This chapter marks Barakiel’s arrival at the threshold between the known and the unknown, and introduces the Shenai, a secluded and withering people, who become both mirror and warning.

Barakiel walked until the light began to dim once more—not with night, but with the heavy hush that settles over land too old to be startled. The trail of millet had led him farther than he thought the forest extended. Here, the trees grew sparse again, giving way to a narrow valley of gray stone and brittle scrub, its soil dry in patches despite the melting snow.

He stepped over the last visible cluster of psheno, now shorter, more faded. It felt like the edge of something—like breath caught between sentences. The grain had brought him as far as it was meant to. Where it ended, the world began again, wild and uncertain.

He stood still, listening.

There was no more birdsong. Only the wind. And beneath the wind, the faintest murmur of smoke.

Then—a flicker of color between the stones.

A cloth. A tent.

A movement.

Barakiel stepped forward carefully.

A few hundred paces beyond the last millet sprout, nestled at the base of the hill like a forgotten page beneath a thick book, sat a scattering of low tents—patched and soot-stained, their corners held down by twisted rope and prayer-weighted stones. Their shape was unfamiliar—longer than they were tall, ribbed like sleeping animals beneath skins stitched from time and scarcity.

This was no village.

This was a refuge.

Smoke rose from a single blackened pot hanging above a fire pit. Children crouched nearby, their small bodies wrapped in too many layers for movement. A woman watched them from a stone, her face veiled not by cloth, but by weariness. Behind her, an old man held a pipe he did not smoke.

They looked up as Barakiel approached—not with fear, but with the blank gaze of people who had long since stopped expecting guests.

He raised his hand in greeting.

They said nothing.

But one of the children stood and ran.

A few moments later, a voice called from between the tents—a rough voice, but not unkind.

“You come through snow and light to reach what?”

Barakiel turned. A figure stepped into view.

where Barakiel encounters the elder of the Shenai—a tribe wary, fractured, and slowly forgetting themselves. This page unfolds with quiet tension, ancient dust, and the stirrings of long-buried legend.

The figure that emerged was not tall, but he carried himself as though he once had been. His back was bent, not by age alone, but by something heavier—disappointment, perhaps, or memory. He wore a patchwork robe made of fur, hide, and wool, its pieces stitched with twine and thorn. Around his neck hung beads carved from bone, their surfaces worn smooth from generations of worry.

His eyes, however, were sharp. Small, but searching.

Barakiel bowed his head in greeting.

“I mean no harm,” he said. “I came following a trail. I did not know this place existed. ”

The old man tilted his head slightly, stepping closer. His feet made no sound on the frost-hardened ground. “No one knows we exist,” he said, not bitterly, but with a kind of practiced detachment “That is why we still do.”

Barakiel waited.

The old man studied him for a long moment. Then, with a curt nod, he gestured toward a low rock near the fire “Sit. You look like a man who has walked through more than forest. ”

Barakiel sat.

The fire gave off more smoke than heat, but it still felt good. His bones had begun to tighten from the cold.

A few more figures emerged from the tents—men and women, quiet and watchful. They kept their distance, but their eyes did not leave him. A child peeked out from behind a skin flap and was quickly pulled back by a cautious hand.

“I am called Dumak,” the old man said at last, lowering himself beside the fire “These are Shenai. Or what is left of us. ”

Barakiel turned toward him “You speak the old tongue.”

Dumak nodded “Some of us still remember Though fewer each season. Most speak with gestures now. Or in silence. ”

Barakiel was quiet.

Dumak looked into the fire “And you, traveler—what trail did you follow here?”

Barakiel opened the cloth he had tucked in his robe. A few grains of psheno—golden and fragrant—rolled into his palm.

“I followed this,” he said.

And the murmurs around the fire stilled.

where the mention of psheno stirs the Shenai—a people who no longer plant, no longer hope, but still remember the scent of something sacred. The air becomes heavier, as legend begins to rise.

Dumak leaned forward slowly, his eyes narrowing. The light from the fire caught the glint of the grains in Barakiel’s palm—small, unassuming, yet golden enough to gleam even in ash-hued dusk.

He did not touch them.

Instead, he sniffed once, sharply. Then again.

“Psheno,” he said, as though speaking the name of a long-lost relative.

The others murmured behind him. One of the women, older than she looked, made a low sound in her throat—not surprise, not fear, but a note of recognition.

Barakiel nodded.

“It grew behind us,” he said, “In the snow From what spilled as we walked. ”

Dumak’s eyes flicked upward “You lie”

Barakiel did not flinch “I speak only what I’ve seen.”

“Then what you’ve seen,” Dumak said slowly, “is not of this world.”

Barakiel let the grains fall back into the fold of cloth, tying it gently “I did not understand it either Not at first.”

Dumak stared at the fire for a long time, the flames dancing in the reflection of his eyes. Then he spoke again, his voice low—almost hesitant, as if drawing from memory carved deep in the walls of forgetting.

“My grandfather told stories,”He said “When I was small Stories of a time before we lost our script. Before we forgot our language. He spoke of a grain that bloomed only where the blood of prophecy had been poured… or where the feet of the pure had passed.”

He looked back at Barakiel.

“We thought it only myth.”

Barakiel’s voice was quiet “I gave my daughter to something I did not understand. A golden-furred bear, sent by a voice I heard in prayer. I carried the grain as I was told. She walked beside me. We parted in silence.”

Now the fire truly stilled.

The tribe did not gasp.

They remembered.

The way people remember a scent that once lived in their childhood, or a word they heard before they knew its meaning.

Dumak whispered: “The Kingdom beyond the Horizon.”

where the myth of the Kingdom beyond the Horizon begins to stir in full. The old stories, buried under silence and snow, rise again in trembling wonder—and suspicion.

The words hung in the air like breath in frost—half-seen, fully felt

Barakiel looked up,“You know of it?”

Dumak did not answer immediately. His eyes had turned inward now, flickering not with the fire’s reflection but with memory—of stories whispered under hides, of tales only dared between fathers and sons, too dangerous to believe, too sacred to forget.

He finally spoke “My great-grandmother told me once, before her tongue forgot the shape of speech. She said that far past the heights, beyond the last ice where even the sun walks cautiously, there is a kingdom where the bears rule in silence. Not the beasts of the forest—but those born under star-blood, who walk like men within and change their skin when crossing into our world. ”

He met Barakiel’s eyes again.

“But those are only stories Passed down by mouths that no longer remember the words. ”

Barakiel unfastened his cloak . His hands trembled—not with cold, but with the weight of knowing what came next. He reached into the inner fold and brought out something small.

A thread.

It shimmered faintly in the firelight.

A single strand of Nooriyah’s green scarf, torn by accident as she walked toward the bear. He had kept it without thought. Now, it pulsed like proof.

“She followed the creature willingly,” he said “It bowed its head to her. And she walked into the white with it. I returned alone. But days later, where our grains had spilled, the snow broke. The earth breathed. And the psheno rose. ”

Duma lone But was barely audible “No one who enters that realm ever returns. ”

Barakiel nodded “Perhaps she will not. Perhaps she was never meant to ”

Another silence. But this time, it was not distrust.

It was awe.

And fear.

The kind that comes not from danger, but from prophecy waking up inside the bones.

where the weight of prophecy begins to press upon the Shenai camp—and Barakiel, though a stranger, becomes a mirror in which the tribe sees both their forgotten dignity and their slow descent.

The silence that followed was not empty.

It was layered—like sediment beneath a river: generations of unspoken stories, buried languages, and songs no longer sung. The Shenai stood like shadows beside the fire, but Barakiel could feel it in their posture, their eyes, the subtle tremble in their stillness:

They knew.

Not fully. Not consciously. But deep in the marrow—the place where legend lives after words have died—they knew something sacred had passed them by .

And that they had forgotten how to follow it.

Dumak exhaled through his nose, a long, slow breath “If what you say is true…” he began, then stopped, as if the sentence itself resisted being spoken.

Barakiel waited.

The old man shook his head, eyes still on the fire “Then you are the last of something. And she is the first of something else.”

A few of the children crept closer now, their eyes wide—not with fear, but with curiosity rarely stirred in them. One of them reached toward Barakiel’s folded cloth, where the psheno grains still rested. Mahira’s stitching was faint but visible on the linen—runic, protective, like a mother’s touch turned into thread.

Barakiel gently opened the cloth again.

He held it out to them.

The children stared. One leaned in and touched a grain with a fingertip, then pulled back quickly, as if it might burn. Another knelt and sniffed it.

They did not recognize the seed—but they knew it was not ordinary.

Dumak’s voice returned, hushed now “We once grew psheno,” he said “Long ago, before our tongues grew short and our spines bent. Before we traded seed for salt and memory for meat. But we forgot the song that woke the earth.”

Barakiel looked at him “You haven’t forgotten Not all the way. ”

Dumak gave a tired smile “Perhaps. But forgetting makes dwarfs of men. And this tribe has grown smaller not just in body, but in heart”

Then, almost to himself, he whispered, “Maybe you were sent to remind us.”

Barakiel closed the cloth.

And the wind, which had been still, stirred the flames into a quiet dance.

where a fragile hospitality begins to form, and Barakiel—without knowing—reawakens not just memory, but longing in a people who have shrunk to survive. The land listens, and so do the forgotten hearts.

Night fell slowly over the camp

The sky deepened into indigo, and the wind settled into the stone crevices like a tired shepherd returning home. A few stars blinked into view, shy at first, then steadier—each one seeming to pulse in time with the flames at the tribe’s center fire. It was not bright, not loud. But it burned with purpose.

Dumak handed Barakiel a bowl carved from pine, smoothed from years of use. It held a stew of root and lentil—simple, but rich with salt and patience. Barakiel took it with both hands and bowed his head before eating. Not out of politeness, but reverence. Every offering, no matter how humble, was sacred to him now.

As he ate, the Shenai began to sit nearer—one by one, as if the fire had suddenly grown larger in his presence. They did not speak, but they listened. And Barakiel, who was not a storyteller by nature, found himself speaking.

Not loudly. Not grandly.

But with the quiet strength of someone who had walked through mystery and come out the other side with wonder intact.

He told them of the night the voice came.

Of Mahira tying the psheno in cloth with trembling hands.

Of Nooriyah stepping into the snow without looking back.

He did not embellish.

He did not preach.

He simply remembered.

And as he spoke, something softened in the air.

Not the wind—it had long since calmed—but something deeper. The hush that surrounded them began to feel less like silence and more like listening. Even the old woman who hadn’t spoken in years, they said, leaned forward, her eyes gleaming like wet coal.

When he finished, no one clapped.

No one bowed.

They only sat with him a while, their faces lit by firelight and memory.

Then Dumak spoke, low and gravel-voiced.

“There was a time we believed the world still whispered. ”

He looked at the children.

“And maybe it does, Just not to us. ”

Barakiel set down his bowl.

“It will,” he said gently, “when you remember how to listen.”

where Barakiel’s presence becomes more than a visit—it becomes a gentle disturbance in a long-dormant soul of a people who have learned to survive by forgetting. But now, memory stirs like an ember touched by wind.

The fire burned low, but no one moved to feed it. Its glow had become more than warmth—it had become a hearth of remembrance. Around it, the faces of the Shenai glimmered in shifting amber: faces carved by hardship, by cold, by years of speaking too little and wanting too much. Yet in their eyes, something had returned—not belief, not yet, but the much. Yet it.

Barakiel watched the way they sat now, slightly closer together than before. The children leaned into their elders. The elders leaned toward the flame. It was a posture of listening, and more than that—of yearning . As if they had remembered, even for a few minutes, what it meant to be part of a story greater than mere endurance.

He felt no pride in this.

Only quiet sorrow that such beauty had gone so long unfed.

Dumak reached into his robe and pulled out a small bundle wrapped in hide. He unrolled it slowly—inside were carved stones: old, blackened with soot and time, each bearing a mark. Not a letter. Not anymore. But once, perhaps, it had been a script.

“These,” he said softly, “are all we have left of our language. No one reads them now . We say they’re tokens, charms .”

Barakiel took one into his palm.

It was smooth and warm from Dumak’s touch. The carving was simple—a curved line, a circle above it, another below. To Barakiel, it looked like a figure with open arms and light at its crown

“This,” Dumak whispered, “was the sign of guidance. The old ones used to say it marked the way to the sky-bear’s realm. ”

Barakiel looked up from the stone.

His voice was barely audible “Svalur. ”

A child echoed it under her breath, as if testing a forbidden word.

“Sva-lur,” she whispered again.

Dumak’s shoulders tightened—but he didn’t stop her..

The stone in Barakiel’s hand seemed to pulse slightly.

He handed it back.

And the fire crackled, as though it, too, had remembered something it had once been told in the time before ash.

where the fragile veil between legend and reality begins to tear. For the Shenai, what was once myth now glows faintly at the edge of the fire—and in Barakiel’s presence, they begin to believe not in kingdoms beyond, but in their own forgotten selves.

The night grew colder, but no one retreated to their tents. Not yet. They sat in a half-circle, leaning closer to the flame, not for heat—but to stay within the orbit of a story that had woken something in their bones. Even the silence between words was sacred now, and they dared not interrupt it with sleep.

Barakiel sat with his legs folded beneath him, hands resting on his knees, eyes lowered in thought. He was not trying to teach. He did not come with answers. But something in him—his quiet, his faith, his grief—had touched the space around them and made it shimmer like frost beneath starlight.

Dumak studied him in the fire’s glow “You are not like men who come from the world,” he said “You carry no sword, no wealth. Not even a demand.”

Barakiel smiled faintly, though the smile did not reach his eyes “I came with a daughter,” he said “And I left with an absence.”

The old man nodded slowly, solemnly “The kind of absence that opens a door,” he murmured “We know something of those”

He looked up at the sky.

It was clear now, black and wide, stars scattered like dust from a celestial hand. The constellations were unfamiliar to the children—they no longer had names for them—but Dumak traced them with his finger, just above the rim of his pipe.

“That one,” he said, pointing to a crooked hook of stars, “used to be called the Watcher. They say he looked over the pass at Galawan Heights.”

Barakiel turned to him.

“Galawan?”

Dumak nodded “The last threshold. Where the wind is too sharp for sound, and the bears walk in silence.”

Barakiel inhaled slowly.

He had never heard the name before, yet it rang within him like a bell struck in a sealed chamber—familiar in the way sacred places are familiar, even before they’re seen.

“And beyond it?” he asked.

Dumak hesitated.

Then answered, voice low “Only stories.”

Barakiel did not press further.

Because sometimes, the way forward lies hidden in the space where stories end.

where the mystic tone deepens. As Barakiel listens, the unseen threads that have long bound land, prophecy, and loss begin to hum again—within the fire, the stars, and the hearts of a fading people learning to feel again.

The fire had burned down to a soft ember-bed, but no one stirred to leave .

The children had fallen asleep with their heads on their mothers’ knees, the glow of the coals painting their cheeks in warm dusk. The elders remained seated, their backs curved like the bark of ancient trees, their eyes fixed on flames that no longer danced but listened. And between them all, as delicate as a breath on glass, hung a sense of something returning.

Not just the memory of a kingdom whispered across generations.

But the possibility that it had never left.

Barakiel tilted his head upward again.

The stars, like seeds scattered across a celestial scroll, seemed closer here. He wondered if Nooriyah was beneath them now—or beyond them. If the golden bear still walked beside her, or if she had already passed into that realm he dared not name except in silence.

He touched the small pouch of millet still tied at his waist. Its weight was nearly gone now, just a few grains left—like echoes of a sacred trail that had done its work. Yet he kept it there. Not as proof. But as promise.

Dumak’s voice broke the stillness, not with volume, but with tenderness.

“We once knew the path,” he said “There was a time when the Shenai were the bridge-keepers. We lived along the base of Galawan, where the winds taught us to listen and the snow taught us to remember. We were not large. We were not powerful. But we were faithful.”

He reached down and scooped a bit of ash from the fire’s edge.

“We forgot,” he whispered, letting it fall through his fingers “We let forgetting to become survival. And survival made us small.”

Barakiel looked into the fire.

“No one is too small,” he said softly, “to be remembered by the divine. ”

Dumak glanced at him, and in his eyes was the faint glint of something older than shame.

Hope.

Not yet kindled. But waiting.

where Barakiel’s presence begins to transform from a visit into a blessing—and the Shenai, long dimmed by exile, begin to feel the light of prophecy tremble again along their forgotten edge.

The wind stirred again.

Not loud. Not cold. It moved like a breath passed from one soul to another—a whisper shared between earth and sky. The fire, reduced to its final coals, flared once more as if in answer. Sparks leapt upward, brief golden spirits ascending into the dark before vanishing among the stars.

Barakiel sat with his hands open on his knees, palms to the sky.

It was not a posture of pleading.

It was one of availability—as if his body had become a vessel and was now saying, without words: If there is more to do, let it be done through me.

Dumak watched him from the opposite side of the fire. The others did too, though none spoke . There was something in the old man’s stillness that needed no interpretation. He was not teaching them. He was reminding them how to feel the language of silence again.

At last, Dumak rose.

His joints cracked audibly, but he stood with the slow dignity of someone who had not risen for a guest in many years. He walked toward Barakiel and placed a hand on his shoulder—dry, light, but firm.

“If you go to Galawan,” he said, “do not go alone. ”

Barakiel met his eyes.

“I have never walked alone,” he said.

Dumak gave the smallest nod “You are right.”

He turned then, speaking to the people gathered in the dim orange ring of firelight

“This man,” he said, voice clear now, no longer gravel and hesitation, “came from the path of seed. He followed grain that grew through snow. He carried obedience in his hands and let his daughter walk into a mystery none of us dared name. ”

He looked down at Barakiel again.

“And so, he will sleep in my tent tonight. And tomorrow, when the sun returns—he will walk to the edge of what we forgot. ”

Barakiel bowed his head.

And behind the tribe, across the hills, beneath the stars, the wind whispered down the slopes of Galawan.

Not yet seen.

But near.

Next Chapter: Chapter 5: The Cave and the Transformation—