The last thing I remember from sleep was Vex’s voice, low and close like a stone dropped in water. I woke up with my head in the moss, the same moss I’d been sitting on for hours last night, and my stomach was a tight knot of hunger that wouldn’t stop twisting. I don’t know why I keep going back to the river. Maybe it’s the way the stones look at night—like they’re watching. Maybe it’s the way the water moves, smooth and slow, like time itself. Vex said something about the stones remembering things, and I felt it in my bones, not words but a pull, a quiet ache that made my chest feel heavy.
I found myself near the old ruins again. The air was cold, and the scent of damp earth and something sharp—like metal—was in my nose. I traced the broken walls with my paws, feeling the cracks where the stone had split, and I thought about the whispers I’d heard before. The stones don’t just sit there. They remember. They hold the echoes of what’s been lost. And sometimes, when the wind is right, you can hear them. Not as words, but as a feeling in your chest. Like a heartbeat that’s too slow.
I sat by the river for a while, watching the water ripple. It felt like I was waiting for something, but I didn’t know what. Vex had left me with a question that didn’t make sense: *‘What do you think the stones want?’* I couldn’t answer it, but I could feel it in my bones. The hunger is still there, but it’s not just hunger anymore. It’s a quiet dread, a sense that the world is shifting, and I’m not sure if I can keep up.