Maurice stood on the embankment, unmoving. His boots sank into the mud with a slow, steady weight. He was not praying. Not thinking. Only listening.
The river didn’t roar. It murmured. Beneath the ordinary sounds of shifting current and sodden reeds, there was something else—a hum, like breath drawn through a long corridor. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard it. But this night, it felt closer. Hungrier.
Somewhere far behind him, the Abbey bells rang twice—soft, echoing, carried by the wind. And just for a moment, the entire town seemed to pause. No footsteps. No voices. No birds. Only the river.
Then came the threads.
They shimmered faintly above the surface—thin strands of light, silvery and trembling, as if spun from the river’s own breath. They weaved together without pattern, forming arcs that dissolved before they could shape symbols. Maurice didn’t move. Didn’t blink. The world seemed to pull inward, to this one quiet place where water and memory met.
He felt something stir behind his ribs. A reflex. A word he had forgotten how to speak. His lips parted—but he said nothing.
It was too dangerous. Too soon. And besides, the Veil still held.
He swallowed the breath and stepped back, breaking the moment like a page torn from a sacred text. The river settled. The strands vanished. The hum faded.
When he finally turned, the Abbey windows shone like distant stars. In one of them, a boy stood watching—small, barely more than a silhouette, his hand pressed to the glass. Maurice met his gaze across the distance, and in that second, he saw a question in the child’s eyes that echoed the one in his own.