The room began to breathe when the boy opened his eyes.
The beams of wood bent like ribs. The flickering fire in the quarters froze. For three seconds, the golden thornmark on his chest matched the perfect rhythm of the world around him.
Then time snapped back.
The boy sat up, blinking.
"The hungry lady dreams about you," he said casually to Mara.
Jarek pulled his knife halfway before he stopped.
That night her own thornmark was hotter than ever.
Within the seclusion of her quarters, Mara peeled back her tunic and observed the gold veins radiating from the scar in the distorted mirror. They beat in time with...
something.
Not her heartbeat.
Not the boy's.
Something else.
She touched the spot with a razor.
"Don't."
Ethan's voice, but with a sharper, colder tone. The Duskheir's rhythm crawling through.
The razor fell to the ground with a clank.
There was an iron and mildew odor to the Ravenscroft family archives.
By candlelight, Jarek searched through the tattered pages, searching for a truth that ducked just out of reach. He was haunted by the image of the thorny woman with the void knife.
He traced a faint marginal note with his fingers.
"The Twelve shall awaken when the Thirteenth bleeds."
The candle went out.
The parchment behind him rustled in the absence of wind.
When dawn came, they discovered the girl by the old well.
She was eight years old, her nightgown covered in frost, and she was barefoot in the snow. Her skin had emerald veins that were more radiant than the boy.
Without hesitation, Mara stepped forward, the last piece of void hilt shining dimly in her hand.
The girl smiled. Not with relief.
But with acknowledgment.
"You're the knife now," the child whispered. "However, who is holding you?"
Mara froze.
Suddenly, the girl's tiny hand appeared, twisting and clamping around the hilt.
…..
The glass plain shattered.
It shattered into a thousand reflections, scattering Ethan's dream-form. Every shard contains a distinct horror.
The girl's eyes became solid jade.
The inside of Jarek's skeleton was blooming.
Like a mouth, Mara's thorn mark split open.
He tried to scream.
It was swallowed by the emptiness.
…..
Jarek's reaction was quicker than expected.
The link between girl and hilt was severed when his common steel knife flashed. Despite being unharmed, the child's emerald glow turned murkier as she collapsed.
Something more ravenous.
With the void-hilt fused to her palm, Mara stumbled back.
"What did you—?"
The girl sat up.
When she spoke, it was not her own voice.
"You cannot remake what was never whole."
The first boy sleepwalked to the edge of the ruins that night.
He was sketching in the snow when Mara discovered him, but it was not pictures.
'Equations.'
The intricate, spiraling patterns caused her scar to ache. Patterns that shifted when unobserved.
Breathing heavily, Jarek came with a stolen archive page.
"It's not a star. It's a—"
"Lock," Mara said, gazing at the boy's icy creation.
Above them, the real stars tugged.
Mara touched her thornmark with the fused hilt.
"Show me," she demanded.
Pain burst from her body… then clarity.
The image pierced her.
A circle of twelve graves.
A single one is empty.
And there was a moving beneath her feet.
When she regained consciousness, Jarek was holding her shoulders.
"They buried them," she gasped. "The other people. The first Twelve."
The boy, now awake, touched his matching mark.
"The key's inside us," he whispered.
…..
Far away, in a place that no one discovered, the wounded Thirteenth shifted.
And eleven sets of eyelids fluttered in the darkness between moments.