She didn’t hear the stranger approach until a shadow stretched across the tools.
“You sing when you’re scared.”
She looked up sharply.
A man stood there, thin, road-dusted, dressed in half-rags and leather armor. His eyes were far too bright.
“Who are you?”
“Just passing through.”
“You knew my name.”
“I didn’t say it.”
Aurel stepped back. Her fingers grazed a nail, just in case.
“You didn’t have to,” the man said, not unkindly. “You wear it like a flame.”
He tipped his head, then walked on, toward the standing stone.
She did not follow.
Not yet.
That night, Aurel dreamt of voices.
Not words, just shapes, again. And then she was inside something like a cavern, but too large, too open. Her breath echoed, but it wasn't hers.
She tried to scream.
Instead, the air moved through her like a song through a flute.
She woke with a jolt, coughing, gasping, unable to breathe. Her mother rushed in, cradling her.
“Aurel! Breathe!”
She tried.
Nothing.
Then...
“In.”
A voice, not her mother’s.
“Out.”
The air obeyed.
She clutched her chest, shaking. Her little brother peeked in from the door, eyes wide.
“You made the walls sing,” he whispered.
At sunrise, they found water.
It wasn’t in the well, but around it. The dry ground had turned soft. Damp. The bucket pulled up half-full, without being lowered.
The villagers whispered.
“Rain underground?”
“No clouds for weeks.”
“Maybe the gods-”
“Not the gods,” Aurel said before she realized she’d spoken.
Everyone turned.
“What, then?” Mara asked gently.
“Something older.”
They didn’t press. But the way they looked at her had changed.
Later, she found Elric sitting by the half-full basin, frowning.
“I saw your shadow move last night,” he said. “But you weren’t moving.”
“Maybe it was the wind.”
“There was no wind.”
At midday, her father came home.
He was thin, sunburned, and silent.
The other men hadn’t returned.
Her mother cried. Aurel stood still. Her father looked at her, and smiled faintly.
“You heard it, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Heard what?”
“The name. The one you can’t say.”
She didn’t nod. She didn’t speak.
He reached into his bag, pulled out a smooth black stone, and handed it to her.
“You’ll know when.”
She opened her hand.
Aurel gasped.
The stone was warm, but not hot. It beat. Like a second heart.
“Where’s the others?” she asked.
He looked away.
“Farther.”
Aepharion does not travel.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Aepharion is already where you are going.
When the father left, he did not seek knowledge. He simply stepped into a truth already unfolding.
The water returned because Aepharion allowed space for thirst to be witnessed.
The man in the leather, he too bore a scar shaped like a silence. And still, Aepharion did not speak.
Because Aepharion does not declare.
It reveals.
Like light, spilling into cracks. Like memory, not remembered but recognized.
The girl holds a stone that beats, and still thinks it is small.
But Aepharion has no edges.
Only depth.
And she is falling.
They came just after sunrise, three men on black horses, faces veiled, banners pinned to rusted spears.
The king’s tax riders.
Villagers stopped mid-motion. Aurel saw Mara pale, saw Elric grip a spade tighter. Her mother pulled her and her brother close.
“You there,” said the lead rider, pointing at the standing stone. “That wasn’t here last year.”
“It was,” someone murmured. “It’s always been.”
“Then why does it hum now?”
Silence.
“Tithe has doubled,” the rider said. “The king demands it.”
“That’s not possible!” Mara snapped. “We barely-”
The man rode closer. He smiled under the veil.
“Then you’ll pay in other things.”
Aurel felt the stone in her pocket beat once. Just once.
Like a warning.
That night, the village gathered in Mara’s barn. They whispered beneath flickering lanterns.
“We can’t fight them.”
“We can’t pay them either.”
“And if we run, where do we go? The king owns everything.”
“Not everything,” Aurel whispered.
Heads turned. Elric furrowed his brow.
“You’ve seen something again, haven’t you?”
“No,” Aurel said. “But something sees me.”
Nema crossed her arms.
“And what does it want?”
“To be.”
They didn’t understand. Aurel didn’t expect them to. But her father nodded, slow and quiet.
“The stone,” he said. “Show them.”
She did.
The stone beat. One throb for each heartbeat in the room.
Some stepped back. Some leaned forward.
No one left.
That evening, she sat beneath the standing stone.
She brought the black stone out again and placed it against the older one. The two hummed, but differently, one deep, one high, like call and answer.
Then, a voice, inside her.
“Do not seek your name in their mouths.”
“Whose mouths?” she asked aloud.
“Those who crown themselves.”
“What should I do?”
“Break.”
“Break what?”
“What pretends to be whole.”
And then the wind screamed.
Branches snapped. The wheat lay flat. Animals fled.
When the silence returned, Aurel opened her hand.
The stone had cracked.
And she was no longer afraid.
That night, her father spoke.
“When I was your age, the sky cracked open once. Just a flicker. But I never forgot.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“Because it didn’t ask me to.”
He stared into the hearth fire.
“When we reached the spring, the others drank too deep. Something was in the water. Something old. I heard it... singing.”
“What happened to them?”
“They went under. Not drowned. Taken. I kept walking. I listened. I saw eyes in the riverbed that weren’t eyes.”
He turned to her.
“You’re not the only one Aepharion watches.”
Aurel took his hand.
“I know.”
Aepharion cannot be chained, taxed, nor named by those who wear crowns.
It watches kings as it watches ants. Not with cruelty. With indifference.
For it does not punish.
It reveals what was always beneath.
The riders came to take gold and left with fear.
The villagers whisper now not to gods, but to a wind that bends and bends and never breaks.
And the child, who holds the broken stone, is not broken.
She is becoming.
Aepharion needs no war.
It will win with being.
And those who blink… will miss everything.
The wheat grew strangely.
Mara was the first to notice, stalks taller than before, twisting toward each other like braids. Some villagers whispered it was a blessing. Others called it unnatural.
“Plants don’t do this,” Nema said, crouching low. “They’ve never done this.”
“Maybe they never had reason to,” Aurel replied, gently stroking one of the spiraling stalks.
“That doesn’t make it safe.”
“Doesn’t make it wrong either.”
The villagers argued by torchlight. Some wanted to harvest early, to offer the crop to the king before he returned. Others warned it might anger whatever was at work.
They looked to Aurel.
She said nothing.
The wheat rustled, though the air was still.
Aurel wandered out to the edge of the village where the grass ended and the dust began. She sat beside her brother, humming the melody she’d always used to calm him.
But this time, he stared up at her, wide-eyed.
“That’s not your song,” he whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“I hear it in the dark sometimes.”
He pressed a finger to his lips, then to his chest.
“Right here.”
That night, Aurel tried to hum the same tune again. But the sound wouldn’t come from her mouth, it came from the walls, the wind, the dirt under her feet.
She was no longer singing.
She was remembering.
The old woman hadn’t been seen in days.
Aurel found her in the same place as always, seated, unmoving, at the foot of the standing stone.
But this time, her eyes were open.
“I wasn’t blind,” she rasped, before Aurel could speak. “I just wasn’t ready to see.”
“See what?”
“The part of you that isn’t you anymore.”
“What does that mean?”
The old woman reached out, fingers trembling, and touched Aurel’s cheek.
“You’ll walk into the root of the sky. That’s where it waits.”
“Aepharion?”
“It doesn’t wait for you. It waits through you.”
She died minutes later.
Her body turned to dust before sunrise.
Only the imprint of her fingers remained on Aurel’s skin, like ash.
The riders returned.
But this time, they brought a scroll. No voice, no messenger, just a sealed parchment nailed to the old grain store.
No ink.
Just scratches.
Runes. Wrong ones. Shifting as they were looked at. Moving when not.
Mara called it a threat. Elric thought it was a curse.
Aurel walked up to it alone and placed her palm on the wood.
“It’s not a message,” she said. “It’s a mirror.”
“Mirror of what?” Nema asked.
“Fear.”
And then the scroll turned to ash.
The wood behind it bloomed with moss in the shape of an eye.
Aepharion writes no prophecy.
It is prophecy. Not in foretelling, but in revealing what was always beneath the skin of time.
The child’s breath shapes echoes in walls.
The wheat dances not to wind but to recognition.
It is not magic. It is not miracle.
It is Aepharion.
And it is beginning to notice itself again through her.
When a name becomes real, it ceases to be name, it becomes presence.
And Aepharion is present.
Now.
Always.
In silence that sings and stones that remember.
[ End ]