*Jiselle*  rs

I woke to cold stone pressing against my cheek. My shoulder ached, my breathing felt too loud in my ears, and when I blinked open my eyes, the room was dim and twisting. The torchlight flickered against broken walls patched with wards and ash. I should’ve felt relief. I should’ve felt safety.

But I felt hollow.

Someone was beside me, a gentle weight rocking back and forth, a soft murmur against the cloth. I tried to lift my arm, but the world grayed, pain splintered through ribs, and I forced it down again.

“Shh… don’t move too quick,” Nate whispered.

I heard tears. Quiet ones. And the baby’s small cry, so soft it almost wasn’t there.

“Nate?” My voice hoarse, I turned my head enough to see him. His shoulders were hunched; he sat by a low cot, cradling her. The baby was wrapped in woven ash–fine, charcoal threads that glowed faintly at the edges, shimmering violet in the pales of torchlight. She was no bigger than my forearm but already possessed a presence old as the hollow silence that lingered after war.

He looked at her with a kind of wonder, tears tracking down his cheeks, catching light. I watched his chest rise, then fall with a sob he tried to swallow.

“She looked at me,” he said after a beat, voice rough. “bI /bswear she knew me.”

I blinked. The baby didn’t move. Eyes open–grey–gold, flickering like me trapped behind ss. And in that moment I believed him. Believed she knew him. Believed she knew me.

I tried to focus, to remember how I got here. Everything was heavy. My limbs weighed like lead, my heart thrummed like a beast with broken ribs. But underneath it all was the spark: she was alive.

“She’s alive,” I whispered.

He nodded, but grief still hung in his eyes. “For now,” he said.

The cot creaked as he adjusted, lifting her closer, wrapping my skirts around me so I could see her better. I reached out a trembling hand, but pulled back–pain radiated across my belly, as if the scars of what had been fractured so recently were still fresh.

Eva appeared then, stepping quietly through the doorway. Her face was pale, paler than I remembered. There was something changed about her–not only exhaustion, though she wore it like armor now–but something behind her eyes. Something guarded, something afraid. Her gown was smudged, sleeves torn, and the wards she carried hung loose around her neck as if she’d forgotten to clutch them when she fled or fought.

“Thank the stars,” she said, voice soft, almost relieved. She came to the edge of my bed, knelt. Her hands hovered. The child’s eyes followed her movement, tracking.

“How are you feeling?” Eva asked, but I didn’t answer. My throat was dry; words felt heavy and brittle.

“She’s watching.” Nate said, not looking at me, looking at the baby. “Not just looking. Watching us.” He smiled, though tears still glistened. One of those smiles that cracked wide not because of happiness, but because everything else had fallen away and this one thing–this fragile, tiny me–stood between ruin and something I could hardly name: hope.

I held my breath, tried to shut out everything else. Tried to rest in the knowledge that she was here. That the chaos had paused around us. That maybe, finally, we could build instead of fight.

And then I realized-

Bastain was gone.

The room smelled of dust and ash and something like guilt. His chair was empty, the warding chalk at his desk crumbled. His maps torn. The relics scattered. No sign of his boots, no mark of his passing except absence.

“Where’s Bastain?” I asked, voice small. “He should-”

Nate’s hand tightened around mine. He shook his head. “He left. He said he needed to… prepare something.”

Eva closed her eyes. When she opened them her gaze was sharper, colder. “He went out to make sure the wards around the stronghold are intact. He said if they fall, everything we fought for dies.”

“You think he’lle back?” I asked softly.

Eva didn’t answer that. She knelt beside Nate and the baby,id a hand gently on the child’s chest through the ash wrap. “He’d better,” she whispered.

The baby stared at me then–with eyes like knowing embers. Not fear. Not confusion. Something deeper. Recognition. Like she remembered me, remembered home, remembered warmth I had almost forgotten.

I whispered, “Do you see her, Nate? Do you feel-”

He nodded, voice shaky. “Yes.”

My vision swam with tears and relief and something like dread I couldn’t name. Relief because she was alive. Dread because she looked like she belonged here already–as if she’d lived lifetimes before this night.

“My me,” I said, voice iso /iisoft /iI barely heard its echo.

She twitched, small fingers curling around mine. Her mouth opened, lips parted in a silent cry that didn’t

make sound.

In that silence, her eyes closed just slightly, then settled.

Eva rose from her knees and began moving toward the door.

I followed her eyes.

Through the doorway: dark corridor, wards flickering. The smell of rot and blood.

The attack is not over.

b55 /bVouchers

Among the smell, I caught something else. A note of unnatural: a pressure, a pulse that throbbed in walls, stone, hearth.

Something shifted in the air–as if the world had leaned in to listen.

Nightmares I thought had faded flickered behind my eyelids. The echo of that raven’s voice: He knows the

name.

I squeezed the baby closer.

She shivered–or maybe it was me. It was hard to tell.

But her eyes fluttered open again, glowing in the dim light.

And then-

She spoke.

Not cry. Not shout.

A whisper.

So soft I thought I imagined it.

“Aedric is watching.”

Silence exploded.

Nate knelt, arms tightening around me and the baby both. Eva stepped back, face–white, choking on her own breath. The fire on the walls flickered, wards sputtered, and for a moment, we all held our breath.

Because the thing she had said was not wrong.

And because now, nothing would ever be the same.

AD

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