Whispers In the Western Vale

The plains ended like the end of a long sigh, giving way to stone and timber walls that stretched high into the sky. Towers bristled with iron spikes, banners fluttered in the wind, and the low murmur of countless voices drifted over the ramparts like the sea crashing faintly against rocks. The Western Vale stood proud and alive before them.

Shin slowed his steps as the dirt path widened into a packed trade road. Wagons creaked by, pulled by snorting oxen; adventurers in mismatched armor clattered past with laughter and heavy boots. The hum of commerce and living souls pressed down like an invisible weight. Compared to the forest trails they had just left behind, the city seemed a world entirely its own.

Hikari’s eyes were wide, shimmering with childlike wonder. “It’s… huge,” she whispered, fingers tightening on Shin’s sleeve as if she feared she might lose herself in the crowd at the gates. “All these people… so many…”

Shin’s gaze lingered on the bustling press of humanity. Cloaks brushed past shoulders, merchants barked out prices in overlapping shouts, a blacksmith dragged a crate of dull steel toward the gates. It was alive, yes, but to him, it felt like chaos. The rhythm of the forest had been slow and deliberate. Here, everything seemed to move too quickly, like a current threatening to sweep him away.

“Keep close,” Daelric ordered, his tone calm but unyielding as always. The disciplined knight walked at the head of their group, hand resting on the pommel of his sword. His eyes never stopped moving—watching guards, watching traders, watching the flicker of shadows between people’s boots.

Luneth glanced back at Shin briefly, her expression unreadable but her pace measured so as not to leave him or Hikari behind. There was always something careful in the way she moved around him, as though she were weighing and testing him against the world they walked in.

They joined the queue at the outer checkpoint, wedged between a caravan of spice merchants and a pair of hunters with shaggy hounds. The hunters’ dogs sniffed at Hikari’s boots and sneezed, offended. Somewhere high on the wall a bell tolled the hour; pigeons shot up from the battlements in a whirr of wings. A bent old woman shuffled past ringing a small tin chime and muttering in a dialect Shin didn’t recognize; the charm jangling from her wrist was carved with a serpent eating its tail.

“Lucky charm,” Kaori said cheerfully, elbowing Shin. “Ward against bad trades and worse men.”

“Does it work?” Hikari asked.

Kaori grinned. “Only if you believe and pay triple.”

Hikari tried not to smile. Shin did not try at all, but the corner of his mouth twitched despite himself.

The line to the gates stretched long, but it moved with efficiency. Vale guards wore steel half-plate trimmed with blue, halberds gleaming beneath lantern-light. They checked papers, sealed documents, and crates one after the other, barking orders to merchants and adventurers alike.

The air smelled of dust, horses, and oil from the hinges of the gates. Travelers shifted impatiently in line; children whined while their mothers hushed them; merchants cursed in half a dozen dialects.

A scribe at a high desk dipped his quill, scrawling names and destinations into a ledger the size of a paving stone. “Business?” he droned to the man ahead of them.

“Carpets,” the merchant replied. “From the east.”

“Declare dyes. Last wagon was hiding tinctures.” The scribe didn’t look up.

When it was their turn, Luneth produced a rolled parchment, sealed in dark red wax. “Escort from eastern plains complete,” she told the guard briskly.

The guard looked at the seal, then at Luneth, and his stiff features softened with recognition. “Ah, Luneth’s band. Well done. Reports of gnoll activity near the pass have already reached here. Your timing was impeccable.” He stamped the parchment and waved them through without question.

A second guard—older, with a scar across his scalp—leaned in and spoke low to Luneth. Shin couldn’t catch the whole of it, only fragments that snagged his ear: “…three missing… past week… patrol won’t speak… strange marks near the north ditch…”

Luneth’s expression didn’t change, but her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “We’ll talk inside,” she murmured. The older guard nodded and stepped back.

Shin handed over his own item—a pouch containing a claw from the beast he had slain earlier. His quest had been minor compared to theirs, but he had fulfilled it nonetheless. The guard inspected it, shrugged, and scribbled something into a ledger before handing Shin a few bronze coins.

It was quick, unceremonious. Shin felt the sharp divide immediately: Luneth’s group was treated with respect, even familiarity, while he was brushed aside like any wandering adventurer. The difference was undeniable, and it gnawed faintly at him.

Kaori caught the look in his eyes. She leaned close, her grin teasing. “Don’t sulk. One day they’ll write songs about you. For now? You’re just background noise.”

He scowled, but her playful tone softened the sting.

“Besides,” she added, waggling her brows, “some of us are fond of background noise. It lets us sneak in the melody.”

Hikari blinked. “That… actually makes sense.”

“Careful,” Daelric said dryly. “If you feed her, she’ll keep talking.”

Kaori clutched her chest. “The disrespect.”

They passed beneath the gate and under the shadow of its portcullis. Iron teeth loomed inches above their heads, slick with oil. Shin glanced up and imagined them dropping; he stepped faster without meaning to.

Inside, the Western Vale unfolded like a tapestry of noise and color.

The main square opened wide, lanterns strung from tall posts casting golden light across cobblestone streets. Merchants lined both sides of the avenue, stalls groaning beneath heaps of goods: glittering trinkets, cured meats, polished swords, and cages of squawking birds.

The clang of a blacksmith’s hammer rang out from a nearby forge, sparks cascading into the dark. A bard strummed a lute outside a tavern, voice carrying above drunken laughter. A pair of mercenaries boasted loudly about their kill count, each trying to outdo the other while waving tankards high.

A boy darted past and nearly collided with Shin. The boy’s hand snagged at Shin’s belt and came away with a coin purse so smoothly that Shin almost missed it—almost. He caught the boy’s wrist without thinking. The boy froze, eyes huge.

“Back,” Shin said evenly.

The boy swallowed and returned the purse. Shin let go. The boy bolted, vanishing beneath a table piled with framed maps.

Kaori clicked her tongue. “Welcome to the Vale. Keep your pockets close and your wits closer.”

Hikari’s eyes lit up instantly. “Look! That stall—look at those knives! Oh, and over there! Spices from the desert, I’ve never seen—come on, let’s go!”

Before anyone could argue, she had already darted into the crowd, tugging a reluctant Daelric along by the wrist.

“Stay sharp,” Daelric muttered, but his voice was drowned out by Kaori’s excitement.

They wove past a glassblower turning molten globes on a pipe, past a perfumer flicking droplets onto a ribbon of silk, past a tattooist ink-brushing a symbol on a sailor’s forearm—the same serpent biting its tail. The sailor hissed as the needle kissed skin; the tattooist whispered, “For luck. For endings that are also beginnings.”

Hikari pressed even closer to Shin, almost glued to his side. The press of bodies unsettled her. “It’s so loud,” she murmured, voice barely audible.

“Too loud,” Shin agreed, scanning the crowd. Every brush of a shoulder set his nerves alight. His hand itched toward his sword more than once, though he forced himself to relax. This was not a battlefield.

Luneth lingered behind him, her sharp gaze flicking from Shin to the crowd and back again. For a fleeting moment, her lips curved—not quite a smile, more an acknowledgment that she was watching how he moved, how he adjusted.

They passed a row of notices nailed to a timbered wall: bounties, hiring calls, missed-persons pleas written in uneven hands. A charcoal sketch showed a woman with dark hair and a crescent scar near her temple. Missing. Last seen near the north ditch. Someone had drawn a serpent around the border, teeth meeting in the tail.

“Who posts these?” Hikari asked.

“Everyone,” Luneth said. “No one.” She didn’t slow.

They gathered near the fountain at the center of the square, where water cascaded in glimmering arcs. The noise of the marketplace seemed to swell and fold in waves around them. The fountain itself was carved in the likeness of a griffon, wings arched high, water pouring from its beak into the pool below. Children splashed near the edges while their mothers gossiped under lanterns.

A street preacher stood on a crate near the fountain, shouting something about debts and storms while tossing salt across the cobbles. A pair of city watchmen rolled their eyes as they moved past. The water caught the lantern-light and broke it into shivering coins that played over Shin’s boots.

Kaori was still babbling about trinkets and weapons. “The knives! Did you see the balance on those? And the spice guy tried to sell me something that smelled like old boots and fire. I bought two pinches.”

Daelric, though exasperated, kept her from wandering too far. “If you feed us something that makes my tongue numb again, I’ll make you drink river water for a week.”

“It was a learning experience,” Kaori said primly. “For all of us.”

Luneth turned to Shin, her expression softening ever so slightly. “Stay with us. At least until you decide where to go. The Vale has its dangers too—less obvious than the forest, but no less real.”

Kaori leaned over with a grin. “Besides, who else is going to put up with Hikari’s endless questions?”

Hikari’s cheeks flushed, and she swatted Kaori’s arm lightly, but her smile crept through. For the first time since entering the city, she seemed to relax. She leaned toward Shin, showing him a little wooden charm she had bought—a clumsy carving of a bird. Her eyes sparkled as if the trinket were a treasure.

“It reminded me of the one that sat on the branch last night,” she said, almost apologetically. “The one that wouldn’t fly away until you stood up. I thought… maybe it meant something.”

“Maybe it did,” Shin said. He didn’t know what, but the words felt right in his mouth.

The warmth of their laughter, the ease of their banter—it tugged at something deep within Shin. Belonging. Outsider or comrade? Which path would he choose? He found no answer, only the weight of the question pressing down.

A vendor of tin whistles began to play a tune: lilting, too sweet. The notes threaded through the clamor like a ribbon. A breeze lifted and ran fingers over the fountain’s skin, dimpling it; the water’s ripples shivered in an odd rhythm, almost like a pulse. Hikari frowned and glanced down. The ripple faded. She shook her head as if to clear it.

As the group settled into the rhythm of the Vale, unease began to creep at the edges.

Shin noticed shadowed figures near the gates, faces hidden under hoods that lingered too long, watching too carefully. A pair slipped from doorway to doorway with the patience of spiders.

At one point, a guard leaned close to Luneth, whispering something urgent. Shin caught only fragments: “…disappearances… not safe after dark…” Luneth’s reply was quiet, but her jaw tightened.

They passed a shabby temple with cracked steps and candles guttering in jars. Someone had scrawled a message on the door in chalk: DO NOT DRAW THE CIRCLE. A priest scrubbed at the words with a wet rag, leaving a pale smear.

A bounty board outside a tavern bore notices of rising monster raids—attacks more organized than random. One parchment in particular bore the crest of some unknown faction, a symbol like a serpent biting its own tail. Shin stared at it for a long moment, unease crawling up his spine.

As he turned away, he nearly collided with a man leaving the tavern. The man’s ring flashed in the lantern light: a serpent, jaws locked on its tail. The man nodded apology and moved on. Shin watched him until the crowd swallowed him.

“Rumors spread faster than fire,” Daelric said, following Shin’s gaze. “Most burns out before it reaches a house.”

“And the ones that don’t?” Shin asked.

“Those are the ones you remember,” Daelric said simply.

From an upstairs window, a woman laughed too loudly. Somewhere else, a door slammed and a baby began to cry. The city felt like a storm that hadn’t realized it had passed; everything crackled, everything watched.

The Western Vale at night did not truly sleep. Though the taverns roared with music and drunken shouts, the outer streets breathed with a slower rhythm—carts being packed away, blacksmiths cooling their last forges, and stray dogs sniffing at scraps tossed aside. Shin sat still beside the fountain, listening to the city’s pulse, unsure if it comforted him or pressed against his chest like an unseen weight.

Hikari leaned against his shoulder, her hair brushing lightly against his arm. Her breathing had already fallen into the steady cadence of sleep. For a fleeting moment, Shin thought of how easily she trusted him, how strange it was that in the chaos of this new city she had chosen his side as her resting place. A small warmth lingered in his chest—warmth quickly chilled when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

Luneth again—gone now, swallowed by the alley.

Shin’s hand flexed. If he followed, he might learn something he wasn’t meant to. If he stayed, he would remain blind.

“Not my place… to interfere” he whispered to himself, though the words rang hollow even in his own ears.

A gust slid across the square. The fountain’s surface tightened, then trembled—just once—as though something very far away had tapped the world.

Outside the walls, beneath the cold moon, a figure moved through the fields.

The Witch.

Her cloak whipped in the wind, shadows twisting unnaturally at her feet. She moved to a patch of bare earth, where the grass seemed already sickened, wilted, as though the land itself feared her presence. She knelt, slowly, reverently, as though approaching an altar.

From within her cloak she drew a curved dagger, its blade blackened and jagged like something hewn from obsidian. She pulled the edge across her palm. Blood welled, thick and dark, dripping onto the soil.

The ground drank it greedily. The soil hissed.

She whispered incantations in a voice that did not belong to any human tongue. The air rippled, heavy with malice. Symbols seared themselves into the ground where her blood touched, glowing faintly before sinking into the dirt. Circles upon circles formed, nested like an intricate web. The markings pulsed red, then black, then red again, beating like a heart.

Her shadow stretched, elongated, moving as though alive—curling into grotesque shapes that writhed like serpents. They slithered across the circle, filling the spaces between runes, weaving through them like threads stitching a wound.

The air grew cold. Frost gathered on blades of grass, yet her breath steamed as though the air were hot. Two contradictions warred in the night.

Her face, half-hidden, bore no simple malice but something colder: sorrow laced with hatred. A grief so deep it had rotted into rage. Her lips trembled on one word, repeated again and again: a name. The syllables were warped, broken, but it was a name nonetheless—someone she had lost.

She reached into her cloak and withdrew three small objects wrapped in cloth: a sliver of bone drilled with a hole; a tarnished coin scored with a line; a vial of water, faintly shimmering. Each she placed with precise care at the points of an invisible triangle around the circle.

When she uncorked the vial, the scent of minerals rose—familiar, almost clean. She tilted it, and a single drop fell into the heart of the chalk. The lines shuddered. Far away, inside the city, the griffon fountain sent up a taller arc of water that no one noticed, then settled.

The Witch’s voice deepened, cadence steadying, words falling into a rhythm older than the language that birthed them. The bone sliver quivered and spun; the coin vibrated until it hummed like a struck bell; the drop of water spread beyond its size, unfurling into a thin film that mirrored the moon.

The earth split open at the center of the circle. A jagged fissure gaped, spilling mist as dark as tar. From within came faint cries, not entirely human—echoes of voices caught between worlds. A hand, or something like it, pressed against the rift’s edge before dissolving back into smoke.

She did not falter. With her uncut hand she drew a sign in the air, a crooked loop crossing itself—serpent swallowing tail, broken at the moment of the bite. The mist recoiled, then surged, tasting the gap the sign made and testing it like a tongue tests a cracked tooth.

Around her, the dead trees leaned as if listening. Bark split and wept sap that steamed in the cold. Insects crawled from the soil and lay still on their backs like scattered seeds.

“Not yet,” she breathed—not in prayer, but command. “Soon.”

The shadow behind her grew and grew until it swallowed her own, a towering antlered shape with wings that were not wings so much as the absence where wings should be. Stars near the horizon flickered, veiled—as though something unseen had brushed against the heavens and smudged them with its fingertips. The moonlight dimmed, devoured by the circle’s pulse.

The fissure widened a fraction. A different sound came—a low, thrumming note that rattled the teeth. The chalk lines climbed themselves into delicate ridges like frost, then shattered and fell as dust, only to knit again where they lay, alive and obedient. The blood line at the center blackened, then bloomed with a thin white light, colder than any fire.

Images rippled across the dark water skin at the circle’s heart. A tower of pale stone burning from within. A woman on a balcony, hair silver in the wind, watching something vanish over the sea. A child’s hand dropping a wooden bird, its wing snapping clean off. The scenes were too quick to seize, but the ache they left was not. The Witch’s mouth trembled. The name she had repeated softened into something close to a sob.

She straightened and set her bleeding palm on the soil. The light froze, as if startled, then obeyed her and ran to the edges of the circle like hounds returning to a whistle. “Bound,” she whispered. “Kept. Held.” Each word landed like iron on an anvil.

A hush fell so complete it erased even the wind. The night held its breath.

Then silence broke with a soft, terrible sigh—from the ground, from the space between the chalk and the blood, from the memory of something that had been sleeping and now knew it would be woken. The fissure sealed. The symbols burned away, leaving only scorched earth. The mist faded, though the taste of iron and ash lingered in the air.

The Witch lowered her hand. Her cloak swayed gently in the returning breeze. She rewrapped the bone, the coin, the empty vial, and tucked them away as tenderly as one might tuck away a keepsake.

For the briefest instant, her face caught the moonlight—sharper now, eerily familiar. Her jawline, her eyes, the curve of her lips… if Shin or anyone from the Vale had seen her at that moment, they would have sworn she was Luneth’s reflection, aged by shadow rather than time.

She turned toward the distant lights of the city. Her gaze lingered there, unreadable—part longing, part hatred, part sorrow so deep it threatened to devour her. She raised two fingers and drew a small circle in the air, low and private. The circle did not close.

No confirmation. No explanation. Only that impossible echo—enough to set doubt burning in the heart of anyone who saw.

She whispered one final word into the darkness, and the wind carried it toward the city like a curse. The word did not belong to any tongue Shin knew, but if it had one foot in their language, it would have sounded like “Ouro.” The tail without a mouth. The hunger without a feast.

Then she vanished into the night, leaving only the withered grove behind as proof she had ever stood there. After she went, the ground relaxed the way a clenched fist does when it forgets it’s angry. Dew formed on the dead grass but would not fall, beading like tears that refused to drop.

Back at the fountain, Shin shifted uncomfortably. The unease had not left him. He stared into the rippling water, catching his own reflection blurred and fractured by the lantern light.

“Feels different here, doesn’t it?” Hikari had whispered earlier. The words replayed in his mind, heavier now.

A violinist began to play somewhere down the street, a tune too slow for the hour. The sound wound around the square and crawled into shin-boned places. A stray cat leapt lightly to the fountain’s rim, stared at him with lamp-glass eyes, and then drank, tongue flicking, as if to prove that water was still just water.

Across the way, the older guard with the scalp scar stood speaking to a younger watchman. The older man’s hands moved: a circle traced in the air, a line breaking it. The younger watchman crossed himself in the Vale fashion and nodded too quickly. They parted. The older guard turned, looking briefly toward the alley Luneth had taken, then away—like a man deciding not to look at a storm.

Shin glanced down at Hikari. She slept on, trusting and warm. He felt the pull of two tides: the old reflex to keep moving alone and the new, quieter draw toward these people who had, somehow, made his chest hurt less.

Yes. Different—and dangerous.

The Vale bustled like any city, its people oblivious to what lurked just beyond their walls. And Shin couldn’t shake the thought that they had all simply stepped onto a larger stage, one where shadows waited patiently for their cue.

Above, a thin cloud slipped over the moon. The lanterns fluttered. Somewhere beyond the walls, a withered grove cooled, and a circle that refused to close held its breath and counted the beats of a sleeping city.

Shin watched the water pulse once more—so faintly he might have imagined it—and decided he would not follow tonight.

But soon.