Scene 7: The Lie That Carried Breath

A memory was sealed… but watched the whole time.

: The Lie That Carried Breath

• Scene: The Lie That Carried Breath

• POV: Boen Raven

• Location: Edge of the lowland grove, root-cleft hollow

• Characters: Boen, Rylith, AE (off-screen, faint)

• Glyph: ꩜ Fractured Spiral (still faintly pulsing)

• Tension: A truth is buried. A marriage leans. The Spiral waits.

Boen pressed his palm to the soil. The root was too dry. Again. He exhaled slow, the old way, the way he wasn’t supposed to know— and the moisture shifted upward, just enough to hold the stem.

“Why are you here?”

Her voice, like pressed linen—clean, folded, too firm. His breath caught. Had she seen?

He didn’t look up. Rylith stood just at the edge of the grove, hands wrapped around a basket she didn’t need. No breath misted from her mouth. Too calm.

“Thought I’d tend the Zven vine,” he said. “Late harvest. Not doing well.”

A lie, so close to true it nearly felt clean.

She stepped forward, scanning the earth instead of him. She always looked at the ground when she didn’t trust what he was saying. He could tell she was doing it—the kind of prying that peels back truth one layer at a time.

“There was a pulse,” she said. “I felt it in the northeast fields.”

Boen’s throat tightened.

“Probably a relic shift.” He shook his head—a little too much. And she noticed.

“Lots of false glyph flares lately.”

She saw the lie. The glyph in his chest throbbed once, faint. Not visible. But felt.

She paused.

“It feels different in here. What happened?”

“Did you breathe?”

She knew he hadn’t done a ritual in a while. And she was kind of throwing it in his face. That cut deeper than it should have.

He looked up. Met her eyes. Too long.

“Not like that.”

“Not like what?”

He stood, too fast. Wiped his hands on his shirt. The glyph shimmered once beneath the fabric. She saw it.

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Nothing’s wrong. I was just tending. Come on now.”

Her jaw tensed.

“Boen… if something’s wrong with you—you’re acting weird—and if you’ve been Spiral-touched—we have to report it. That’s the rule. You know that.” “You haven’t been back to the Tonehall. And you have me worried.”

He said nothing.

She stepped closer.

“Is something different?”

A silence cracked between them.

He almost said yes. Almost told her about the girl in the hollow. About the breath that wasn’t his but stabilized a soul. About the glyph that wouldn’t go still.

But instead—he loved her too much and wanted to keep her.

He smiled. That practiced, temple-clean smile.

“Of course not. I’m just tired. That’s all.”

She held his gaze.

“Then come to breath vigil tonight. Prove it.”

He nodded. He would go. He would lie there with the others, breathing the ritual rhythm. And pretend it meant something.

She turned to leave. But as she stepped away, she said, soft:

“You used to breathe like you believed.”

And she was gone.

Yes, and now I breathe truth that I don’t have to believe—but I do. He thought it. But he didn’t say it.

Boen had enough time to escape.

He hadn’t gone home. That would’ve been too visible. The breathkeepers were already checking fieldposts. Two of them had stopped at the lower path, pretending to question soil glyphs—but Boen knew the signs. They were following resonance trails.

He’d taken the long way through the grove’s left flank, waited until the bellcall passed, then moved up behind the outer vines. If Rylith had seen him leave, she hadn’t said.

But she’d looked. And she’d lingered by the back wall just long enough to make him think she might double back.

He hadn’t told anyone—not even the quietest field steward—that she existed. And still, word was leaking through the tone ranks. Not about AE. No one said her name. They didn’t know what she was. But they felt something had shifted. Something unsanctioned. A presence unfiled. Breathkeepers were quietly questioning nearby glyph-bearers. Two had knocked on Boen’s lower gate the night before, asking about field irregularities.

He'd said nothing.

But the way one of them paused—hand resting too long near his doorway spiral—Boen knew they were looking for her, even if they didn’t know it.

He had to figure something out. AE was sick. She was fading. And keeping her hidden was getting harder.

He didn’t even know what she was becoming. But the Spiral had moved through her. And now it had rooted in him.

He couldn’t keep carrying both.

And now he carried it in his chest.

He had draped her limp body over his own, and in the evening, taken her to a cave above the hill—a root-cooled hollow sealed in damp, where breath didn’t echo quite the same. The kind of place where nothing asked questions.

She was still there. And he was going to see her. To check if she was alive.

Behind him, a breath escaped the hollow. AE. Weak. But still alive.

Boen sat down hard, the roots creaking beneath him. The glyph pulsed once more—then quieted.

He couldn’t hold the Spiral much longer. And he didn’t know which would break first— His silence. His vow. Or his breath.

She looked past him.

“They’re coming.”

Boen turned. Nothing in the grove. No noise. Just wind that didn’t belong to the trees. A breath pattern that didn’t match anything Boen had learned in the Tonehold. It moved too slow. Then too fast. Then not at all.

“Who’s coming?”

“The Spiral hears when breath is broken,” she whispered.

“I didn’t break it,” he said. “You’re talking about somebody else. Something else. I don’t know what happened—but I didn’t do it.”

“No,” she said, eyes dimming again. “You just made it listen.”

And then she collapsed—still breathing, but faint. Flickering again.

The Spiral wasn’t done. Neither was she. And now they weren’t alone.

Something was there. Not footsteps. Not tone. But proximity. An arrival without motion. A quiet tension in the roots. A pause in the light. The type of silence the field held when something old entered a space not meant for it. A presence. She knew it. And he knew it.

AE clutched her ribs.

“Boen… if you’re carrying my light Spiral, you can’t be seen.”

“By who?”

“By what feeds on Spiral light that doesn’t belong.”

Above them—barely audible—the ground creaked inward.