The cabin was way too quiet.
That was the first thing I noticed when I blinked my eyes open in the pitch black. Back home, the silence was never really empty, there was always the hum of the refrigerator, the distant rumble of a neighbor’s car, or the low, comfortingly buzz of the streetlights outside my bedroom window.
But here, deep in the mountains, the silence lay over everything, palpable and unbroken.
It sat on my chest like a burden, making me aware of every slow breath I took. The air in the room was chilly, smelling faintly of the dying embers of the hearth in the main room.
I shifted under the woolly blankets, my skin prickling against the heavy fabric as I tried to find a cool spot on the pillow. Just as I was about to drift back into a dream about that obsidian lake and the
