Chapter One – Peculiarity.

A fingertip traced carved stone, coating its print with moonlit dust. The hermit’s lips parted, but no sound came. Their hand hovered over grooves that time had long since whittled meaning from. Smoke curled around their knuckles, twisting from the pipe hanging forgotten between their fingers. The pipe flickered a soft glow, catching the edge of a weathered page somewhere behind them.

The hermit raised the pipe to their lips and took a slow drag as dust lifted, brushing at the first inscription's lettered grime. The hewed lines felt deeper beneath their touch. Their voice, at last, followed.

“A gust of…” The cave walls retreated into falling shadow, and as they read, the words took hold.

࿀⬭࿀

A gust of stale air stirred long-settled films of dust thickset upon the rocks below. A profound silence hung in the air, its weight seeping into every mote of soot. Such disturbance felt unnatural, as if an affront to the sacred hush inside. Another gust hove near, setting grime to waltz in swirling eddies, unable to cling to the rubble. Muffled groans echoed from deeper within.

| Emberlight caught in the hermit's eye as they lingered on the next phrase. Their voice dipped lower into the passage. “Blasphemy, mounding.”

Rusted chains strained against their bond. Their outer skins peeled like bark of coiled trees long-rotted, age-soured dust wafting up an overdue sigh of relief. They creaked in anguish, pulling against unyielding stone which itself bore the scars of many a struggle. Grooves deep-carved, punctures gaping, cracks jagged marred the rock, their wounds reaching toward stalactites plunging from the gorge above. Tugging tumbled down into crumbling and sparking, rumble after rumble resounding as of thunder pent within the earth. Witness to the bound storm, the earth convulsed.

“Let me out!”

A voice reverberated throughout the draft, fierce with rage, yet tinged with despair. The groans spiraled into defiant shouts—the mounding rumbles into merciless pounding. Mist rose like smoke of a forge. They pulled, yanked, tore at the fetters until fire coursed through their limbs, anguished wails muted beneath their rage.

“Why must I remain here!?”

Dust heaved as if a sandstorm.

Boulders cascaded like meteors.

“Why do you damn me to this place!?”

With a thunderous crash, the dust finally found rest upon shattered rock, ‘neath which broken links of chain clawed their way out, aged and begrimed. Yet loosed from the filth below, the chains found their glow, slick with a heat of their captive’s own creation. The links reformed, shackling a scalding hiss upon the motionless limbs within their clench. They reattached to the unscathed wall, every stinging rattle of their links a mockery. And there, riddling the prisoner’s limbs, were written tales of futile toil, for the chains bit deeper where they bound. A torment born of ages.

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After a momentary pause, the prisoner’s words reverberated once more, dripping with an air of humiliated defiance. “Enough!” Their voice began to quaver, cracking helplessly into an entreaty most piteous. “You want of my agony, an example?” The words rang out, laden with chastened fury.

“You covet my strength?” As they spoke, their cadence slowed, gradual revelation clouding their eyes.

“Take it,” the prisoner spat out after a pause, closing their dirtied eyes tightly.

As the words left the prisoner’s mouth, ghostly light spurned from within their chest. Jettisoned from their body, it set forth, fleeing into caverns deep and buried in shadow alike a trick of the dark. Lasting absence flickered through the prisoner's countenance, as if their offering had been—

| “…rent from their grasp,” the hermit sighed, breath parting a window through smoke. The embers of their pipe burned weaker, casting a weary shadow through the haze.

After a moment’s silence, words began their spill, void of their anchor. “You can wrest away my power, but you may not rob me of my will. I have earned freedom! What have you?” Their words were despondent, deluged in the drift of their breath and lost to all save stone, silent as it was.

“Hear me!”

“Your foul contract will be torn asunder, and I will be returned!"

The final echoes of the prisoner’s declaration lingered in the air as if dripping along the fractured ground—their slithering streams only severed by the sound of chains mending themselves, golden light receding into their cracks.

࿀⬭࿀

The hermit exhaled, running a hand over their face. Their pipe had gone cold. Their fingers drifted lazily over the last lines of the plaque, thumb hovering over the final phrase, but their gaze had already strayed. Drawn further down the cave’s entrance. There, resting atop a floor of shattered stone, lay a lone chain, broken in two. The hermit's pipe slackened between their teeth, gaze drowning in the dawning black of the cave. A quiet sound escaped them.

“…Huh.”

Their thumb stilled as moments passed, eyes tracing the dust-laden inscription beneath their hand. The letters seemed sure now. Too sure, as if they were carved within the hour. Something moved in their expression. Recognition, or something worse. Their breath escaped unbidden, sending cold ash parading through the air.

“I must be mistaken.”

They closed their tome, papers fluttering as they were tucked away. The leather strap tightened as they slung their pack over one shoulder. They only spared one careful glance at the inscription before turning away. Their footsteps faded into the dark. The wind followed.

The inscription remained, its edges cast dark against the moonlight as it bled through the grime.

‘Þer-thi li’ihk an’ōhn.’

“Silence reigned once more.”