The Fable of the Ribless Sister
Recovered from the Ossuary of Murkenreach
Once there lived three sisters beneath a hill of sleeping skulls.
The eldest, Vintula, wore her spine outside her body, and it rang like a ladder when she danced.
The youngest, Yesh, was made of candlewax and pressed bone dust, and wept marrow when she dreamed.
But the middle sister, Hara, was born without ribs. Not one. Not even a shard.
The elders declared her unglyphable, and she was forbidden to sing the Bone Psalms or enter the Vault of Listening.
How will she echo? How will she bend? Where will her guilt collect? the archivists whispered.
So Hara lived in silence. But where ribs were absent, other things grew.
In the hollow place where her cage should be, a stone hatched. The stone pulsed. It spoke when she touched it.
It taught her glyphs that didn't require bone, only intention and heat.
And so Hara wandered into the archival ruins, scribbling forbidden phrases onto ossified doors. The doors opened.
Inside were thousands of ribs — ancient, carved, fused together in impossible lattices, humming with guilt.
She picked one up. It shattered. And every shard whispered her name.
When she returned, she had become wide. Wider than any girl. Her chest was a prism of memory and silence.
She sang.
And when she did, the sky calcified, and every living creature heard their own ribs answering back — some weeping, some breaking.
The elders tried to stop her. They failed.
Her song reached beyond the hill, beyond the vault, beyond the marrow-slick stars.
The glyphs began to change.
And that night, even the skulls beneath the hill blinked.
Moral:
That which has no ribs cannot be caged.
That which cannot echo creates new resonance.
Beware the hollow-bodied, for they are nearest to the source.
@onyxbone