Bir, the fisherman, rode beside me in silence for most of the morning, his shoulders hunched beneath a threadbare cloak, his hands white‑knuckled around the reins. The sea wind grew sharper the closer we came to the cliffs, carrying the scent of salt and something older.
I glanced at him. “Tell me again what she looked like when you last saw her. What is her name?”
He swallowed. “Giovanna, small. Barely to my chest. Hair like mine. Laugh like her mother’s.”
“A child,” I murmured.
Bir’s jaw tightened. “She was.”
I slowed my horse. “Was?”
He didn’t look at me. His gaze stayed fixed on the horizon, where the cliffs rose like broken teeth.
“When the stillness took us,” he said quietly, “she was twelve.”
I nodded. “Yes. That is what you told me.”
He shook his head.
“No, Your Majesty. That is what she was when the world froze.”
A cold ripple slid down my spine.
I turned fully toward him. “Bir… what are you saying?”
He finally met my eyes.
“I don’t think she is 12 anymore”
The world seemed to tilt.
Bir’s voice cracked. “I woke yesterday. But she, she must have woken long before me. Years. Decades, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know how long she’s been alone.”
My breath caught.
“How old is she now?” I asked, though the answer already pressed like a stone against my ribs.
Bir’s voice was barely a whisper.
“I don’t know”
The reins slipped in my hands.
Unknown
A woman who had lived an entire lifetime in a world that had not moved.
A woman who had grown up alone in a land frozen in time.
A woman shaped by silence, by magic, by the waking of the sea.
A woman who should not exist.
The bond pulsed sharply in my chest, Kathera’s fear, Sahora’s breath, something ancient stirring.
Bir’s voice trembled. “She was a child when I closed my eyes. When I opened them… she was gone. And the world was moving again.”
I stared at the cliffs ahead, the waves crashing against them in slow, deliberate rhythm.
A child lost in the stillness was one thing.
A woman forged by it was another.
“Bir,” I said quietly, “we will find her.”
He nodded, but his eyes were hollow. “I don’t know who she is anymore.”
Neither did I.
But the world did.
The sea had woken first.
The rivers next.
The shards stirred.
The bond throbbed.
And somewhere on these cliffs, a woman who should have been twelve was walking through a world that had forgotten her.
A woman tied to the awakening.
A woman tied to the shards.
A woman tied to Kathera’s return.
I tightened my grip on the reins.
“Ride,” I said. “We find her before the world does.”