Chapter 638: The Silence She Chose and the Story That Found Her

Chapter 637: The Quiet That Broke and the Story That Followed

There had come a point when something in Sophia simply... stopped.

It had not been loud. It had not been sudden.

There had been no breaking sound, no sharp moment she could point to and say, this was when it happened.

It had been quieter than that.

A slow withdrawal.

A retreat into herself so complete that even she had not fully understood when it began.

She had stopped trying.

Stopped speaking unless she was spoken to.

Stopped moving unless she was told to.

And when she was left alone, she would fold in on herself, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs as she sat in the corner of her room, her forehead resting against her knees.

"It’s not real," she would whisper.

Her voice small, barely audible even to her own ears.

"It’s not real... it’s not real... it’s not real..."

She would repeat it over and over again, as though saying it enough times would make it true.

As though the repetition itself could reshape reality into something more bearable.

Her mother would not do something like that.

She wouldn’t.

Not because of something so small.

Not because she had simply... run into someone.

Her mother loved her.

That was what had mattered.

That was what had always mattered.

So this—this had to be something else.

A misunderstanding.

A mistake.

Something that would eventually correct itself if Sophia just held on long enough.

"It’s not real," she would whisper again, her fingers tightening slightly where they clutched at her sleeves.

But the words had not settled the way they used to. They had not brought comfort. They only filled the space.

And when the words had stopped working, something else had taken their place.

"I’m sorry," she would say.

"I’m sorry... I’m sorry... I’m sorry..."

The apologies would come without direction, without purpose. She was not speaking to anyone, not really.

But she said them anyway.

Over and over again.

Because if there had been one thing Sophia had learned, it had been that everything could be solved if she just apologized enough.

If she just accepted it.

If she just... made herself smaller.

Her voice had grown hoarse from it, her throat aching from the constant repetition, but she had not stopped.

She hadn’t known how to.

Time had passed like that.

Hours blending into something shapeless.

And when her mother would come to see her, she would not comment on it. She would not acknowledge the state Sophia had been in. She would not ask why her daughter had been sitting curled into herself, whispering to empty air.

Because none of that had mattered to her. Only one thing did.

The visions.

She made Sophia drink the tonic, increasing the dosage as time passed, and Sophia would come to conclude that this was normal. And she would do everything her mother told her to do... but at some point, the tonic stopped helping Sophia see the visions. It stopped working.

And when her mother would ask;

"What have you seen?"

Sophia would lie to her with the help of her wolf. She would tell her mother something that should suit her mother. Something her mother would accept.

And this continued for a while. Her mother always accepted whatever Sophia told her, but alas, like the saying goes, every day for the thief, one day for the owner. And with time, her mother began suspecting that Sophia was lying to her.

She confronted Sophia regarding it, but Sophia had insisted that that was what she had seen. That it wasn’t a lie. Her wolf encouraged Sophia, and so Sophia stood her ground even when her mother had hit Sophia, saying it was her stupid visions that had put her in the situation she was in. Sophia had no idea what situation her mother was talking about, and she didn’t say anything either, letting her mother do what she felt like.

But after that day, the demand for visions only came... occasionally.

And even when her mother would ask for visions and Sophia couldn’t give her any, she wouldn’t push Sophia to give her more, and Sophia’s life became a bit peaceful... at least from her perspective.

And given that, she filled her life the only way she knew how... with books. Her room became even more surrounded with them.

They would arrive regularly, as they always had. Left quietly in her room without explanation.

She never saw who brought them; she only knew when they came. She was certain, though, that it was her mother sending the person.

And Sophia learned about the world from the books she would read, her wolf explaining some things Sophia had questions about.

She read of places she had never seen. People she would never meet.

Worlds that felt so different from the one she lived in that sometimes, she would find herself lingering on certain pages longer than necessary, as though trying to step into them.

As though trying to exist there instead.

It was easier, in those moments, to forget.

But one day, while she was going through the books brought to her, she noticed a different book.

It was blue and old.

Worn in a way that suggested it had been handled many times before it ever reached her.

The cover was faded, the edges softened with age. But she could not deny that it was beautiful—the shape of a moon, a crescent moon, etched on the cover of the book.

The book was written like a diary, a detailed account of every event the writer had gone through, and from the very beginning, Sophia was intrigued.

The book told a tale from long ago, a story from a time far removed from her own—about the moon goddess, Selene, and the era when she walked among their kind.

Blessing the land, roaming with children, animals, and plants of all kinds. The world had been peaceful then, but one thing stood out to Sophia in the book—the illustrations.

And one in particular.

A wolf.

A dark wolf...Sophia wasn’t certain if it was really fully black...perhaps not, but it had that same crescent moon shape on his forehead.

And his name...Noctis.