The Echo

The chapel was a listening room. Grief was carried in, spoken once, and pressed into bone so the living could set it down and walk back out lighter. The keepers were sanctioned to hold the jaw open for as long as it took. Every relic on that wall still carries the last sound it was given. The corvid orders under the Ninth Cairn used to say you could hear the wall from the rookery on a still night. This one has not finished releasing what it holds.

Every layer line is a ring in the bone, laid down slow and left visible. The build marks stay in because they belong to the object now.