Luminara - Chapter Fourteen: The Names We Keep - Wattpad

Luminara

by NaturesQueen_

Luminara

They say the gods saved the world.
They lied.
Now the dead are speaking through forbidden bells, empires are bleeding secrets, and a forgotten force beneath reality is beginning to remember itself.
Zafira Kain was never meant to hear the truth.
But...

The Hollow did not sleep after the Echo showed them the road.

No one said this aloud. No one needed to. Sleep was for people who believed morning would arrive without asking anything from them. The Hollow of Unwritten Names had never trusted mornings that easily.

After the vision faded from the obsidian basin, the chamber remained quiet for a long while. Rué stood with her wrapped arms folded tightly across her chest, though her palms had begun to burn beneath the skin. Zafira stood across from her with the cracked death bell tied at her wrist and blood drying beneath the bandage around her hand. Between them, the Echo had gone still inside Rué's satchel, as if it had spent itself on truth and now expected everyone else to clean up the ruin it left behind.

No one trusted that stillness.

Kiva Dawu ordered the inner doors sealed.

Naji went running to the eastern watch.

Malo led the survivors from Zafira's village deeper into the root shelters beneath the great tree, where Mother Yselle's helpers were laying out dry blankets, hot broth, and sleep mats woven from sweet reed. Sefu stayed near Rué without touching her. Amara stayed near Zafira with one hand resting on her blade. Tamsin watched everyone with exhausted eyes, the blue markings along her hands fading and brightening like a tide that had forgotten where shore ended.

Nythera remained beside the basin.

She did not speak.

That unsettled Rué more than any warning would have.

When ancient women stopped explaining disasters, it usually meant the disaster had become large enough to name itself.

Mother Yselle was the first to break the silence.

"You two," she said.

Rué looked up.

Zafira did too.

Yselle pointed toward both of them with a wooden spoon she had somehow acquired between one crisis and the next.

"Healing room. Now."

Rué blinked. "I have been summoned by cookware."

"You have been summoned by the woman holding cookware. There is a difference."

"I am fine."

Yselle looked at her palms.

The cloth beneath Rué's fingers had darkened.

"You are leaking through your lie."

Sefu murmured, "That does happen."

Rué gave him a look.

Zafira did not move. "My people need tending first."

"They are being tended," Yselle said. "You are bleeding on my floor."

"It is not your floor."

"The moment blood touches a floor near me, it becomes mine."

Zafira opened her mouth.

Yselle's face softened, but her voice did not.

"Bellkeeper, grief does not make a wound holy. It still rots if ignored."

That silenced her.

For a breath, Zafira looked as if she might argue simply because she had not decided what else to do with the ache in her chest. Then she lowered her eyes and followed.

Rué hesitated.

Sefu leaned close enough that only she could hear him.

"I would go. She seems like the type to heal you against your will and make you thank her."

The healing room was tucked beneath a broad root on the western side of the great tree. It smelled of crushed herbs, hot water, clean linen, and smoke from a small blue flame burning in a clay bowl near the wall. Bundles of dried lavender, bitterleaf, rosemary, redgrass, and pale mushrooms hung from the ceiling. The walls were living wood, carved with names so old the letters had softened beneath decades of hands.

Yselle pushed Rué onto one low stool and Zafira onto another.

The stools were close.

Too close.

Zafira noticed.

So did Rué.

Neither moved, mostly because Yselle stood between them with a basin of steaming water and the expression of a woman waiting for someone younger and stupider to test her.

"Hands," Yselle said.

Zafira held out hers first.

Her palm was raw where the cracked death bell had cut through the bandage. The wound was not deep, but it had opened more than once, and ash had settled in the edges. Yselle made a low sound of disapproval.

"Your dead will not love you less if you stop injuring yourself for them."

Zafira's face tightened.

Yselle cleaned the wound anyway.

Rué watched despite herself.

Zafira did not flinch. Not once. Her eyes stayed fixed on the wall ahead, on a carved name nearly hidden behind a hanging bundle of herbs. Her grief sat straight backed inside her, refusing to bend where anyone might see.

Yselle wrapped the wound with clean cloth, then turned to Rué.

"Your turn."

Rué held out one hand.

Yselle looked at it, then at her.

"Both hands, unless you plan to steal with only one from now on."

"That would make my work less elegant."

"Your work has already brought armed men, a cursed relic, a grieving Bellkeeper, and several arguments into my Hollow. Elegance has left the room."

Rué gave her both hands.

The skin across her palms had gone red where the Echo burned her. Thin silver lines still shimmered beneath the surface, fading and returning like veins seen under water.

Yselle's expression changed.

Not fear.

Concern.

That was worse.

"What?" Rué asked.

Yselle took one of her hands gently.

"Has it marked you before?"

"No."

Zafira looked over.

Rué pretended not to notice.

Yselle dipped a cloth in the steaming water. "This may hurt."

"Most things do."

"Not all things are worth pretending away."