The group pushed through the thickening mist of Tal’gorr. Marnok and Seyra walked on foot, leading their Ryneths by the reins. Marnok moved at the front, his aura flickering nervously and reflecting off drifting shreds of fog as if bumping into invisible walls. Bipilon perched on his shoulder, lazily cleaning his claws. Seyra tried to stay quiet, but every few steps a short, birdlike tik‑tik escaped her mouth — and Lira, sitting on her shoulder, immediately answered in Seyra’s rich, irritated voice: “Damn mist.”
Marnok suddenly stopped. His eyes focused on something far away — and his aura flickered again. “When there are seventy, stop and be silent.”
Bipilon looked up toward the invisible sky and sighed theatrically. “Oh perfect, Marny. Another riddle for advanced students. Seventy of what? Your attempts to look intelligent? If we have to stay silent every time you say a number, I’ll reach retirement in absolute quiet. Let’s move before my scales mold in this humidity.”
From Lira’s beak came Seyra’s annoyed voice: “Lira thinks Marnok’s rhythm is strange. But Seyra says you should shut your mouth, Bipilon. Something in the air is different.”
They continued on. The forest was changing. The sound of their breathing returned with a one‑second delay, as if the mist were learning their rhythm and trying to imitate it. After a moment, Bipilon asked nervously: “Will someone finally tell me what the seventy is supposed to be?”
The forest darkened, and the air thickened until their steps seemed to sink into it. Seyra suddenly whistled Lira’s warning signal and stopped sharply. Her Ryneth snorted behind her. Then Lira asked quietly, in Seyra’s voice: “Did anyone count the steps since Marnok’s prophecy?”
In that instant, Marnok — one step ahead — froze with his foot suspended over nothing. He watched the air a few inches in front of his boot begin to tear like wet paper — slowly, reluctantly, with a faint sound like ice cracking under a thin layer of snow.
“Sixty… nine,” he whispered. His voice caught in his throat, and he remained in an impossible pose, foot stretched over emptiness.
And then it happened.
The air collapsed. Not downward, not sideways — but inward. As if the world inhaled… and forgot to exhale. The mist pulled back into a perfect circle around them, as if it had decided to be a witness. Not a participant, not an obstacle. Just a silent observer of the end of logic.
Seyra felt the hairs on her neck rise, and her aura flickered treacherously blue beneath her hair. Lira froze on her shoulder, feathers pressed tight to her body. “…this… is not… normal…” she said in Seyra’s voice.
Bipilon stopped laughing. That alone meant the fun was over. “Marny,” he whispered, “if you’ve got any more of your prophecies, now would be an excellent time.”
Marnok opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His aura flared silver, dimmed, then flickered again like a dying lamp. As if his lumin nature couldn’t decide whether to flee or bow.
When he finally, very carefully, lowered his foot back to the ground, a Sound emerged. Not a step, not a snapping twig. A sound that had decided to be something else. First a tone, then an echo, then an echo of an echo. And finally silence — not the absence of noise, but a tense waiting.
Seyra swallowed. The sound of the swallow came two seconds later, from the center of the emptiness before them.
The air split into a thin line of light. It wasn’t Kaelor’s light, nor Vaelor’s red glow. It was something between. Something that didn’t want to be light — but in the logic of a malfunction, had to be. The line rippled, testing its own existence — and then widened. Not like a gate, but like a memory forcing itself back into the present.
The mist pressed against the edges of the glowing seam. The air tightened to the point of breaking. And then — silence with its own gravity.
Marnok stepped back. Bipilon dove into Marnok’s pack in a blur — something he never did unless his life was in danger. Seyra inhaled — and Lira exhaled for her: “…the world… has put something down…”
An Aruen had been born. Thirty feet ahead, ten feet tall, pulsing, beautiful, and utterly unpredictable.
Seyra opened her mouth, but no words came.
“This is… an Aruen,” Lira finished in her voice.
Bipilon cautiously poked his head out of the pack, stared at the pulsing seam of light, and said in a tone that was suspiciously calm: “Great. The world decided to take notes. And we’re here to witness it. Wonderful. This always ends perfectly.”
Bipilon’s Note
“And if the world has started taking notes, I just hope it doesn’t add our names to them.”