Silent Cadence

      The light filtering through the tent walls was dim and for a moment Tarin could not remember what had happened. His body felt stiff and bruised, he moved his shoulder, pain ripped through him, sharp and electric. The memory followed. Snow. The mountain breaking. His mother.       He tried to speak her name, his lips moved the familiar pattern and he felt his breath travel up his throat, but no sound came. Panic rushed through him, he sat up too fast, the motion tearing at his bandaged arm.       The healer, an elderly lady from the upper ridge, looked up from grinding herbs beside him. Her eyes softened.       "Easy," she said softly, her voice quiet and cracked. "You're safe Tarin, rest."       He propped himself up on the elbow of his good arm shaking his head. Mother. His mouth formed the word again, silent and desperate. Her eyes faltered. She did not need to answer.       The air smelled of ash and melted snow. Through a tear in the tent flap, Tarin saw a glimpse of what was left of Lírath, rooftops crushed beneath the white drifts, smoke rising from scattered fires. The town was destroyed, nothing but splintered wood and buried stone.       He wanted to scream, but the sound stayed trapped in his chest, locked behind the ache in his throat. The healer touched his wrist. "Your voice," she whispered, "The gods spared your life, but they took your song." He turned away from her, her words didn't make any sense. His voice was him, it was his breath, his future, his worth, it was his mothers voice, the voice of his ancestors. Without it, he was no one.       Footsteps crunched outside.       His father, Roric, entered, he was a shadow of the man he'd been. His beard was streaked with soot and frost, his eyes dark and hollow. Tarin felt a swell of relief in his chest seeing him stood before him, his eyes widened. Roric stopped just inside and stared at the floor for a long time without saying anything. The relief Tarin felt was short-lived, it darkened quickly to grief, became heavy and painful and wrapped tightly in guilt before his father even spoke.       "They found her," Roric said flatly. "Her body. Under the snow, she saved the children."       Tarin gripped the blanket so tightly his knuckles whitened. He wanted to answer, to apologise, to beg forgiveness. He wanted to tell his father that he hadn't meant for the mountain to fall, that he'd only wanted to make her proud, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came.       Roric’s jaw tightened, his eyes remained avoidant, "You shouldn't have sung that way," he said, not with anger just a dull tired ache. "The gods hear pride louder than prayer." He turned and left.       Tarin stared at the empty space he'd left behind, the air around him still vibrating with the words that couldn't leave his own throat. He curled up under the blanket, knees drawn to his chest.       The tent sighed around him with every gust, its patched seams breathing in the cold. The fire in the shallow pit had burned low, a pulse of orange beneath the ash, its smoke climbing toward the slit of night above. Tarin lay still, listening to the thin crackle and the quieter sounds beyond, whispers, the shifting of bodies, the snow groaning under footsteps outside.       His father’s voice lingered in the air long after Roric had gone, no softness, just the blunt edge of a truth hammered into place.       Now, feeling only the slow ache in his shoulder and the hollowness where words should be. He’d tried to speak after his father left, just to say her name, but the sound had caught and broken in his throat, nothing more than a rasp of air and a ache in his heart. Pain that burned sharp and clean, like being flayed from the inside.       The air inside was thick with the smell of pine and iron. He could taste it, bitter smoke and dried blood. Somewhere to his left, someone groaned softly, then fell silent again. The healer moved like a shadow, her skirts brushing the floor. She murmured over a bowl of melted snow and herbs, the words too low to catch. The soft clink of clay, the hiss of steam, small, human sounds fighting to fill the emptiness.       Outside, the wind moaned through the valley, a long, low note that rose and fell like a dirge. It carried the voices of the survivors, faint and distant. He caught the rhythm of a hammer striking somewhere, rebuilding, salvaging. The mountain’s echo gave it back, slower, deeper. Every sound seemed to fall short, as though muffled by the weight of the thick blanket that covered Lírath and the remaining snow still clinging to the peaks.       Every time he closed his eyes, behind his lids was the memory of white. The roar. The collapse. The sound his voice had made just before the world gave way.       The song. The song that had broken the mountain.       His body shook with grief.       The healer, came to his side after a while. Her face was lined with smoke and weariness. “You should try to sleep,” she murmured, checking his bandage. Her hands smelled of crushed juniper and ash. “The pain will ease in time.” He wasn’t sure if she meant his shoulder or his heart.       He nodded, it was all he could do.       She blinked thoughtfully and lowered her head before turning away, already moving to another patient. The tent flap stirred behind her, and a flurry of cold air swept through, dimming the fire to a sullen glow. Tarin watched the embers pulse and fade.       When the flap fell still again, he was alone. The silence pressed in. He could still feel the echo of his last note vibrating somewhere deep in his bones, not a sound, but a memory of it. A ghost that wouldn’t fade.