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Mistborn · The Cold · Week 2 — The White Silence
Sean & Eljara · Southern Scadrial · The Ice Death
The snow had swallowed the roads.
The cold had taken the warmth from the world.
And now the dead had apparently begun speaking.
Which, according to Sean, was rather inconsiderate of them.
The first voice came at three in the morning.
Sean was sitting beside the communal furnace in Keret’s Hollow, examining the fuel ledger.
Three weeks had passed since the crisis of the last coal.
The settlement had survived.
There was food again.
A little fuel.
And, for the first time in months, a reasonable chance that nobody would die before breakfast.
Sean had been enjoying this modest improvement when Nerin appeared in the doorway.
The eight-year-old boy carried his wooden horse beneath one arm.
He looked terrified.
SEAN:
“Nerin? What are you doing out of bed?”
NERIN:
“Grandfather Oren is outside.”
Sean stopped writing.
Oren had died three weeks earlier.
Eljara had cared for him during his final illness.
Sean had helped carry his body to the burial chamber.
SEAN:
“Did you dream about him?”
NERIN:
“No. He called me.”
SEAN:
“From where?”
Nerin pointed towards the northern wall.
Beyond it lay an abandoned storage passage, sealed years earlier after part of the structure became unsafe.
NERIN:
“Under the snow.”
He hesitated.
NERIN:
“He said to open the door.”
Sean closed the ledger.
SEAN:
“Right.”
He picked up his cloak.
SEAN:
“Let’s go and find Eljara.”
Keret’s Hollow had once been a trading station beneath the southern hills of Scadrial.
Now its inhabitants lived in underground chambers protected from the Ice Death.
For seven years, they had endured a world that had forgotten how to be warm.
Old cellars had become homes.
Warehouses had become communal shelters.
And abandoned passages had disappeared beneath ice and snow.
Sometimes the ancient walls groaned.
Sometimes frost cracked the stone.
Sometimes the wind made strange sounds inside the old ventilation shafts.
But lately, people had begun hearing voices.
And several claimed those voices belonged to the dead.
Eljara listened carefully to Nerin’s account.
ELJARA:
“Were you awake when you heard him?”
NERIN:
“I woke up because he was talking.”
ELJARA:
“Could you understand what he said?”
NERIN:
“Open the door.”
ELJARA:
“Are you certain it was your grandfather?”
The boy nodded.
NERIN:
“I know his voice.”
Sean looked at Eljara.
She examined Nerin for signs of illness or cold exposure and asked about his sleep.
Nothing she found immediately explained the experience.
ELJARA:
“Has anyone else heard something?”
Nerin nodded.
NERIN:
“Vara heard somebody crying in the old passage.”
SEAN:
“Vara?”
NERIN:
“And Relin said it was the wind.”
He looked at them both.
NERIN:
“But the wind doesn’t know my name.”
Neither answered immediately.
People who have lost someone close to them sometimes report hearing the deceased person’s voice or sensing their presence.
Such experiences can occur during ordinary bereavement and do not automatically indicate mental illness.
Memory, expectation, sleep and emotional attachment may influence perception.
But the experience itself does not establish its cause.
Across human history, cultures have understood encounters with the dead in very different ways.
Some regard them as spiritual contact.
Others interpret them through grief, dreams or unusual states of consciousness.
The crucial distinction is simple.
Hearing something is an experience.
Knowing what produced it is an interpretation.
And the two must not be confused.
By midday, Sean had collected seven accounts.
Three people had heard voices near the northern passage.
Two reported crying.
One had heard singing.
And Vara believed somebody had spoken her mother’s name.
Sean interviewed an elderly weaver named Hessa.
SEAN:
“Have people told stories about voices here before?”
HESSA:
“Long before the winter.”
ELJARA:
“What sort of stories?”
HESSA:
“Travellers hearing someone call from places where nobody should be standing.”
SEAN:
“And what happened if they answered?”
Hessa smiled.
HESSA:
“That depends on who was telling the story.”
Sean leaned forward.
SEAN:
“My favourite kind.”
HESSA:
“Some said the voices belonged to lost children. Others said they were the dead.”
She looked towards the northern wall.
HESSA:
“But most of the stories were warnings not to leave a safe road.”
ELJARA:
“And what if someone really was lost?”
Hessa stopped weaving.
HESSA:
“Then the warning could prevent us from helping them.”
Winter folklore often connects dangerous landscapes with strange presences.
The Old Norse draugr, for example, is generally a threatening, corporeal revenant rather than merely a disembodied voice in the snow.
Other traditions preserve stories of restless dead, mysterious travellers and supernatural warnings.
These traditions are not interchangeable.
Nor are they evidence that the same beings inhabit every frozen landscape.
But they demonstrate how danger becomes part of cultural memory.
A story can preserve a warning long after its original reason has been forgotten.
It can also shape what people expect to see or hear.
A person who fears ghosts may interpret an unfamiliar sound as a spirit.
A person who rejects every supernatural explanation may overlook an actual cry for help.
Both can become prisoners of their expectations.
That evening, Eljara persuaded Vara to accompany them to the northern service passage.
Sean followed.
Reluctantly.
SEAN:
“Why do our investigations always end with going somewhere colder?”
ELJARA:
“Because the strange sounds are coming from there.”
SEAN:
“A disappointing but technically excellent answer.”
The old corridor was narrow.
Frost covered the walls.
Above them, a ventilation opening disappeared into the stone.
ELJARA:
“Where did you hear the voice?”
Vara pointed.
VARA:
“Up there.”
A faint sound emerged from the opening.
A long, wavering note.
It rose.
Fell.
Then broke apart.
For a moment, it almost resembled speech.
VARA:
“There! Someone said my name!”
ELJARA:
“I heard a whistle.”
SEAN:
“I heard singing.”
They looked at one another.
The sound came again.
And once again, they disagreed.
Human beings are remarkably good at recognising patterns.
Sometimes we recognise them where no intended pattern exists.
The phenomenon is known as pareidolia.
We see faces in clouds.
Animals in rocks.
And sometimes hear words in ambiguous sounds.
Wind moving through a narrow opening can produce tones resembling a human voice.
Expectation may influence what we think those sounds mean.
Add exhaustion, grief, fear and prolonged isolation, and interpretation becomes even more difficult.
But none of this means that every unexpected voice is an illusion.
The question is not whether somebody believes what they heard.
The question is what can be independently checked.
They were preparing to leave when the knocking began.
Three knocks.
A pause.
Two more.
Sean turned.
SEAN:
“Did you hear that?”
Eljara nodded.
Vara went pale.
VARA:
“Oren used to knock three times before opening an old maintenance door.”
Sean stared at the wall.
SEAN:
“That’s rather unfortunate information to receive at this moment.”
Eljara picked up a small wooden tool.
She struck the wall twice.
Waited.
Then struck it once.
Nothing happened.
Sean smiled.
SEAN:
“An uncooperative ghost.”
Then came the answer.
Two knocks.
A pause.
One.
Sean stopped smiling.
SEAN:
“Oh.”
Eljara looked towards the sealed passage.
ELJARA:
“Something may be answering us.”
SEAN:
“Something?”
ELJARA:
“Or someone.”
The old drainage works extended beneath the northern slope.
Parts of the system had been abandoned after a collapse.
And the ventilation shafts connected chambers that had not been used in years.
ELJARA:
“If someone is trapped below, the shaft could carry their voice.”
Sean stared at the sealed door.
SEAN:
“Then we need to reach them.”
ELJARA:
“Not through that door. We don’t know whether it’s safe.”
SEAN:
“I wasn’t going to open it.”
She raised an eyebrow.
SEAN:
“I was merely admiring the latch.”
Relin arrived with two engineers.
They examined the old plans and identified a possible lower access route.
RELIN:
“Nobody opens the northern door. The wall may collapse.”
SEAN:
“Agreed.”
She looked surprised.
RELIN:
“That was easy.”
SEAN:
“Don’t get used to it.”
The rescue team investigated the old drainage works.
Far beneath the inhabited chambers, they heard more knocking.
This time the rhythm changed when they changed their signal.
And eventually they found three people.
Two adults.
And a young girl.
The travellers had taken shelter in an abandoned underground chamber after their route became blocked.
Fallen masonry had trapped them inside.
They had shouted for help for two nights.
Their clothing was damp and cold.
Their food was almost gone.
One of the adults could barely stand.
But all three were alive.
When Eljara examined the rescued woman, Mera, she asked what they had been calling through the ventilation shaft.
MERA:
“We heard people moving above us.”
ELJARA:
“And you shouted?”
MERA:
“Yes. We were frightened they’d open the wrong door.”
Sean frowned.
SEAN:
“Why?”
MERA:
“Because the wall above us was unstable.”
She looked towards the northern passage.
MERA:
“We kept shouting, ‘Don’t open the door!’”
Sean became very still.
Eljara looked at him.
ELJARA:
“Nerin said he heard, ‘Open the door.’”
Mera shook her head.
MERA:
“No.”
She spoke slowly.
MERA:
“We said don’t.”
One word.
Lost somewhere inside the stone.
One word had changed a warning into an apparent instruction.
Nerin had heard something real.
But he had misunderstood its meaning.
The ventilation shaft had carried the sound.
Noise and expectation had helped transform it.
And had somebody obeyed the apparent instruction, the unstable passage might have collapsed.
Hearing a voice is not the same as understanding its message.
Sometimes the most dangerous thing is not that we hear something strange.
It is that we believe we have understood it perfectly.
The rescue did not end the argument.
Some inhabitants declared that the mystery was solved.
There had been no ghosts.
Only travellers trapped beneath the settlement.
Others insisted that the voices had begun before those travellers arrived.
Vara maintained that she had heard her mother’s name.
Hessa remembered strange noises from earlier winters.
And Nerin remained convinced that he had heard Oren.
Sean and Eljara disagreed about what this meant.
ELJARA:
“We’ve explained how the voices travelled.”
SEAN:
“Some of them.”
ELJARA:
“We found the people who needed rescuing.”
SEAN:
“Yes.”
ELJARA:
“Then what remains?”
Sean looked towards the infirmary.
SEAN:
“A little boy who heard the voice of someone he loved.”
She became quiet.
SEAN:
“I don’t want him wandering into dangerous passages because he thinks his grandfather is waiting.”
ELJARA:
“Neither do I.”
SEAN:
“But I don’t want him to believe that finding a pipe somehow makes his grief meaningless.”
Eljara considered that.
Then she nodded.
They visited Nerin together.
He sat on his bed, turning the wooden horse in his hands.
NERIN:
“Did you find Grandfather?”
Sean sat beside him.
SEAN:
“We found three living people trapped beneath the old passages.”
NERIN:
“Were they the ones calling?”
ELJARA:
“Some of the sounds came from them. We can’t be certain what you heard.”
Nerin looked down.
NERIN:
“But it sounded like Grandfather.”
SEAN:
“I know.”
NERIN:
“Sometimes I’m frightened I’ll forget his voice.”
Sean looked at the wooden horse.
SEAN:
“Who made that?”
NERIN:
“Grandfather.”
SEAN:
“And what did he teach you?”
NERIN:
“How to carve. How to fix hinges. How to stop candles smoking.”
He thought.
NERIN:
“And to knock before opening an old maintenance door.”
Sean smiled.
SEAN:
“Good advice.”
NERIN:
“Three times. Then wait.”
He tapped the wooden horse three times.
NERIN:
“Do you think he was trying to warn me?”
Sean considered the question.
SEAN:
“I don’t know whether he was the one you heard.”
He gently touched the boy’s shoulder.
SEAN:
“But I do know the things he taught you can still keep you safe.”
Nerin looked at the horse.
NERIN:
“Then he hasn’t completely gone away?”
SEAN:
“Not everything he gave you has gone.”
Later, the settlement agreed upon a new rule.
Anyone who heard an unexplained voice, cry or knocking sound should report it.
Nobody would be mocked for doing so.
But nobody would investigate dangerous passages alone.
And no sealed door would be opened without checking whether the structure was safe.
HESSA:
“What if the voices really are the dead?”
Sean considered that.
SEAN:
“Then I imagine the dead can wait while we make sure the living don’t fall into a hole.”
Even Relin smiled.
That night, Sean found Eljara beside the infirmary hearth.
SEAN:
“Do you think we’ve solved the mystery?”
ELJARA:
“Part of it.”
SEAN:
“The important part?”
ELJARA:
“We found the people who needed help.”
He nodded.
SEAN:
“Aye.”
They listened to the fire.
Then a faint sound came from the wall.
Three knocks.
A pause.
Two.
Sean looked towards the northern passage.
SEAN:
“Tell me that’s one of Relin’s engineers.”
ELJARA:
“It may be.”
They waited.
Then another sound emerged.
A few quiet notes.
Almost like an old southern lullaby.
Eljara went still.
SEAN:
“What is it?”
ELJARA:
“Oren used to hum that tune.”
Sean listened.
The sound faded.
SEAN:
“Perhaps the wind.”
ELJARA:
“Perhaps.”
SEAN:
“Perhaps somebody else remembers the song.”
ELJARA:
“Also possible.”
He looked at her.
SEAN:
“What do you believe?”
She watched the dying flame.
ELJARA:
“I believe I heard something.”
A pause.
ELJARA:
“And I don’t know what it was.”
Sean smiled.
SEAN:
“That’s a good answer.”
ELJARA:
“Coming from you?”
SEAN:
“Aye.”
He leaned back against the wall.
SEAN:
“A mystery doesn’t become less interesting just because we refuse to invent an ending.”
The winter had swallowed their roads.
It had silenced their settlements.
And it had changed the way people experienced the world.
Some voices belonged to memory.
Some to expectation.
Some to real people calling desperately for help.
And a few remained unexplained.
This is where science, philosophy, history and folklore meet.
Not in the demand that every mystery must be supernatural.
Nor in the claim that every strange experience must be imaginary.
But in the responsibility to distinguish what we know from what we merely believe.
Listening does not mean accepting every explanation.
Questioning does not mean refusing to care.
And perhaps the greatest danger of the white silence is not that the dead might speak.
It is that the living might stop listening.
CTA — WHO IS CALLING BENEATH THE SNOW?
If you heard the voice of someone long dead calling from the darkness, would you follow it, investigate it or refuse to listen?
Explore The White Silence, our second week of the November Mistborn series, where grief, folklore, perception and the mysteries of winter become dangerously difficult to separate.
PLAY EPIC. FEEL THE STORY.
Discover mysteries with consequences in Mistborn: Rebels of the Final Empire. Our campaign takes place during the earlier Final Empire, before the later Ice Death stories.
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