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# Waverider Expedition - Sylvaranith

Escaping the voices

The jungle grew thicker the deeper they went.

Mist clung to the branches, heavy and cool, carrying a faint sound like whispering water. Selene walked ahead, her eyes half-closed, listening to the strange stillness between the calls of birds. Severin followed, his hand resting lightly on the mule’s pack rope, humming to himself as if to keep rhythm against the silence.

They had left the coast that morning, bound for a Sylvarani town that traded dyes and herbs. The path wound between enormous trees, their roots coiling like veins. The air smelled of sap and decay.

“It’s beautiful,” Severin said.

Selene nodded slowly. “Yes. But listen.”

He stopped. At first, he heard nothing but wind. Then faintly, beneath it... voices. Not loud, not clear, just a murmur. A crowd far away, whispering his name though he’d never been here before.

“Ghosts?” he asked softly.

“Not ghosts,” Selene said. “The trees.”

They went on. The voices grew stronger. Words slipped between breaths. Stay... don’t go... listen... The tone neither pleading nor cruel, just endless.

By noon, the sound pressed against their skulls like heat. Selene’s hands shook on the reins.

“Selene?”

She didn’t answer. Her lips were moving silently, her gaze unfocused.

“Selene.”

She blinked once, twice, and fell to her knee. Her hands dug into the soil to steady herself.

Severin caught her before she fell forward. Her eyes were wide and wet, her breath quick.

“They’re talking,” she whispered. “Too many. I can’t tell them apart.”

“Can you still hear me?”

She nodded, barely. “It’s like drowning in words.”

He lifted her gently, her weight slight against him, and drew her arm over his shoulder. “I'm here. Breathe with me. One word at a time.”

They moved slowly toward the town. The forest whispered around them, thousands of unseen mouths murmuring beneath the leaves. The closer they came to the settlement, the worse it grew. The trees were older here, their trunks carved with runes and names, their roots wound around bones.

By the time they reached the gate, Selene was trembling.

Elven guards stopped them, their faces drawn. “She’s hearing them, isn’t she?” one said quietly.

Severin nodded. “The voices. What is this place?”

“An old burial grove,” said the guard. “Too old. The roots are thick with the dead.”

They brought Selene into a hall of living wood, its walls pulsing faintly as if the tree still breathed. A Veilwarden met them there, a woman pale as moonlight, her eyes ringed with exhaustion.

“She hears what we all hear,” the priestess said. “But she was not born to it. The voices do not know her. They are trying to make her remember lives that were never hers.”

“Can you help her?”

“Only by taking her away from here.”

So he did.

The road back to the coast was worse. The whispers followed them, soft at first, then rising in waves, until even Severin thought he heard his own mother’s voice calling from the trees. Selene leaned against him as they walked, her skin cold with sweat, whispering names that meant nothing.

Once, she began to laugh. It was a terrible sound, thin and frightened.

“Don’t listen,” Severin said. “They’re not yours.”

She buried her face against his shoulder. “I know. But they’re so lonely.”

He held her tighter. “Then let them be lonely. You belong to the living.”

The whispers crawled into his skull too, naming him in a dozen dead voices. He wanted to cover his ears, but she was shaking, so he kept moving, one step at the time, one breath at the time. When her legs gave out, he lifted her without a word. Her head rested against his chest, and he felt her breath falter with every step.

They reached the Waverider at dusk. The jungle stretched behind them like a dark tide.

On the deck, Phaedros waited, arms crossed. “You both look like death itself.”

“Close enough,” Severin said, helping Selene to a seat.

Phaedros frowned. “I told you Sylvaranith was a dangerous place.”

“Not dangerous,” Severin said quietly. “Just broken.”

Selene rubbed her temples. “They’re quiet now. Distant. But I can still feel them.”

“Will it fade?” Phaedros asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe not.”

They stood in silence for a while, listening to the jungle beyond the waves.

Then Severin poured two cups of wine and handed one to her. “Drink,” he said softly. “It’ll help.”

She smiled faintly. “You don’t believe that.”

“No,” he said. “But I like the sound of your voice when you believe it.”

For a moment, the world was still, only the sound of the sea, the scent of salt and leaves, the flicker of lanterns.

Then Selene raised her cup, her hand trembling. “To the living.”

He covered her hand with his, steadying it. “Easy now. You’ve had enough of shaking voices for one day.”

She smiled, faint but real. He touched his cup to hers. “To the living,” he said.

And Phaedros, watching from the rail, said nothing. He only looked toward the jungle and thought of all the dead who never stopped talking.

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