The herbs had done nothing.
Esther stared at the remnants of her latest attempt—crushed petals and ground roots scattered across the wooden table, mixed with ash and salt and her own blood. Three drops, she'd given. Three drops that had hissed and steamed and ultimately turned to nothing but foul-smelling smoke.
Her hands were raw. Small cuts crisscrossed her palms from gathering plants in the dark, from grinding them with stone, from trying and failing and trying again. She'd been at this for days. Weeks, if she was honest with herself.
The spell wouldn't work.
She pressed her palms against her eyes, feeling the grit of exhaustion there. Behind her eyelids, she saw them—her children, pale and still. Henrik's small body. The blood. The screaming. Mikael's rage, his grief twisted into something sharp and demanding.
Fix this. You're a witch. Fix this.
But she couldn't. She'd tried everything. Every spell she knew, every ritual passed down through generations. She'd called on the spirits, on the earth, on forces she barely understood. Nothing had been strong enough. Nothing could grant immortality. Nothing could—
A sound cut through her thoughts.
No, not a sound exactly. A pull. Like someone had tied a string around her ribs and tugged.
Esther's head snapped up. She looked around the small room—empty except for herself and her failures. But the pull came again, stronger this time. Insistent.
She stood slowly, her body protesting. When had she last slept? When had she last eaten?
It didn't matter.
The pull was coming from outside. From the forest.
She should ignore it. She should stay here, keep trying, keep working until she found the answer. But her feet were already moving, carrying her to the door.
The night air hit her like a slap. Cold. Sharp. It cut through the haze of exhaustion and made her gasp. Above, the moon was a thin crescent, offering almost no light. The village was quiet—everyone asleep, safe behind their walls.
Everyone except her.
The pull came again, and this time it had direction. East. Into the trees.
Esther wrapped her cloak tighter around herself and walked.
The forest was different at night.
During the day, it was simply trees and undergrowth, familiar paths she'd walked a thousand times gathering herbs and ingredients. But now, in the dark, it was something else. Something alive and watchful.
Her breath misted in front of her. Her feet found the path without thought, following that strange pull deeper into the woods. Branches seemed to part for her, shadows shifting just enough to let her pass.
She should be afraid. She knew that distantly, logically. A woman alone in the dark forest, following something she couldn't name—it was foolish. Dangerous.
But she wasn't afraid. The pull felt... old. Ancient. Not malevolent, just there, like a mountain or a river. Something that had always existed and always would.
The whispers started slowly.
At first, she thought it was wind through leaves. Then she realized there was no wind. The air was perfectly still, perfectly silent except for—
This way.
Closer.
Come.
Not words, exactly. More like thoughts that weren't hers, brushing against the edges of her mind. She tried to grasp them, understand them, but they slipped away like water through her fingers.
She walked faster.
The trees grew denser, older. These weren't the pines and birches near the village. These were ancient oaks, their trunks so wide three men couldn't encircle them. Their roots broke through the earth like gnarled fingers, and Esther had to watch her step or risk turning an ankle.
How far had she come? How long had she been walking?
She didn't know. Time felt strange here, thick and slow like honey.
Then she saw it—a break in the trees. Not a clearing exactly, but a place where the forest pulled back, leaving a space of bare earth and stone. And in the stone face of a small cliff, hidden behind hanging moss and twisted vines, was a dark opening.
A cave.
The pull was coming from inside.
Esther hesitated for the first time. The cave mouth looked like a wound in the earth, black and depthless. Nothing good lived in caves. Bears, maybe. Wolves. Or worse things, old things that predated human memory.
But the pull was so strong now it made her chest ache.
She needed to go inside.
She gathered a fallen branch, wrapped the end with dried moss from her pouch, and spoke a small spell. Fire bloomed in her palm, and she touched it to the moss. It caught, giving her a makeshift torch.
The light pushed back the darkness just enough.
Esther stepped into the cave.
It was smaller than she'd expected. Not a deep cavern but more of a chamber, barely ten paces across. The walls were rough stone, slick with moisture. The air smelled of earth and something else—something sweet and strange, like incense she couldn't name.
And in the center of the chamber sat a coffin.
Esther stopped, her breath catching.
It was made of stone, carved from a single piece of dark rock she didn't recognize. The craftsmanship was extraordinary—perfectly smooth surfaces, sharp corners, symbols carved into every inch of the lid and sides.
She moved closer, holding the torch higher.
The symbols were like nothing she'd ever seen. Not runes, not any script she'd studied. They were beautiful and alien, flowing and geometric all at once. Just looking at them made her head hurt, made her thoughts slip sideways.
Who had made this? When?
The coffin looked ancient. Not just old, but ancient—the kind of ancient that made her feel like a child playing with forces she couldn't comprehend. Dust covered every surface except...
Esther's breath caught.
On top of the coffin, in the very center, was a single drop of blood.
It gleamed in the torchlight, perfectly round, perfectly red. Not dried. Not aged. Fresh, as if it had been placed there moments ago.
That was impossible.
Esther set the torch in a crack in the wall and approached slowly. Her hands were shaking. She shouldn't touch it. She should leave, go back to the village, forget she'd ever found this place.
But the pull was overwhelming now, singing in her bones, and she knew—knew—that this was what she'd been meant to find. This was the answer.
She reached out and touched the blood with her fingertip.
It was warm.
Inside the coffin, something shifted. Not movement exactly, but awareness. Like an eye opening in the dark.
Esther jerked her hand back, her heart hammering. She stared at the coffin, waiting for it to open, waiting for something to emerge.
Nothing happened.
The silence stretched. Her heartbeat gradually slowed.
She looked at her finger. The blood sat there, a perfect crimson drop, seeming to glow with its own light. Power thrummed through it—old power, vast power, the kind of power she'd been searching for.
This could work. This could be what she needed.
Quickly, before she could second-guess herself, Esther tore a strip of fabric from the hem of her dress. She wiped the blood onto the cloth carefully, reverently. The fabric absorbed it but the red didn't spread or fade. It stayed vibrant, alive.
She folded the cloth and tucked it into her pouch.
For a long moment, she stood there, staring at the coffin. She should try to open it. She should see what—or who—was inside. The lid was a single piece of stone, heavy and sealed tight. She ran her hands along the edges, looking for a seam, a way to pry it open.
Nothing. It wouldn't budge. The stone might as well have been a single piece of mountain.
Magic, then. It was sealed with magic far older and stronger than anything she knew.
Inside the coffin, that presence stirred again. Watching. Waiting.
Letting her take what she'd come for.
Esther shivered. "Thank you," she whispered, not knowing if whatever was inside could hear her. Not knowing if it even understood.
The presence settled back into stillness.
She picked up her torch and left the cave quickly, not looking back. The whispers were gone now. The pull had released her. The forest felt normal again—just trees and darkness and the sound of her own footsteps.
By the time she reached the village, dawn was breaking.
Esther went straight to her workroom. She laid out the cloth with the blood, and just looking at it, she knew. This was it. This was the answer she'd been searching for.
She didn't know what she'd taken it from. Didn't know who rested in that ancient coffin, sealed in the earth with symbols older than memory.
But it didn't matter.
She had what she needed to save her children.
She had what she needed to create something new.