She goes on.

Dirt crunched under Cerina’s ankle-high boots as she walked along the curving road toward the gates of the monastery. Realizing that the ditches running alongside the road were littered with strange black rocks, she strayed toward the middle.

A woman waited at the monastery gates, her figure a dark shadow against the stone walls. She was tall and narrow, her hair covered by a hood that was too tight, and her nose oddly akin to a raven’s beak. She didn’t move as Cerina approached, didn’t speak when the driver walked up to deposit the trunk Cerina had forgotten, and didn’t speak until the old man’s munching steps had faded down the road.

“You are late,” the woman said at last, voice crackling like a small fire.

“I’m sorry,” Cerina replied, though she wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for. She had no control over the timing of her journey.

The woman turned without acknowledgment of the apology and pushed open the heavy wooden gate. It groaned on its hinges, revealing a courtyard lit by flickering torches. The light cast long, restless shadows across the stones, which were etched with deep grooves that seemed almost deliberate. Cerina stepped inside, dragging her trunk behind her, and the gate slammed shut with a finality that made her flinch.

“This way,” the woman said, her footsteps echoing as she led Cerina across the courtyard. The buildings loomed around them, windows narrow slits, walls bare of decoration. Cerina tried to imagine some decoration that might lighten up the place, but her imagination deserted her.

As they passed a low archway, Cerina caught sight of a group of figures kneeling in the dirt. They wore plain, dark robes, their faces obscured by their hoods. Their hands were clasped in front of them, but they weren’t praying. They were swaying, back and forth in perfect unison, like reeds in a dying breeze.

“Who are they?” Cerina asked.

The woman didn’t answer. She didn’t even glance in their direction.

They’d barely entered the building when they came upon a small, dimly lit chamber with a single candle. It burned atop a wooden table stacked with books, scrolls, and old parchment. There were also several odd black stones like the ones alongside the road.

The woman gestured for Cerina to enter, then disappeared down the corridor.

Cerina deposited her trunk at the foot of a tattered bed, hesitating before lowering herself onto the table’s flat but misshapen bench. The candlelight flickered, casting strange patterns on the stone walls, and she realized the grooves in the courtyard stones were here too, running like veins through the floor and up the walls. They made her think of roots, or scars.

The floor creaked, and another figure entered. This one was shorter, stouter, her robes cinched uncomfortably at his waist. She carried a small, cloth-wrapped bundle, which she set on the table in front of Cerina.

“You are to study,” she said, unwrapping the cloth to reveal a quill and a pot of ink. Her hands were pale and smooth, almost waxy.

“I don’t know how to read the old words,” Cerina said quietly.

“You will learn,” she replied, her tone suggesting that any further questions would be unwise.

Cerina waited for the woman to go, but she seemed to hover uncomfortably beside the table. “Are you waiting for something?”

The short woman shook her cheeks, almost timidly. “No.” Then, she left.

She reached for the quill with a hesitant hand, but stopped when she saw the table’s parchments up close. The surface was faintly textured, more like cloth than paper.

For hours, or perhaps only minutes, she sat alone in the flickering candlelight, staring at the blank strip of parchment. Her mind wandered back to the figures in the courtyard, to their swaying forms and the unheard rhythm, like silent breathing.

The candle sputtered, and the flame began to falter. Cerina reached out to steady it, but as her hand passed over several of the dark stones, the surface beneath her fingertips pulsed. Just once. A faint, wave-like vibration.

She snatched her hand back, her breath catching in her throat. The chamber had gone silent, the air thick and still. But somewhere, far off, the bell tolled again, its sound resonating within the walls, like the whisper of the monastery itself.

In that moment, Cerina wondered if six months would be far too long.