Bren was halfway out the door before he let himself think about whether this was a mistake.
The voice hadn’t said anything else since I have too. He’d waited almost an hour, sitting perfectly still, half-hoping it would explain itself and half-terrified that it would. It never did. Eventually the silence got worse than the risk, and he found himself lacing his boots by the dying light through his one window, telling himself he was only going to look. Not to trust anyone. Just to look.
The square was empty in the way it was never supposed to be empty — no baker’s script running late into evening, no blacksmith grumbling to nobody. Oakhaven at night apparently had no lines written for it at all. That should have felt safer. Instead it felt like walking through a stage after the audience had gone home and forgotten to turn off the lights.
He kept to the shadows out of instinct, though he couldn’t have said what instinct that was. Six years of standing behind a stall hadn’t taught him how to sneak anywhere.
The old mill sat past the well, exactly where the boy had said it would, its wheel long since stopped turning, black against a sky that didn’t have real stars in it — just the same dull gray glow it always had after dusk, like even the night here was borrowed from somewhere else.
A shape moved near the mill’s broken door. Bren froze.
"You came," Colm said. Same flat unhurried voice from the square that morning. "Wasn’t sure you would."
"I wasn’t sure either," Bren admitted.
Colm stepped into what little light there was. Up close, without the City Watch uniform’s authority behind him, he looked younger than Bren had assumed — tired, mostly, in the particular way of someone who’d been tired for longer than made sense.
"The boy told you what I needed him to tell you?" Colm asked.
"Most of it." Bren hesitated. "He said to ask the voice what it wants before I trust it."
"And did you?"
"It told me it’s been waiting four years too. Same as Ressa."
Something shifted in Colm’s face — not surprise, exactly. Recognition. The look of a man hearing a fact confirm a fear he’d already been carrying.
"Say that again," Colm said quietly.
"It said it’s been waiting four years. What—"
"Four years exactly, or four years too, like it was agreeing with something Ressa already told you?"
Bren thought back. "The second one. It said ’he’s not the only one who’s been waiting four years for you to wake up. I have too.’"
Colm went very still. For a long moment he didn’t say anything at all, just looked past Bren toward the dark shape of the village behind him, like he was doing math he didn’t want the answer to.
"That’s bad," he said finally.
"Why?"
"Because Ressa never told anyone how long she’d been watching you. Not me. Not the last one who tried this, before her." Colm’s jaw tightened. "Which means whatever’s talking to you either heard her say it in that room today — which shouldn’t be possible, because the System’s own scan came up empty on that room — or it already knew. Before she said a word."
The night felt colder than it had a second ago.
"You think it’s the System," Bren said slowly. "Wearing a different voice."
"I don’t know what I think." Colm rubbed a hand across his face. "I’ve been doing this four years myself, Bren. Watching Unwritten people wake up, watching most of them get caught inside a day. You’re the only one who’s ever made it this far. The only one who’s ever had something step in and hide him from a full scan." He met Bren’s eyes. "That should feel like good luck. It doesn’t, does it."
"No," Bren said. "It doesn’t."
"Good. Trust that feeling." Colm reached into his coat and pulled out a small folded scrap of cloth, offering it across the space between them. "This is what Ressa was trying to give you before the scan caught her. She’s kept it four years, waiting for you to be real enough to hold it."
Bren took it with hands that weren’t steady. Unfolded, it revealed a single word, stitched crudely into the fabric with thread gone dark and brittle with age.
LISTEN.
Just that. One word, no context, no explanation.
"That’s it?" Bren said. "That’s what she died trying to tell me?"
"She didn’t die trying to tell you the word," Colm said. "She died trying to tell you what the word means. The cloth was just proof she’d actually found you, in case she never got the chance to explain it herself." He exhaled, slow. "I don’t know what it means either. She never told me. She said it wasn’t safe for more than one person to carry it at a time."
Bren turned the cloth over in his hands, like an answer might be hiding on the other side of the thread. There wasn’t one.
"Listen to what," he said.
"I was hoping you’d know." Colm’s eyes flicked toward the tree line beyond the mill, sharp and sudden, the way a man’s eyes move when he hears something he wishes he hadn’t. "We need to go. Now."
"What’s wrong—"
"Your Detection Risk," Colm said, already moving toward the mill’s shadow. "Check it. Now."
Bren pulled up his status with hands that had started shaking again.
[STATUS]
Detection Risk: HIGH → CRITICAL
[Cause: Two Unwritten entities detected in proximity]
[Correction Unit dispatched]
[ETA: 00:01:12]
Seventy-two seconds. Not thirty this time. Not enough time to argue about it.
"Split up," Colm said, already backing toward the tree line. "It’s looking for two of us together. Alone, we’re both harder to flag. Go back the way you came, stay off the main road, and don’t — Bren, listen to me — don’t talk to the voice again until you understand what it wants. Not until you know for certain whose side it’s actually on."
"How am I supposed to figure that out?"
"I don’t know," Colm said, already half-swallowed by the dark. "But whatever you do, don’t let it answer for you before you ask the question yourself."
He was gone before Bren could respond, swallowed into the treeline like he’d never been there at all.
Bren ran.
He didn’t remember deciding to run — his legs simply moved, carrying him back past the well, back toward the square, the cloth clutched so tight in his fist the stitching bit into his palm. The countdown ticked behind his eyes the whole way, shrinking toward zero, and he didn’t dare stop to check it again.
He made it through his own door with eleven seconds left on the clock, according to the last glance he’d allowed himself, and collapsed against it, chest heaving, waiting for the scan to sweep through and find absolutely nothing again, the way it had before.
The countdown reached zero.
Silence.
No scan notification. No Anomaly status: Not Found. Nothing at all — like whatever usually announced the sweep hadn’t bothered this time, because it already knew the answer.
Bren straightened slowly; unfolded the scrap of cloth in his shaking hand and stared again at the single stitched word, waiting for it to mean something.
LISTEN.
And then, so close it might have been inside his own skull instead of in the room at all, the voice spoke again — softer than before, almost tender, almost sad.
You still haven’t asked me the one question that matters, Bren.
So I’ll ask it for you.
Do you want to know what happens to you the moment you finally do listen — or would you rather I let you find out the same way Ressa did?