Mira always thought she understood fear.
Fear of not fitting in. Fear of being judged. Fear of dying in some unremarkable way, like choking on dust in the fields or bleeding out from a mule's misplaced kick.
But this—this fear had a voice.
It whispered in the rustling wheat, murmured from the trees, hummed beneath the earth.
And it began the night she stood between the villagers and Xerces.
She dreamed of the well.
Not as it was—but twisted.
The stones were black, slick with oil. The rope dangled something too thin to be a bucket, too lively to be dead.
And when she looked down, she saw eyes staring back from the dark.
Not Xerces's.
Not human.
Watching her. Waiting.
She woke with a scream, clutching her blanket to her chest as sweat clung to her skin. Her heart raced like a hunted animal, and for a moment, she couldn't remember why she was afraid.
Then she did.
The villagers.
The goats.
Cerric.
Or… Xerces?
He hadn't corrected her yet. Never gave a full name. Never spoke of where he was from. She hadn't pressed.
But now she realized…
He had never once said he was human.
The day was gray and quiet.
The village had returned to its passive hatred—still polite, still silent, but colder now. Children no longer waved. Elders turned their heads. Even the baker, who once gave her free bread on feast days, offered only a stiff nod.
"You've chosen your side," he muttered.
She didn't respond.
Because maybe she had.
She found him again near the woods, collecting herbs from the roots of a felwood tree. The wind tugged at his cloak. His hands moved with surgical calm.
He didn't look up when she approached.
"I dreamt of something last night," she said.
"I know," he replied, eyes never leaving the dirt. "I felt it too."
That should have terrified her.
It didn't.
"What is it?"
He paused. The air shifted.
"It's old," he said. "Older than your village. Older than your kingdom. It was buried for a reason. Something is waking it."
She stared at him.
"You know."
He finally looked at her.
And in that gaze—brief, quiet, and impossibly heavy—Mira saw something impossible: pity.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"For what?"
"For what's coming."
She followed him back to the barn.
They spoke little.
But in the quiet, Mira began to notice the small things—the unnatural stillness to his body, the way his steps made no sound, the odd flicker of heat she felt when she was near him, like standing beside a forge.
She sat across from him as he opened an old tome. Its pages weren't written in ink. They shimmered like firelight trapped in flesh.
"Can I ask something?"
He glanced up.
"Why me?"
He blinked.
"Why are you kind to me? Why do you trust me at all?"
He hesitated.
Then said: "Because when I look at you, I feel something I thought I lost."
"What's that?"
"Remorse."
That night, Mira returned home to find a single dead bird on her doorstep.
Its eyes had been plucked. Its wings folded like a burial.
She said nothing.
She just stared at it for a long time.
Then picked it up, gently, and carried it to the forest.
The shadows whispered her name.
In the days to come, Mira noticed other changes.
Her dreams grew colder.
Children spoke of nightmares.
And her feelings for Xerces—Cerric—deepened in strange, terrifying ways. He didn't smile. He didn't laugh. But when she was near him, she felt protected.
She felt alive.
And that, perhaps, frightened her most of all.