Chapter 5 - The Quiet That Remains

The Silk of Fate

Chapter 5 – The Quiet That Remains

It began with coughing.

Servant quarters on the eastern wing. Barely mentioned at first—just a few elderly attendants falling ill, followed by a cook, a stable boy. Then the fever spread. The palace physicians called it a seasonal sickness. “The air is too wet,” they said. “Too much rain. Too little sun.”

But Idran knew better.

He had seen this before. On the coast, in one of the port towns where Karim once brought him during monsoon season. It wasn’t the rain. It was the water—polluted wells and stagnant drains, where disease bred like whispers.

Within three days, the palace lost seven people.

Within five, Maya, Idran’s old caretaker, was among them.

He sat at her bedside that morning, hands trembling despite the calm on his face.

She had once nursed him through fevers. She braided his hair when he cried for his mother. She smuggled sweets to him during court fasts. She knew every mole on his arm, every scar on his knee, and every fear he never dared speak aloud.

Now she lay barely conscious, lips cracked, her chest rising like it was being pulled through mud.

Idran reached for her hand.

It felt like paper.

“I’m here,” he whispered, though she didn’t stir.

“I’m here, Maya.”

The priests came late.

They performed rites. Sprinkled water. Chanted. But the air remained heavy. Idran watched as they did their work, eyes dull, lips tight.

He wanted to scream.
She does not need your pageantry.
She needed healing. She needed water that wasn’t poisoned. She needed compassion before she lay like this.

But he said nothing.

He just knelt by her side and prayed.

Not to the gods of his palace. Not to the spirits of mountains or rivers.

But to the God Karim had described.

One. Just one.

No name, no statue, no image.

Only a presence. A mercy.

He bowed his head to the floor.

And he said:

“Take her gently. If not for me, then for the love she gave when no one else did.”

That night, she died.

And in the hours that followed, no one came to comfort him.

His brother didn’t speak. His father didn’t notice.

But Karim did.

He appeared at the garden gate the next morning, holding nothing but a folded cloth and an old copy of the Qur’an.

“I heard,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”

Idran didn’t speak. He couldn’t. His throat was sand.

Karim stepped beside him and laid the cloth down.

They sat.

Silence. Birds. The distant clink of palace life resuming, uncaring.

After a while, Karim opened the book.
And read—not to preach, not to teach.

Just to be there.

“Indeed, with hardship comes ease.”
“Indeed, with hardship comes ease.”

Idran didn’t weep.

But for the first time, he allowed himself to feel the weight of what he carried.

And in the quiet that followed, in that impossible stillness between grief and grace—
He found something like peace.

Not the peace of having answers.

But the peace of being seen.
Of knowing God had watched him kneel.

And that was enough.