The village of Vaenmoor slept with its eyes half-open.

  Lyra was only days old, yet the snow hadn’t melted since the night of her birth. It clung to the eaves like old secrets and muted the air with a quiet that felt more watchful than peaceful.

  Inside the cottage, Maelis sat before the hearth, not for warmth, but for the whispers. The flames had begun to flicker in patterns she could no longer ignore—forking like veins, dancing like runes she once saw carved into the walls of a burned monastery.

  Faye paced behind her. “You marked her. What if they come? The Watchers?”

  Maelis didn’t turn. “Then we offer them tea and lies. Like always.”

  Faye scoffed, but it lacked fire. Ysel, meanwhile, remained in the cradle room, humming nervously as Lyra stared at the ceiling with those unblinking, too-aware eyes.

  Suddenly, a click. Maelis looked down to see something falling from the mantle.

  A sliver of bone, no longer than a quill, had dropped from behind a loose brick.

  It wasn’t ordinary. This bone was etched with lines—an impossibly fine map—tiny scratches and curves like veins drawn by a cartographer who understood not land, but fate.

  Faye froze as Maelis picked it up. “Is that—?”

  Maelis nodded. “A bone-thread.”

  “From the old times?” Ysel’s voice came from behind them, quiet and unsure.

  Maelis ran her thumb across the markings. “It’s a map, or a spell disguised as one. Maybe both. And it wasn’t meant to be found until now.”

  The bone pulsed faintly in her hand. Not glowing—breathing.

  “Where does it lead?” Faye asked, still keeping her distance.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Maelis turned the bone toward the firelight. “Somewhere far. Or perhaps within.”

  Ysel stared at it. “Does it have something to do with her?”

  “Everything does now.”

  Three days later, the bone-thread bone was stitched into a strip of deerskin and wrapped around Lyra’s swaddle, invisible to all but the three midwives.

  But Lyra had begun to change.

  Not in ways the village could easily explain, or the midwives could openly admit. It was in the silences. In the way birds avoided her window. In the way her cries stopped before anyone reached her crib.

  And then there were the visitors.

  Not villagers. Not kin.

  The first came at dusk—hooded, nameless, wearing boots without snow on them.

  He stood at the edge of the tree line, his hand resting on a long walking stick made of root and iron. When he turned to leave, Ysel swore she saw a shadow detach from his feet and crawl the other way.

  “He didn’t knock,” she said afterward.

  “He didn’t need to,” Maelis murmured.

  The next day, Faye noticed the shrine outside town had been altered. Someone—or something—had placed a stone carved with the same glyph Maelis had drawn on Lyra’s forehead.

  “They’re watching,” Faye said.

  “They always were,” Maelis replied.

  That night, Ysel couldn’t sleep.

  She rose and tiptoed to Lyra’s room. The baby lay awake, staring once again at the ceiling—only this time her lips moved in silent patterns.

  Ysel leaned closer. “What are you saying, little one?”

  She expected nonsense. Babble. But what she heard chilled her.

  Not words, exactly.

  Echoes.

  Ysel’s ears rang. The ceiling above Lyra shimmered faintly—like heat on stone. Then, from the cradle’s woodwork, faint scratches began to appear—growing before Ysel’s eyes.

  Lines forming a shape.

  A map.

  “The bone-thread…” Ysel whispered, backing away.

  Then Lyra blinked—and the scratches stopped.

  Ysel didn’t sleep after that.

  Morning brought no sun. Just a thin silver mist that clung to every rooftop. In the mist, Maelis held the bone-thread map and pressed it against an old book—a tome older than the midwives themselves.

  The glyph on Lyra’s forehead, the scratches on the cradle, the whispers in the fire—they weren’t coincidences.

  The map was activating.

  The bone-thread map leads us deeper into Vaenmoor’s buried secrets. Each clue brings the midwives—and us—closer to The Hollowing, a place that might hold the origin of Lyra’s forbidden power. What lies there? And why does it call to her already?

  Not for them.

  For her.

  And it pointed to a place the book called The Hollowing.

  Faye recognized the name. “A dead place. A wound in the forest.”

  Maelis closed the book. “Then we must go.”

  Ysel stared. “With the baby?”

  “She’s not just a baby anymore.”

  Maelis turned toward the crib. Lyra’s eyes met hers.

  No smile. No fear.

  Just… readiness.