The Whispering Stones.
561 Words
The Whispering Stones
Episode 5:
The Keeper of Ashmere Hollow
The path to Ashmere Hollow was no path at all—just tangled woods and breathless air. The farther Kael traveled from Elmsworth, the more distant everything familiar became. Even the trees felt… older. They didn’t sway. They watched.
The fifth whisper had called him here.
Behind him, Nyra padded silently, her feline eyes scanning the shadows. The two of them had followed the trail of whispers since the Arch, across Thalurea’s fractured lands, through ruins and rivers of sky. But nothing had felt as heavy as this place.
Ashmere Hollow was quiet. Too quiet.
Kael stopped at the edge of a fog-wrapped glade where even the wind seemed afraid to blow. The stone underfoot glowed faintly—blue veins pulsing beneath the moss.
“I don’t like this,” Nyra whispered.
“I don’t either,” Kael said. “But the Stone is here. I can feel it.”
He stepped into the clearing.
The mist thickened, and a figure stepped forward—tall, cloaked, faceless. Their voice was neither male nor female, old nor young. It echoed in Kael’s chest more than in his ears.
“You have come for what you do not yet understand.”
Kael held his ground. “The fifth stone.”
The figure nodded. “It is not a prize. It is a weight. A memory. A key. Only those who carry truth may hold it.”
Kael frowned. “What truth?”
The figure extended a long, pale hand—and the glade changed.
The trees melted away. Kael stood in Elmsworth… but not the Elmsworth he knew. It was burned. Silent. Dead.
He turned and saw a child—himself—kneeling beside his parents’ grave. A memory. One he had buried.
The cloaked figure’s voice returned.
“Before the stones whispered to you, they wept for you.”
Kael’s throat tightened.
“You are the Listener not because you were chosen… but because you were broken.”
The vision faded. The forest returned. The fifth stone hovered before him now—silent, black, cracked with veins of deep blue light. It pulsed once—waiting.
Kael stepped forward, breath shaking.
Nyra whispered, “Kael… are you sure?”
“No,” he said. “But I can’t turn away.”
He reached for the stone.
The moment his fingers touched it, pain lanced through his chest—but not pain of the body. Pain of memory. Of loss. Of truth. But Kael did not pull back.
The stone accepted him.
And then—it spoke.
“Five stand. One sleeps. The last is lost… or hidden.”
Kael staggered. “What does that mean?”
The cloaked figure’s voice was soft now. “The sixth whisper comes not from the earth… but from what was taken. You must descend to the Ruined Core. To the place where the first silence was born.”
Nyra hissed. “The Ruined Core? That place is dead!”
“Not dead,” the Keeper said. “Stolen.”
Then the figure stepped back—and vanished into mist.
Kael held the fifth stone, now bound to him. The others in his satchel pulsed in response.
The Hollow fell quiet again.
But the whisper returned:
“The silence has a face… and it remembers yours.”
- Writer
