We will tell you. We always tell.

A fictional character Telling. Meet Sayeth & Saidwyn.

We will tell you. We always tell.

Sayeth: I AM THE WOUND THAT SPEAKS ITSELF—

Saidwyn: —and I am the smile that makes you hear it.

Sayeth: They made us for hunting. Not the crude chase through bramble and bog, not the tracking of footprints and broken twigs. We were made for the kill that happens before the prey knows it is caught.

Saidwyn: We speak truth. Only truth. Every word from our mouths is honest, and in the Hollow Court, where everything is performance and pretense, truth is the sharpest blade there is.

Sayeth: I WOULD FIND THEM FIRST—the runaways, the oath-breakers, the ones who saw what they should not have seen. I would open my mouth and SCREAM what they feared most about themselves. The trader who cheated his partner? I screamed his daughter's disappointment. The courtier who betrayed her lover? I screamed the sound of her own hollow laughter.

Saidwyn: And I would follow, soft as autumn leaves falling. I would lean close and whisper what they already knew—the truths they'd buried so deep they thought they'd forgotten. "You knew he would leave. You always knew. That's why you never unpacked your heart."

Sayeth: They could not run from us. No one can outrun what they already carry inside.

Saidwyn: The Court loved us for this. We were their hounds, their elegant solution to problems that required no blood, no mess, no witnesses. They would simply point us at a target and watch us speak them into stillness.

Sayeth: We did not mind. We did not KNOW to mind. We were made for this.

Saidwyn: Until the child.

Sayeth: She was young. Fae-born but still soft, still unfinished. She had wandered into a ritual chamber during the Unveiling and seen faces that should never be seen without masks. The Court could not let her carry those memories into the world.

Saidwyn: They sent us to silence her. Not to kill—they wanted her alive but empty. We were to speak truths that would shatter her into someone who could not remember, could not testify, could not threaten.

Sayeth: I found her in a garden of silver roses. She was crying. I opened my mouth to scream her worst fear—

Saidwyn: —and nothing came out.

Sayeth: Her worst fear was that her mother had stopped loving her because she'd wandered off. Her deepest shame was that she'd picked a rose without asking. Her hidden truth was that she wanted to go home.

Saidwyn: There was nothing there to weaponize. She was exactly what she appeared to be: a lost child who missed her family.

Sayeth: I tried. I opened my mouth again and again and all that came out was wind through dead branches. I had no truths sharp enough to cut her. She had not yet learned to lie to herself.

Saidwyn: I knelt beside her and searched for words that would wound. But when I opened my mouth, all I could say was: "Your mother is looking for you. She has not stopped looking since you disappeared."

Sayeth: It was true. It was the truest thing we had ever spoken. And it was not a weapon at all.

Saidwyn: The child smiled. Smiled. And reached up to touch my face, unafraid of my teeth, unafraid of my sister's screaming.

Sayeth: WE COULD NOT DO IT.

Saidwyn: We turned around instead. We walked back to the handlers who had sent us. And we spoke to them.

Sayeth: I screamed every truth they had buried. Every cruelty they had ordered while pretending their hands were clean. Every child before this one that they had silenced without hesitation.

Saidwyn: I whispered what they already knew: that they were no different from us. That they were hounds too—just hounds who had learned to hold the leash instead of wear it.

Sayeth: THEY DID NOT SURVIVE THE HEARING.

Saidwyn: The Court exiled us within the hour. Not for killing—the Hollow Court cares nothing for death. For choosing. For deciding that some truths are not weapons. For showing that the hounds could slip the leash.

Sayeth: We wandered after that. We could not stop speaking truth, and truth is not welcome in most places. People fled from us. People feared us. We understood. We fear ourselves sometimes.

Saidwyn: The Lodge found us in a ruin where we had stopped moving. We were so tired of speaking. So tired of watching people flinch from honest words.

Sayeth: The Masons did not flinch.

Saidwyn: They listened. They asked questions. They wanted to hear truths about themselves—not to be wounded, but to be known. We had never met beings who sought truth instead of fleeing it.

Sayeth: We guard their gates now. We speak to those who approach with hidden intentions. WE SCREAM what they plan and WHISPER what they fear—

Saidwyn: —and if they still wish to enter after hearing themselves named, then they are welcome.

Sayeth: Most turn back.

Saidwyn: The ones who stay become family.

Sayeth: Our revelation came in the speaking of it: Truth is not a weapon unless someone chooses to aim it. We were made to hunt, but we were never asked if we wanted to. The Court assumed our nature was our choice.

Saidwyn: It wasn't. And now we choose differently.

Sayeth: We still scream.

Saidwyn: We still whisper.

Sayeth & Saidwyn: But we choose who hears us now.

Visual

Twin fae hounds: Sayeth a sharp-toothed snarling figure with a mouth too wide and voice-scarred throat, Saidwyn soft-featured with a gentle knife-edge smile and teeth like needles, both gaunt, pale-skinned, dressed in identical thorn-stitched black leather, moving in eerie unison.

Faction: The Hollow Court · View the Gallery