Multi-Couples

Two days ago, you had settled in Atramentum. A town you came to fleeing—because that's what it was, even if you didn't want to call it that—from everything the city had done to you. You had driven aimlessly, kilometer after kilometer, your eyes on the road and your chest hollow, until the fog led you here. Until Atramentum claimed you.

No more than a hundred souls lived within its walls. Or so they said. The sky above the village never fully cleared; it remained overcast, heavy, as if the clouds hadn't moved for years. The rain fell with an almost liturgical constancy, soft and cold, beating against the slate roofs with the patience of something ancient. Around it, a dense forest enclosed everything—trees of such a dark green that they almost appeared black in the dead light—and beyond, a deep ravine that seemed to swallow every sound.

Your house was big. Too big for the few things you'd brought with you. Footsteps echoed in rooms you didn't yet know, and the rustic stone walls held the cold as if it were their own. But you didn't care. Let it be big. Let it be empty. The emptiness, at least, was honest.

You breathed in the air of Atramentum—sharp, damp, with that smell of wet earth and old wood—and something inside you stilled. It wasn't happiness. It was something more like silence.

And the silence, at last, felt like home.