There are few things that travel as swiftly through Scotara as whispers. They do not move in straight lines, nor do they arrive with certainty. They drift instead, carried from village to village, from traveler to hearth, from one quiet conversation to another, shaped as much by those who speak them as by those who listen.
In Willowmere, they begin softly. A trader passing through lingers a moment longer than usual, sharing word of distant roads where more guards have been seen than before. A fisherman, mending his nets along the shore, speaks of vessels he does not recognize, glimpsed far beyond where they ought to be. The details are few, the certainty less so, yet the stories take hold all the same.
Further inland, the whispers shift. There, they speak not of the sea, but of the king. Of his growing interest in the healers of Scotara. Of the way his attention has turned, not broadly, but with purpose. He continues to seek one above all others, a healer unlike any known, one whose gift reaches beyond what is understood.
Not all believe it. Some dismiss such talk as nothing more than the natural shaping of rumor, each telling made more than the last. Kings have always relied upon healers. That is no new thing. And yet… there is something in the way this is spoken that gives pause.
It is not casual. It is not passing… it lingers.
In some places, the whispers carry another thread still. They speak of Driochmor—not openly, not with detail, but in the way a name is spoken and then left behind, as though saying more would invite something better left untouched. No one claims to know what stirs there, if anything does at all. Yet the thought remains, woven quietly into the others. Not fear, not yet, but rather awareness.
Across Scotara, life continues as it always has. Markets open. Fields are tended. Healers answer when called. Children run their familiar paths between home and stream, their laughter rising clear and untroubled. And still, the whispers move. They settle into conversations not meant to carry weight. They linger at the edge of thought, half-formed and easily dismissed… until they return again, shaped slightly differently, but no less persistent.
No one speaks of certainty and no one claims to know what is coming. Yet more and more, there is a sense—quiet, unspoken—that Scotara is listening. Waiting, as though the land itself has heard the whispers… and has yet to decide what they mean.
