stone lodge, once Tom’s father’s cabin. A forgotten place near a dried-up lake.
Into the Lake
Aunt Lou groaned and stretched, her joints cracking like dry branches.
“Alright, my bones are older than both of you combined, and that includes your long-legged lineage, Eva. I need to stretch. And nap. And possibly drink.”
Eva arched a brow. “You drank before we left.”
Lou gave a grin that crinkled every line on her sun-worn face.
“Exactly. I’m due for another.”
She leaned toward the partition. “Pull over, sweetlings—I’m switching with the porcelain ghost.”
They stopped long enough for Lou to shuffle into the back, muttering to herself about transport seats being designed by sadists. Eva climbed into the driver’s seat, her boots barely brushing the pedals. She didn’t speak for a while. Just drove.
The terrain flattened, the storm thinned, and for a stretch, the road was nothing but wind-swept stillness.
Sylas finally broke it. “You’ve been quiet.”
Eva kept her eyes ahead. “I’m driving.”
“Right.”
Silence again.
Then—
“What do you do, when you’re not rescuing girls from cursed forests?”
She said it lightly, but there was steel tucked behind the softness.
Sylas gave a slow smile.
“I sell things. Fix things. I’m a contractor, mostly.”
“A contractor who knows the Oracle.”
He didn’t respond.
“You lie well.” Her voice was calm. No accusation, just observation.
Sylas shrugged. “It’s a skill.”
He pointed at the console. “What’s that light for?”
Eva gave him a look that said “really?” but didn’t push. She flicked a switch and let the subject slide.
They rode in silence for a few more minutes.
Finally, Sylas asked, “How do you know my name?”
Eva’s lips twitched. “Tom. The moment you walked through the bar, he was in my ear. Said you were ‘too clean for the dust, too pretty for the locals, and just charming enough to be dangerous.’”
Sylas laughed. “That sounds like him.”
Eva nodded.
“He remembers everything. Never forgets a name. Or a betrayal.”
Something in her tone darkened. Just for a second.
Sylas turned to look at her. She didn’t return it.
He thought about asking more, about her past, about the girl, about what she was. But instead, he leaned back and closed his eyes.
Eva glanced sideways. “You’re not what you say you are.”
“Neither are you,” he murmured, and let the silence have the last word.
They rode in silence as the sun sank lower, the sky bruising purple and gold behind them. Both weighed the same question in the quiet: Can I trust you?
Sylas wanted to. He wanted to tell her everything—how he’d found her again, how long he’d been watching, waiting, hoping. He wanted to see her eyes light up the way they used to when she’d catch sight of him through the fence as a boy. But something in him tightened, clamped down around the words before they could rise. He couldn’t bear the weight of her disappointment.
He chose silence. And hated himself for it.
They crested a ridge and the dried lake came into view—endless, cracked, and colorless under the last wash of sunlight. They hadn’t stopped for food in hours. The transport was running low on charge. Callaia stirred gently in her sleep.
Eva leaned forward.
“It’s just ahead. Tom said to turn onto the lake after the Three Sisters. I’m guessing those rocks up ahead.”
Sylas squinted. “That’s on the lake. He didn’t mean literally drive onto it, did he?”
Eva frowned. “That’s what he said. ‘Turn left after the Three Sisters. Drive straight onto the lake. You’ll run right into it.’ I should’ve had him clarify. You’re right—this is nonsense.”
She slowed the vehicle and pulled to a stop just before the lake bed. Everyone but Callaia climbed out to stretch. The air was thick with heat and the distant rattle of wind-blown dust.
The lakebed stretched for miles—cracked clay and sun-bleached bones. A dead sea with no memory of water.
“We only have a bit of light left to charge,” Lou said, shielding her eyes with one hand. “We better make a call. Where the hell was Tom trying to send us?”
Eva pointed vaguely toward the horizon. “Somewhere out there. I don’t know how—”
“Oh, she can handle it,” Lou grunted. She snatched the keys and waved them overhead like a battle flag. “Everybody in.”
The skimmer jerked forward as Lou muttered curses under her breath about Tom’s nonsense and backwater riddles. They bounced along the cracked lakebed, dust spiraling up behind them.
Then, in the haze of fading light, they saw it.
A crumbling shack, nestled at the base of a narrow ridge. Built of dark stone and patchwork timber, it hunched low, half-forgotten. Just below it, carved into the rock, was a shallow cave—its mouth wide and black, shaped like the entrance to a forgotten tomb. Steps, eroded and uneven, spiraled upward to the shack above.
The roof sagged in places. One wall had collapsed inward, and what was once a kitchen now opened to the lakebed like a wound. Spiderwebs clung to the edges of a broken window, catching the last light like silver thread.
This, somehow, was their shelter.
Echoes of Light
Waxing Crescent Moon of Ash – Season of Wind
I dreamed of sand again.
Not the soft kind—the kind that scalds your skin and blinds your eyes. The kind that strips away everything you thought you could carry with you.
We arrived in Pelnar during a storm like that.
I remember holding Seren’s hand so tightly my fingers ached for days. I thought I would lose her in the wind. We were half-starved, weak from the crossing. We nearly got away. We slipped past their guards, stole bread from the merchant’s wall, and ran until our feet bled.
But they caught us.
They always did, back then.
He was there, the boy. Not a man yet. His name wasn’t Sylas then—he used another. It’s buried somewhere I can’t reach, but I remember how he’d pass gifts through the fence. Bits of fruit. A comb. Chalk for Seren to draw with. Always silent, always watching.
Sometimes he’d be inside the house, his face stiff and quiet while his father paced the halls. The headmaster. The overseer. That man’s eyes never left us, even when we were behind closed doors.
I never trusted the boy, not entirely. But Seren did. He was kind to her, and that was rare enough to matter.
I think he wanted to help. I think he did.
He said he’d heard our plans. He said he had keys.
And then—
Dust.
Blood.
I ran.
I dreamed of him tonight—running toward me through the storm, hand outstretched, just like before. But when I reached for him, the sand swallowed him whole.
Then came the hogs. The skimmers. The sound of tracking horns in the distance.
Then nothing.
Then Tom’s voice:
“The past don’t die easy, girl. It waits. And it watches.”
I woke with my hand pressed to the floor.
The dust had crept through the cracks again.
I don’t know if it’s him.
The man traveling with us now—Sylas.
He speaks like a man I should know, and yet… I don’t want to know. If it is him, then the ghosts I’ve buried aren’t ghosts at all. And if it’s not him, then I’ve imagined a kindness that never truly lived.
Either way, the wind is rising.
And something’s coming.
I can feel it beneath my skin.
—Eva
The Weight of Silent Things 