Chapter Text
# Chapter 1: The Weight of Silence
The Avidya Forest was loud.
Tree frogs called to one another from the deep undergrowth. Wind hissed through the canopy overhead. Somewhere in the distance, a Rishboland Tiger growled.
Every sound had a place. Every sound made sense.
The frantic footsteps pounding up the watchtower stairs did not.
Tighnari looked up from his paperwork just as the heavy door burst open.
"Master Tighnari!"
Amir stood in the doorway, bent double and struggling for breath.
"We found someone."
Tighnari set his pen down instantly. "Who?"
Amir swallowed hard, his face pale. "I think it's him."
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
There was only one person in Sumeru that *him* could mean—the one whose sudden disappearance had become a quiet, festering wound the Akademiya pretended didn't exist.
The Grand Scribe.
Alhaitham.
Tighnari was already moving. "Medical cabin. Now."
The lanterns inside the cabin cast a soft, golden light across the room.
Tighnari stopped dead in the doorway.
For a single, breathless second, he wasn't a Forest Watcher. He wasn't a doctor. He wasn't anything at all.
Because the man sitting on the edge of the examination cot barely resembled the person he knew.
Alhaitham sat perfectly upright. Not relaxed, not comfortable—rigidly, perfectly upright. His hands rested flat against his thighs, his shoulders were squared, and his gaze remained fixed unblinkingly on the floorboards.
He didn't react to the door opening. He didn't look up. He didn't ask where he was.
His clothes hung from his frame, far too loose. Months ago, Alhaitham had looked strong enough to carry entire stacks of Akademiya archives by himself. Now, sharp bones pressed visibly beneath his faded skin.
And around his neck—
Tighnari felt his stomach drop.
Metal.
A dark metallic collar wrapped tightly around Alhaitham's throat, its sleek surface pulsing with a faint, violet light. It wasn't Kshahrewar engineering. It wasn't Fontaine technology. It was nothing Tighnari recognized at all.
The skin beneath it was raw, bruised, and deeply damaged. Old scars disappeared beneath the metal; fresh wounds surrounded it.
"Alhaitham."
At the sound of his name, Alhaitham's eyes lifted.
The reaction was instantaneous. It wasn't recognition. It wasn't relief.
It was pure, instinctive fear.
His entire body went taut. His pupils dilated, his breathing turning short and shallow. He looked like a prisoner waiting for instructions.
Tighnari crouched slowly, keeping his hands visible. "Look at me."
Alhaitham obeyed instantly. Too instantly.
That absolute obedience hit Tighnari harder than the physical injuries. Alhaitham had never obeyed anyone instantly—not sages, not scholars, not gods. Yet here he sat, responding before the command had even fully left Tighnari's mouth.
"Can you tell me what happened?"
For a fraction of a second, Alhaitham's lips parted.
The collar screamed.
A sharp, electronic tone shattered the silence of the room as purple light exploded across the metal. Alhaitham recoiled as though struck, his hands gripping the edge of the cot so hard his knuckles turned white. His entire body locked in silent agony.
Then, the sound stopped. The room fell dead silent again.
Alhaitham stared back down at the floor, breathing heavily, his jaw clenched so tightly it trembled. He never made a sound. Not a gasp. Not a whimper.
Tighnari understood immediately. Not the details, nor the mechanism, but he understood enough.
The collar wasn't preventing speech. It was punishing it. And judging by the hollow look in Alhaitham's eyes, it had done so many, many times before.
"Don't speak."
The command came out firmer than Tighnari intended.
Alhaitham visibly relaxed—only slightly, but enough for Tighnari to notice.
"That's an order."
More relaxation followed. It wasn't comfort, but relief. Relief that the correct answer, the safe boundary, had been provided for him.
The realization made Tighnari feel violently sick.
Removing the collar took nearly twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes of analyzing unfamiliar, dangerous technology. Twenty minutes of carefully bypassing neural safeguards. Twenty minutes of trying not to think about how long it had been attached to his throat.
Finally, a sharp *click* echoed through the quiet cabin.
The lock released. Alhaitham flinched as Tighnari carefully lifted the device away.
It was heavier than expected. Far heavier. As though it had been explicitly designed to make its wearer constantly aware of its crushing weight.
"It's off," Tighnari whispered, setting it aside.
No response.
"It's gone."
Still nothing. Alhaitham slowly raised a trembling hand to his throat, his fingertips brushing the damaged skin before immediately pulling away, as if even the ghost of a touch caused pain. His eyes never left the collar sitting on the examination table.
The look on Alhaitham's face wasn't relief. It was terror. As if he expected the machine to leap back onto his neck at any second.
"Send a message to the City," Tighnari ordered, turning back to the door.
Amir immediately straightened. "To who?"
"Kaveh," Tighnari said without a shred of hesitation. "And Cyno."
Two hours later, the front door exploded inward.
"Alhaitham!"
The voice crashed through the cabin—loud, emotional, and utterly desperate.
Kaveh.
The reaction from the cot was instantaneous. Alhaitham threw himself backward, his shoulders slamming hard against the wooden wall. His arms came up over his head, shielding his face as his breathing turned frantic. His eyes were wide with panic, bracing himself for an impending blow.
Expecting a punishment for a crime nobody in the room understood.
Kaveh froze a single step inside the doorway, the rest of his words dying instantly in his throat.
A heavy, suffocating silence settled over the cabin.
Slowly, Kaveh lowered his arms, his gaze raking across Alhaitham's altered frame. He took in the severe weight loss. The scars. The ruined skin around his neck. The glowing collar sitting silently on the table.
And finally—the terror. The unmistakable, heartbreaking terror in Alhaitham's eyes.
It wasn't anger. It wasn't confusion. It was fear. As though Kaveh himself was something dangerous. Something to be survived.
The color completely drained from Kaveh's face.
For months, he had imagined this exact reunion. He had expected arguments. Yelling. Tears of relief. Maybe even a furious fight. He had expected anything, everything—but never this.
Because the man staring back at him didn't look like someone who had finally come home. He looked like someone who had escaped a nightmare, and wasn't yet convinced it was over.
And for the first time since Alhaitham had vanished, Kaveh found a horrifying thought crossing his mind.
Death would have been easier to understand than this.