Chapter 40. The Man with No Voice

The path to Hollow Deep was not marked. No stones. No sigils. No warnings carved into wood.

It didn’t need any.

Those who knew, stayed away. Those who didn’t… weren’t remembered long enough to matter.

Aria left the ridge before dawn, following a narrow trail behind the broken shrine where wolf bones had once been scattered. The earth changed there—looser, darker, like something old had bled into the soil and refused to be washed away. Birds stopped singing two ridgelines back. Even the insects had grown quiet.

The boy’s words haunted her: “A man with no voice. And a beast with no name.”

She wasn’t sure which one she feared more.

Fog collected fast in this part of the basin. It didn’t creep in like breath from the mountains—it was simply there, waiting, pressing close like damp cloth, clinging to her cloak and braids. Her boots slipped twice on the shale before she found the old rails: twin lines of rusted iron snaking down the slope into a