Chapter 28. The Mouthless One

The words haunted her sleep.

Find the Mouthless One.

Aria repeated them in her mind like a chant, a riddle too old for answers. The message hadn’t offered a direction, a sign, or a time—just that name, carved in mystery and wrapped in shadow.

By morning, she and Jules were seated in the upper stacks of the east library wing, surrounded by piles of forbidden tomes and dust-thick scrolls that hadn’t been touched in decades. They worked in silence, the kind born of mutual urgency, flipping page after page until Jules finally let out a sharp breath.

“Here,” she whispered, dragging a cracked leather volume toward them.

Aria leaned closer.

The page bore a sketch—crude, angular, haunting. A woman cloaked in robes, eyes veiled, mouth sewn shut by strands of silver wire. Beneath it, in faded script: The Silent Seer. Oracles lost to punishment, voices torn to prevent prophecy. The last known: housed below the Sanctuary in the Hollow Crypt, sealed b