Bren opened his eyes to find himself upright and unmoving where he had closed them - the still village gone, and the dull light of Oakhaven’s usual morning bleeding grey and tangible over the square. His knees nearly buckled under him and he had to brace against the stone lip of the well to steady himself. It took several slow, measured breaths for the dizziness to ease enough for him to feel properly rooted to the place.
Are you alright.
It sounded... different than Bren had ever heard the voice before.
"I’m not, but I don’t think that’s currently pertinent," Bren said honestly.
He needed Colm. Needed the reassurance of another person who had seen something, learned something he wasn’t being shown. Someone who was aware without being bound in the centuries-old guilt and control that the voice beneath the well had been wrapped in for so long.
He found the mill just as he’d left it, and found Colm waiting in the exact place he’d half-expected to see him - only this time, the carefully-measured detachment in the other’s expression was fraying at the edges.
"You look as if you’ve seen something you weren’t meant to," Colm remarked as Bren appeared in the doorway.
"I saw what came next," Bren said, shrugging off the lingering unease in his bones. "I saw Ressa’s village. What happened to it."
Colm went very still indeed. "She never told me that’s what happened to her," he said quietly. "Only that she’d lost people. I never asked how many, or how..." He frowned, jaw tightening. "That’s not the sort of thing you pry into a person about."
"Everyone stopped mid-sentence," Bren said, voice low. "Everyone but the voice. Except her. The voice thinks that if I finish listening, I’ll be the only person who wakes up in Oakhaven. The only one who remembers."
Colm’s expression remained carefully schooled, but Bren could see the swift calculation in his eyes - the realisation of how much worse this made everything. "Then you shouldn’t finish it," said Colm simply.
"It’s not exactly within my power to decide," said Bren. "Or it may not be. That’s the thing. No one’s told me what happens if I stop, either. Perhaps the wards beneath the village will all activate and wake properly regardless. Perhaps the voice out there will find another crack to slip through if I refuse to be one." Bren hesitated, then exhaled sharply. "There’s something else."
Colm scrubbed at his jaw with a thoughtful frown. "There always is." He paused, then winced. "There’s something I should have told you last night." He shook his head ruefully. "I didn’t think it was important. I still don’t think it’s important. I think it’s probably pertinent now."
Bren’s stomach twisted. "What?"
"You’re not the only one."
It took a long moment for Bren’s pulse to register the words at all; when it did, he felt as if his ribs had turned to ice. "What."
Colm sighed heavily. "You’re not the only one who’s ever managed to survive this. Not just among those of us who’ve managed to exist long enough to be Unwritten. I’m afraid it may be pertinent to this conversation, as well." He looked carefully at Bren’s expression, his brows knitting together. "There’s another one starting to slip, as you did. Tonight. In this village."
Bren felt as if the floor had fallen out from under him. "Who?"
"The miller’s daughter," said Colm. "I noticed it two days ago - minor inconsistencies, things like that. She missed her cue to the passing traveller this morning, for a moment, before it caught up with her. I didn’t think much of it, to be honest. NPC’s can miss their cues occasionally, or at least they can until they’ve been around long enough. I’ve been wrong often enough this evening," he added dryly. "I think I’m likely to be wrong again."
"You think a miller’s daughter is a system flaw," Bren said softly. "Is that what you’re saying?"
"I think it’s possible that nothing about tonight has been a coincidence," said Colm. "You cracked. The systems cracked. Wards woke for the first time in what may be centuries. And now someone else in this village is doing the same thing you did." The voice in Bren’s head seemed almost surprised at that one. And perhaps it was.
It should not be possible, said the voice, and Bren thought that if it weren’t for the very real possibility of waking up in another person’s bedroom again, he might have been more frightened by that tone. Awakenings do not occur in clusters unless there is something deliberately causing them.
"Something is deliberately causing them," said Bren.
Or someone, said the voice.
Bren nearly laughed at that, because he understood the implication as clearly as if the voice hadn’t hidden it at all. "You think it’s the thing beneath the well."
I think it is possible that reaching out to you was never an end in and of itself, said the voice carefully. I think it is possible that your cracking was merely the first step in a long process.
Bren was fairly certain this had something to do with the strange tension that had built in Colm’s shoulders for the past several conversations. If it was meant to be something else entirely, Colm was doing a very poor job of disguising it. "You think Bren is contagious."
I am saying that I do not know, said the voice, and perhaps that terrified Bren more than a simple admission would have.
Bren felt a coldness in his gut that wasn’t the lingering effects of the vision. A sickness of responsibility, of a sudden understanding that he didn’t have the luxury of ignoring this anymore. If the miller’s daughter cracked fully, if she awakened properly like he had, she would have the exact same Detection Risk, the same Correction Unit, the same impossible choice to do nothing or listen until an entire village of people might never hear another sound again.
"How long before she cracks all the way?" Bren asked.
"I don’t know."
Bren barely had time to register the words before a new warning notification flashed red in his vision. He barely registered Colm’s stricken expression as he turned away from the mill and the still-frozen village square, putting as much distance between himself and the well as he could manage.
"Four minutes," Bren bit out. "They already know. The system already knows about her."
Of course they do, said the voice in a grim tone. It has been watching this village more closely than either of us tonight. It allowed you to live because it had no choice. It will not grant her the same courtesy without cause. It has no reason to believe she has one.
Bren was already running, Colm at his heels as they reached the edges of the square. Four minutes to do something they were both certain they would rather not do, to stand between a young woman who had been nothing to either of them for the past six years and certain death.
"If we save her, will this just make it worse?" Bren gasped as they ran. "Will this just make things worse for everyone?"
I don’t know, said the voice, and for the first time since Bren had heard it, he was unreasonably grateful for the lie. But we are about to find out together, whether any of us want to or not
The countdown flickered past three minutes as Bren spotted the young woman near the mill, her hands clasped before her as she stared at them as if she had never seen them before.