The Listener’s Mark
1000 Words
Liora woke to the sound of no sound at all.
No birds. No rustling leaves. Even the wind held its breath. The clearing where the Echo Gate had opened now seemed impossibly still, as though the world had paused to watch what she would do next.
The moss beneath her fingers pulsed faintly, as if it remembered the vibration of the tone. She pressed her palm deeper into the earth. Her heartbeat had changed. Slower now. Stronger. Like she was moving in time with something larger.
She rose.
Something itched beneath her collarbone. She pulled her shirt aside and saw it: a faint shimmer just beneath the skin, like a burn made of starlight. Four interwoven arcs—just like the dream symbols. The mark wasn’t painful. But it hummed.
A resonance. Constant. Alive.
Back in town, things hadn’t stopped. The world kept turning, unaware—or unwilling to acknowledge—the shift that had begun. At the diner, Mrs. Weller asked why she looked pale. Mr. Jerro raised an eyebrow when she didn’t sign good morning. Liora smiled, but her hands stayed still.
She no longer needed to speak just to fill silence.
At home, her mother watched her across the breakfast table. The distance between them had grown, not in miles, but in understanding. Her mother’s eyes held a question—maybe several—but she asked none aloud. Liora touched her hand gently before leaving.
She returned to the observatory.
It had become her place of study, her chapel. The telescope’s great eye no longe
She wasn’t alone long.
They came in quiet pairs, one by one. Children first. Then teenagers. Then a few brave adults. They had felt something too. A dream. A sound. A stillness they couldn’t explain. They didn’t speak much. But they listened. And Liora, somehow, began to teach.
Not in words.
Only that it was right.
The mark on her chest pulsed brighter when someone understood.
And dimmed when they faltered.
One night, a child named Elen drew a new symbol. It wasn’t from Liora’s dreams. It was simpler. A curve within a curve, like an echo nested inside itself. When Liora touched it, her mark responded.
The tone was growing.
But not all listened with open hearts.
Mr. Jerro confronted her near the schoolhouse steps. “What exactly are you doing with these kids?” he demanded, eyes sharp with worry—or something darker. “You teaching them spells? Cult stuff?”
Liora met his gaze calmly. She signed, gently: I’m helping them hear what’s already there.
He didn’t answer. But he didn’t stop watching her.
That night, she dreamed again.
She stood on a high plateau, stars circling her like moths. In her hand, a crystal tuning fork sang silently. Across from her stood another figure—half-seen, cloaked in mist. They held an identical fork. When Liora struck hers, the other cracked.
The silence that followed was... wrong.
A silence that ate meaning.
She awoke trembling.
The mark on her chest flared hot.
Something was coming.
She returned to the forest, alone this time. Past the grove where Caerel had once knelt, past the ring where the Gate had opened. Deeper. Into older woods, where moss hung like curtains and trees leaned close, whispering.
There she found the Mirror Stone.
A standing slab, black as obsidian, but rippling like water. She approached slowly, breath catching in her throat. Her reflection looked back—but not exactly. The eyes glowed faintly. And the mark on its chest pulsed out of sync with hers.
Not a mirror.
A message.
She raised her hand. The reflection did not follow.
Instead, it signed something unfamiliar—then dissolved into mist.
Liora stared at the empty stone.
She felt it then: a faint pull in her chest, like the mark wanted to echo the sign it had just seen. Her fingers moved instinctively. The air shimmered.
A note rang out.
Not loud. But unmistakable.
A new tone.
The forest reacted. Wind surged through the trees. Birds took flight. And from deep underground came a faint, resonant answer.
The Gate wasn’t the only one.
There were others.
She returned to town changed again. The children sensed it first. They signed to her without prompting. Asked to learn the second symbol. Elen showed her a dream-drawing: a spiral, made of leaves.
But the unease was growing.
The silence in town had changed flavor. No longer peaceful. Now it crackled—like old wires, like the moment before a bulb bursts.
And then… the radios died.
Every one.
Phones too. Screens froze. Lights flickered erratically. Mr. Jerro knocked on her door that evening, but didn’t speak. Just looked at her like she was holding something explosive.
That night, Liora’s mark throbbed painfully.
She walked to the center of town, stood beneath the statue of the town’s founder, and signed a single symbol in the air.
The light flared from her fingertips.
Everyone saw.
Gasps. Shouts. A few people ran.
But some stayed.
Some signed back.
The line had been drawn—not by force, but by frequency.
There were those who resonated.
And those who refused.
In the days that followed, new symbols appeared in the dreams of her students. One by one, they brought them to her. Liora collected them like seeds. Patterns formed. Harmonics. She was building something—a lexicon of resonance.
Then, on the seventh night, a tremor shook the town.
Small. But precise.
A message from below.
The eater wasn’t gone.
It had simply found another gate.
Liora stood on her rooftop, mark glowing softly beneath her skin. She looked at the stars, at the shapes they made. The tone she’d heard in the forest—the answer—it was only the beginning.
Her hands rose.
And she signed the new symbol Elen had shown her.
It shimmered in the air.
She wasn’t just a listener anymore.
She wa
s a speaker.
And the world was starting to listen back.
- Writer
