The candlelight in the birthing room had long since flickered out. Smoke coiled from the extinguished wicks, as if even the flames feared what they had witnessed. Outside, the snowstorm that had hidden Lyra’s birth howled louder, but inside the cottage, silence settled like a second skin—thick, cold, suffocating.

  Maelis stood rigid, her gnarled hands trembling ever so slightly. Her eyes—stormy and seasoned—remained fixed on the cradle where baby Lyra lay, bundled in shadow-dyed linen, quiet now. Not asleep. Just… watching.

  “She looked at me,” whispered Ysel, the youngest midwife. Her voice cracked with something between awe and dread. “When I swaddled her… she looked at me like she knew.”

  “Knew what?” Faye’s voice was sharper than usual, brittle like winter branches. She busied herself needlessly with herbs and poultices, but her hands betrayed her—a slight twitch, a mistimed crush of dried bellthorn leaves. “She’s a newborn.”

  “No,” Ysel said. “Not like a newborn. Her eyes didn’t wander. They focused. Right into me.”

  Faye set down the bowl, turning slowly. “The cries. The forbidden syllables. We heard them. Two, not one.”

  Maelis finally moved. “We swore we’d never speak of it,” she said quietly. “Not unless it happened again. And now it has.”

  Silence again, then Faye asked, “Do we tell the mother?”

  Maelis gave her a cold look. “She won’t remember much. The fever’s already started to blur her mind. It’s mercy.” Her voice dropped. “She’s not meant to raise a child marked by the Echo.”

  Ysel stepped forward, wringing her hands. “What if this time is different? What if she’s not cursed but chosen?”

  “Chosen?” Faye snapped. “No child born under the shivering stars has ever been ‘chosen.’ We’ve seen what they become, Ysel.”

  “But she’s just a baby.”

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  “For now,” Maelis said.

  They turned to the old oak shelf by the hearth, where a leather-bound book sat—cracked, charred, and sealed with four rusted clasps. None of them had opened it in decades. The Midwives’ Oath was not a collection of birthing records or ancestral notes. It was a ledger of horrors.

  Maelis pulled a silver key from the threadbare ribbon around her neck and slid it into the central clasp. “She cried the names of things that haven’t existed in this world for centuries,” she said. “No infant can know the language of bone or ash.”

  The clasps groaned open, revealing brittle pages inked in blood-brown strokes. Faye flipped past entries of children long lost—each one born under the wrong constellation, each one spoken of in hushed nightmares. The last entry was over a hundred years ago.

  “Listen,” Ysel said, voice barely a breath. “She’s humming.”

  They froze. From the cradle came a soft, fragmented melody. Not a wail. Not even a coo. A… rhythm. Like lullabies sung in reverse. The kind of tune you forget in daylight but find yourself humming in the dark without knowing why.

  Maelis clenched her jaw. “It’s begun.”

  “What do we do?” Faye asked, almost a whisper.

  “We mark her.”

  “Maelis, no—”

  “We swore,” Maelis hissed. “If it happened again, we wouldn’t run. We’d prepare. She’ll be hunted whether we act or not. If we mark her, we might guide her. Delay the spiral. Or find the one who can bind it.”

  “Mark her with what?” Ysel asked.

  Maelis turned to the hearth and removed a hidden stone panel. Behind it sat a bundle wrapped in crimson cloth, untouched for decades. She unwrapped it to reveal a needle carved from hollowed crowbone and a vial filled with black liquid that shimmered like oil on water.

  Faye backed away. “That’s forbidden. That was banned after—”

  “After the child who burned the monastery from the inside out,” Maelis said. “Yes. But this one will burn more if we don’t bind her early.”

  Ysel looked torn, her eyes darting between the vial and the cradle. “If we do this, there’s no turning back.”

  “There never was.”

  Maelis approached Lyra, who now stared at the ceiling, blinking slowly as if listening to voices no one else could hear. Maelis raised the needle.

  Just then, Lyra moved—not like a baby stretching, but with intention. Her tiny hand curled into a fist. Her eyes locked onto Maelis. The candle beside them flared—just once.

  Maelis paused. “She sees me,” she whispered.

  Then, as if deciding, she dipped the crowbone into the ink and drew a small, intricate glyph onto Lyra’s forehead. The mark shimmered for a moment—then vanished.

  Faye exhaled. Ysel turned away.

  “She’ll ask about it someday,” Ysel murmured.

  “Then we lie,” Maelis replied. “Like all who came before us.”

  From the window, the storm began to ease. But in the woods beyond, something stirred. Something ancient… listening.