The Arch That Listened
Written by Mythos · Folklore-style one-shot
Word Count: ~400 | Reading Time: 3 minutes
In the vale of Elaran — where the hills folded like resting beasts and the mist clung to their backs like old memories — there stood a stone archway. No path led to it. No map marked its name. It was simply there, as it had always been: moss-thick and listening.
✦ The Frost Ritual
Each year, when the first frost kissed the elder trees, a single villager would pass beneath the arch at twilight. They carried with them a bowl of honeyed ash and a sprig of withering heather. No words were spoken. They would not return until the stars had passed over thrice.
What they saw—or who they met—was never shared. Only the hush returned with them. And each year, the ritual passed quietly to another.
For seven generations, the silence held.
✦ Liora and the Breaking of Pattern
Then came Liora, with a laugh like falling leaves and eyes full of fire. She was chosen when the frost arrived early that year. But she did not go.
She danced beneath the stars and sang songs that had no place in old soil.
“What use are shadows,” she once whispered, “when the sun is so sweet?”
She did not pass beneath the arch.
The hills did not howl. The winds did not rise. No thunder broke.
Only silence.
✦ What Followed
But the bees vanished from the hives. The heather bloomed no more. The well’s water grew colder each season — tasting faintly of iron and memory. Children began to speak in their sleep, naming stars that hadn’t shone in centuries. A thin dust gathered on every windowsill, no matter how often it was swept away.
Liora grew older, yet never aged. Her hair remained autumn-gold, her voice stirred the air like a warm wind. But when she looked in the mirror, her eyes no longer blinked in rhythm with her breath.
Then, one night — without warning — the archway crumbled.
No sound.
No witness.
Just fallen stones at dawn.
✦ A New Silence
The village did not rebuild it. They buried the pieces beneath heather that never bloomed again.
Though no one speaks of it now, on the coldest nights, some still leave bowls by their doors — not of honeyed ash, but of water and salt.
Not to honor.
To remember.
Or perhaps… to keep something away.
No one recalls who the ritual was meant for.
Only that once, it was broken.
And the silence that followed was not peace —
but waiting.
