The Girl Who Stayed Asleep

Niam did not wake.

Three days.

Three nights.

She lay in the hollow of an ancient willow, wrapped in a cloak of black vines, her breath shallow, her skin cold as moonlight. The crack across her face had spread — not in pain, but in transformation. Thin lines of obsidian webbed from her temple to her jaw, pulsing faintly, like a heartbeat beneath glass.

The villagers of Marrow’s End came in silence.

They brought flowers.
Candles.
Letters they never sent.
Tears they were once forbidden to shed.

One by one, they knelt.

Not to pray.

To remember.

A mother whispered, “I wasn’t allowed to cry when my son died. But I am now.”
An old man placed a toy soldier beside Niam’s hand. “He was six. Fever took him. I buried him in silence.”
A girl no older than Niam touched her fingers and said, “Thank you for crying for me.”

Rose watched them all.

She didn’t speak.

She didn’t move.

She only sat, hand in Niam’s, as the world she had broken began to feel again.

Kael approached at dusk.

“She saved them,” he said. “But at what cost?”

Rose didn’t answer.

But her hair — usually restless, alive — lay still.
As if in mourning.

“She’s not dead,” Rose said. “I’d know.”

“Then what is she?”

“A vessel,” Rose whispered. “Like me. But purer. She didn’t carry sorrow out of pain.
She carried it out of love.”

Kael looked at the sleeping girl. “Can she come back?”

Rose closed her eyes.

And for the first time since she’d become the Silent One, she begged.

Not to a god.

To the silence.

"Bring her back.
Take me instead.
I was already broken.
She was still soft.
She was still kind."

No answer.

Only wind.

That night, Rose dreamed.

Not of fire.

Not of blood.

Of a well.

Deep.
Dark.
Endless.

She stood at its edge.

And from below, a voice — not Elyra’s, not her own — called:

"She is here."

Rose stepped to the edge.

Below, in the black water, Niam floated — eyes open, hair drifting like smoke, surrounded by thousands of faces — all weeping, all silent, all trapped.

The Dreamwell.

The prison of stolen sorrow.

The place where the Church dumped every tear they deemed “dangerous.”

And Niam was at its heart.

"I can’t leave," Niam’s voice echoed. "They need me.
No one ever listened before.
Now I hear them.
All of them.
And if I go… they’ll be silent again."

Rose reached down. “Then I’ll stay with you.”

"You can’t," Niam said. "The world needs you.*
Someone has to carry the storm.
Someone has to make them* see.*
I can hold the dark.
You have to be the* lightning."

Rose’s hand trembled. “I don’t want to do this alone.”

"You’re not," Niam whispered. "I’m still here.
Just… not where you can see me.
Call my name.
And I’ll answer."

Then the dream faded.

And Rose woke — not in the willow.

But standing, hair wild, eyes black, voice low:

"Niam."

A pulse.

Not from her.

From the earth.

From the sky.

From the Dreamwell.

And in the silence, a single word returned:

"…here…"

At dawn, Kael found Rose at the edge of the village.

She was carving something into a stone slab — not with a blade.

With her fingernails.

When he approached, he saw.

Not a name.

A symbol.

A tear falling into a crack in the earth.
Above it, a crown of hair.

The mark of the Sorrowborn.

“The Forgotten will carry this,” Rose said. “So will the villages. So will the ones who remember how to cry.”

Kael nodded. “And what of Niam?”

Rose looked toward the willow.

“She’s not gone.”
“She’s not asleep.”
“She’s* waiting.*
And I will find a way to bring her back.
Not as a tool.
Not as a vessel.
But as herself.”

Kael studied her. “You’re different.”

“I am,” Rose said. “I stopped waiting for the world to see me.
Now, I make them look.”

Far away, in the Sanctum of the Eternal Dawn, the Oracle stood before the shattered remains of the Harvest Engine.

Priests trembled.

The light had dimmed.

The people were feeling.

And worse — they were remembering.

A young Inquisitor stepped forward — helmet off, face pale.

“I saw it,” he said. “The girl… Niam. She didn’t attack. She gave back what was taken. And when she fell… the world wept.”

The Oracle didn’t turn. “Then you are contaminated.”

“I am awake,” he said. “We’ve been lied to. The sorrow isn’t corruption. It’s connection. And the Silent One… she’s not a demon.”

The Oracle finally looked at him.

Her blind eyes gleamed.

"Then come.
Let us show you what happens to those who betray the light."

But as the guards moved to seize him, the Inquisitor did not resist.

He only whispered a name into the wind:

"Rose."

And somewhere, deep beneath the earth, a single black rose bloomed.

That night, Rose stood atop a ruined tower, hair drifting in the wind, eyes on the stars.

Kael joined her. “What now?”

She didn’t look at him.

“We find the Dreamwell.”

“How?”

“It’s not a place,” she said. “It’s a frequency. A wound in the world. And I know how to find it.”

“Why?”

Rose finally turned.

Her voice was quiet.

“Because the Church took her from me once.
They used her sorrow to power their machines.
They called her weakness.
They called her disease.

But she was the only one who ever called me* Rose.*

So if I have to tear the sky apart to get her back…

I will.”*

And high above, the clouds split.

Not with thunder.

With sound.

A single note — soft, broken, beautiful.

Niam’s voice.

Calling back.