CHAPTER ONE: THE GIRL WHO HEARD THE SKY

Most people in Waigh didn’t notice the sky, not really.

They noticed the weather, the storms, the cold that pressed in around harvest, or the early mist that curled like ghost-breath between the hills. But they didn’t listen.

I always had.

It started when I was a child. I’d sit on the stone steps outside our cottage and tilt my head to the clouds, listening to sounds no one else heard. My mother said it was the wind. My father said it was nonsense. I said nothing because I had already learned that wonder was a dangerous thing in a quiet village like ours.

But that morning, even the sky couldn’t stay silent.

It began with a tremor-not beneath my feet, but somewhere behind my ribs. A hum. A pressure. Like the world was about to speak.

I had gone to the orchard before dawn, as I often did when I couldn’t sleep. The trees knew me. The paths remembered my steps. The soft crunch of frosh beneath my books was the only sound for miles. Until it wasn’t.

The air thickened suddenly. The wind, which had been moving west, hesitated. The crows bickering in the birches fell quiet.

And I heard it.

Not words. Not music, a tone. Low and hollow, like the echo of something ancient striking deep stone. It didn’t come from above or below but from all around me- woven into the very fabric of the air.

My breath caught.

I closed my eyes and tilted my head upward. The clouds were shifting in slow spirals, silver threads curling like smoke from a snuffed flame. Something was waking. Something older than our songs, older than even the hills of Waigh.

And I could feel it in my bones.

A flutter of fear rose I me- not sharp, but strange. As if I had remembered something I’d never known, as if part of me recognized the sound. A story unfinished, a promise once whispered and long forgotten.

Then, it stopped. Just like that.

The wind returned. The orchard breathed again. The first bird cried out as if nothing had happened.

But I knew something had.

And I knew-though I couldn’t say how, that whatever had stirred because of me.

By the time I returned from the orchard, the sun had risen behind a veil of thin, pale clouds. The village rooftops were streaked with dew, and a quiet stillness hung over Waigh like a held breath.

My mother was standing at the stove when I entered, stirring

something thick in a cast-iron pot. She didn’t turn when she spoke.

“You were out early again.”

I shrugged out of my cloak. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Her spoon paused for half a second—just enough to notice— then kept moving. “Did you hear it again?”

I froze. “Hear what?”

She didn’t answer. She never did, not directly. Not about that. Instead, she ladled the stew into two bowls and placed one at my seat. When she finally looked at me, there was something in her eyes—fear, yes, but not surprise. Something older.

Recognition.

“I used to listen, too,” she said quietly. “When I was your age.”

That stopped me cold. “You—what?”

She only shook her head, as if the truth were something she had long ago tried to bury.

“I heard the sky hum. I felt the earth’s breath. But I learned not to speak of it. You should do the same.”

“But something’s happening—something real. The orchard—

”

“You’ll only bring questions,” she interrupted, her voice soft

but sharp. “And in Waigh, questions are heavier than stones.” Silence fell between us, thick and uneasy.

Then I remembered it—the hollow tone, the strange shift in the air. I stood and reached into my cloak pocket, fingers brushing something that hadn’t been there before.

Smooth. Cold. Small. I drew it out slowly.

It was a stone, dark as obsidian, veined with faint, silvery lines that shimmered briefly in the kitchen light. No larger than a sparrow’s egg, but oddly heavy in my palm. I hadn’t picked it up in the orchard. I would have known.

My mother saw it and went still.

She crossed the room in two steps and gently took it from me, her fingers trembling.

“This…” she whispered, eyes wide. “This is from below. From before.”

“Before what?”

She looked at me like she was seeing something she hadn’t expected—like she was remembering, too.

“Before the silence,” she said.

Then she closed my fingers around the stone and turned away.

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