An Isekai Story

The Silent Refectory stretches like a spine beneath the Cradle, an immense hall without echo or warmth. Here, nourishment is ceremony, stripped of flavor, sound, and joy. Long basalt tables—unbroken, monolithic—run the length of the room, flanked by benches so precisely spaced they discourage lingering. Attendants in ashen robes glide between them in perfect synchrony, their footsteps muffled by the enchantments woven into the stone. Meals are set before each seat with ritual precision: gray bread, mineral broth, dried root slivers—sustenance for survival, not satisfaction. No one speaks. They do not need to. Even whispers die before leaving the tongue. The only adornment is the vast mural at the far end, depicting the inside of Mount Thornmaw as a hollowed husk, with a jagged void at its heart. There are no portraits, no names, no record of past diners. Only the quiet gnaw of need, and the ever-present weight of being observed.

The hall is cavernous, its floor polished to a dull sheen beneath rows of unyielding basalt tables and benches. Overhead, the ceiling disappears into shadow, lit only by slits of cold, indirect light. Servers move like shadows themselves, indistinct yet orderly, their robes never brushing the stone. At the far end, the mural of the hollow mountain looms—black on black, a jagged emptiness painted in strokes that seem to pull the eye inward. Nothing echoes here. Not even thought.