The road ended where the trees thinned.
The carriage slowed, wheels crunching softly against gravel, until it came to a final stop just beyond the familiar bend in the path—the one that marked the edge of Aren's village. The sun hung low in the sky, staining the clouds with dull orange and grey.
Kael Riven stepped down first.
He did not help Aren descend. He did not look back toward the village.
"This is as far as I go," he said.
His voice was even. Official. Already distant.
Aren nodded and climbed down on his own, boots touching the earth he had known since childhood. For a moment, neither of them moved. Kael turned then, meeting Aren's eyes.
"You are to remain available," he said. "Further instructions will come when necessary."
No comfort.
No reassurance.
Just procedure.
Aren swallowed. "Yes, sir."
Kael inclined his head once, then turned away. The carriage rolled back onto the road, the sound of its wheels fading steadily until it was gone.
Aren stood alone.
The walk home felt longer than the journey had any right to be.
The path wound through familiar fields, past fences he had climbed as a child, past trees he had once counted in idle boredom. Everything looked the same. That was what unsettled him most. Life had not paused while he had gone to the capital. A dog barked in the distance. Somewhere, someone laughed. Aren kept his head down. When he reached the village proper, a few people noticed him. Some offered brief smiles. Others simply nodded. None asked questions. Word had not yet spread, or perhaps people sensed there were questions best left unasked.
By the time he reached his home, the light had dimmed to twilight.
The door opened before he could knock. His mother stood there, eyes wide, as if she had been listening for his steps.
For a heartbeat, neither of them spoke.
Then she pulled him into her arms. Her grip was tight, almost desperate, fingers pressing into his back as if to make sure he was real.
"You're home," she whispered.
Aren nodded against her shoulder. "I'm home."
Behind her, his father stood in the doorway, gaze sharp and searching. His eyes flicked past Aren—to the road beyond, to the empty space where a carriage might have been.
There was none.
His jaw tightened.
They sat together at the table later, the same table Aren had eaten at all his life. A lamp burned softly between them, casting long shadows across the walls.
"So," his father said at last. "Tell us."
Aren's fingers curled around the edge of the table.
He told them everything.
Not all at once. Not cleanly.
He spoke of the Awakening Hall. Of the platform. Of the silence that had followed when his Relic appeared. Of the laughter that had come after.
He described the guitar—broken, silent, useless in the eyes of everyone who had seen it.
His mother covered her mouth, his father said nothing.
"And then," Aren finished quietly, "they sent me back."
"How?" his mother asked.
"Escorted to the village edge," Aren replied. "Nothing more."
His father exhaled slowly.
"They didn't explain?"
Aren shook his head.
Silence filled the room, not the gentle kind. The kind that presses inward.
That night, Aren lay awake in his bed.
The ceiling above him looked exactly as it always had—wooden beams, faint cracks, a shadow where a knot in the wood resembled an eye. He had stared at it countless nights before.
It felt different now.
The laughter from the Awakening Hall echoed faintly in his thoughts, blending with older memories—another room, another life, another moment when effort had been met with dismissal.
He turned onto his side and squeezed his eyes shut.
Not again.
A knock came softly at his door.
His mother entered, sitting beside him without speaking. For a long while, she simply rested her hand on his shoulder.
"When you were little," she said at last, "you used to listen more than you spoke."
Aren smiled faintly. "I still do."
She hesitated. "I used to tell you stories. About our ancestors."
Aren opened his eyes.
"One of them," she continued, "carried a guitar. Not a celebrated one. People said it was strange. Incomplete."
Aren's breath caught.
"They laughed at him too," she said softly. "Until they didn't."
Aren turned toward her. "Do you think… it's the same?"
She didn't answer right away.
"I think," she said finally, "that silence doesn't always mean absence."
In the days that followed, life resumed its rhythm—uneven, cautious. Aren helped where he could. He listened more than he spoke. People treated him the same as before, and yet not quite.
Some looked at him with curiosity. Others with sympathy.
None asked about his Awakening.
At night, the dreams returned. The broken guitar lay before him, unchanged. Silent. But now, sometimes—only sometimes—he thought he felt a faint vibration beneath his fingers.
So faint he convinced himself it wasn't real.
Outside his window, the wind passed through the village, carrying sound without music.
Aren listened anyway.