The Silence of Scales

A staircase inhales; each step remembers serpents carved in silence.

The staircase inhaled.

Every step remembered serpents once carved, their stone backs arched against time.
Moss threaded the hollows.
Pearl-light gathered in cracks.
Silence pressed close as if it, too, were carved.

A traveller placed a foot.
The step answered with a hush.

Flame from the torch leaned inward, listening.
River air climbed from below, carrying the scent of wet clay and forgotten offerings.

The traveller climbed, counting not numbers but pauses:
silence, then breath, then silence again.

With each pause, scale brightened—
as if a lidless eye had turned.

The serpent’s silence became flame.

It did not burn.
It illumined.

Pearl-light revealed hunger as devotion, not threat.
The traveller’s breath caught—half fear, half awe—
as stone shifted beneath their hand, alive yet patient.

They climbed to the landing and did not look back.

Silence rose with them, unbroken.
In that silence the scales learned to breathe again.

The staircase exhaled.