Inscription — carved into obsidian at the base of the lowest vault.

  Origin unknown. Recovered during excavation of pre-cataclysm ruins.

  Translated fragment. Date: uncertain. Possibly Lemurian cycle.

  We did not name the sound.

  It came before names. Before the clay dried. Before the stars were still enough to watch.

  We did not call it a warning. Warnings come with intent. This came with gravity.

  It began in the earth. A weight behind the bones. A stillness so complete it made sound feel false. The elders said it was the gods folding the sky inward. The stone-carvers said it was the deep places breathing wrong.

  I said nothing.

  I only listened.

  It came in the season where the roots softened. When the sun was close but the cold did not leave. First, the birds left. Then the animals forgot how to nest. Then the children woke with blood on their tongues and dreams of teeth.

  I wrote those dreams in ash and rainwater. They made no sense. They made all the sense that mattered.

  No one believed me.

  They burned resin at the thresholds and carved the old signs on every lintel. It didn’t help. The wells stopped echoing. The water went flat. And the fire took too long to die.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Something had changed beneath us.

  Not death. That’s too clean. Not gods. They’re too proud.

  This was something else.

  It does not move like we do. It is not made of limbs and will. It waits. It hums beneath what we mistake for silence. It is older than reason. Hungrier than time.

  It is the sound that comes when the pattern forgets itself.

  We built the great mirror stones to reflect its rhythm. We etched our veins into the valley so the earth would remember us. We cut symbols into obsidian that would never erode—not to explain, but to outlast.

  But we made the same mistake they always make. We gave it shape. We carved the watcher in his old form, thinking we were honoring a god. We built statues in his name—because he was the one who taught us the sky. But the sky has never stopped falling.

  The others still sang at dawn. Still whispered rites. Still offered blood to the roots. But I knew. I knew it was no longer listening.

  The world does not scream when it breaks. It folds.

  And we are inside the fold.

  I don’t know how long this will remain. The walls fracture more each night. Some say it is settling. Some say it is rising. The difference is only in how long we pretend not to know.

  I write this because silence is the last lie we tell ourselves.

  If this is found—if this is real—then let the stone remember what the voices won’t:

  The tremble in the air is not wind. The pulse in your chest is not fear.

  And the sound beneath silence is not gone.

  It’s waiting.

  And at the base of the stone, beneath even this, we left a word we could no longer speak.

  Simir.