No One Spoke First
The morning after the Spiral dreams, no one speaks. The campfire is long dead, but no one moves to relight it. Each person scans the others for cracks, searching for confirmation they weren’t the only one altered. But no one wants to be first to say it. The walk ahead begins in silence, with tension strung tight as drawn steel.
The ashes from the fire hadn’t
cooled.
But no one stirred them.
The cold didn’t bite.
They barely noticed it.
Roderic sat on a flat stone near the edge of the ridge, blade across his knees, untouched.
Fenra stood watch facing the
trees, but her gaze never quite landed on anything.
As if
looking at the wrong branch might summon something that remembered
her better than she did.
Nyrris was the only one moving.
They were cleaning their knife
with slow, deliberate strokes—
scraping something off the
handle.
But there was nothing on the handle.
Just the faint, unfinished pattern of a crown.
Gaillard stood furthest from the camp.
Back turned.
Hands folded behind him.
No sword.
No posture of leadership.
Just… stillness.
No one said good morning.
No one asked if the others had slept.
They hadn’t.
Not really.
They’d all dreamed.
Even Gaillard.
Though when
he woke, he hadn’t opened his eyes right away.
He’d just whispered one word:
“Another.”
Now, silence.
The kind with weight.
The kind that sits between people
who are unsure what they survived
—or who
they survived it with.
Roderic looked at Gaillard’s back.
He hadn’t turned around in almost half an hour.
That wasn’t like him.
He always surveyed.
Spoke
with command.
Checked positions.
Now?
He just… stood.
Fenra finally spoke.
But not to him.
“Path bends north again by midday. We’ll hit a pass before dusk.”
Nyrris didn’t look up from the blade.
“No. That bend happens two days ahead. You’re thinking of the Spiral Flats.”
Fenra frowned.
“No. I walked it twice during the Border Siege. It’s north. I remember the frost at the rise.”
Gaillard’s voice came then.
Quiet.
But firm.
“You’re both right.”
All three turned.
He still hadn’t turned to face them.
“The Spiral moved the bend.
It exists where both memories are true now.”
Nyrris muttered something under
their breath.
Something in another tongue.
Fenra didn’t argue.
She just folded her arms and looked to the horizon.
Roderic stood, finally.
The scrape of his blade being sheathed sounded louder than it should’ve.
He stepped beside Gaillard.
Not too close.
Not yet.
“Do you remember the hymn you were humming?”
Gaillard turned slightly.
Brows drawn.
“…I wasn’t humming.”
“You were. Before
dawn.
Five-note phrase. Repeated.
It was the Blackstone
lullaby.
From the old siege songs.”
Gaillard blinked slowly.
Then nodded.
“I don’t know it.”
Silence again.
Nyrris rose last.
Wiped the blade clean—still unnecessarily—and tucked it away.
They said nothing.
Just walked.
The others followed.
One after another.
No formation.
No
leadership.
No chatter.
And behind them—
where
Gaillard had been standing—
the ground had pressed into a soft spiral.
Just a faint indentation.
Like someone had exhaled memory into the dirt.
No one looked back.
Because no one wanted to be the
one to notice
if one of them
left twice.
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