The shard hummed all night.
It wasn't loud—not to anyone else. Her mother didn't hear it. Torren didn't either. But to Evelyn, it pulsed like a soft heart under water, whispering something she couldn't quite make out. Like a half-remembered lullaby—familiar, warm, and wrong.
They kept the shard sealed in the hearth urn, bound beneath three layers of ash-chalk and old ward sigils, but it didn't help.
Evelyn sat at the edge of the room that night, arms curled around her knees, unable to sleep. Not because she was afraid—but because part of her wasn't.
She wanted to open the urn.
She wanted to touch it.
Morning came, gray and wrong. The wind blew west for the first time in weeks, and the hearths wouldn't catch flame on the first spark.
Her mother found her near the ashes, fingers smeared faintly with chalk dust. The urn was untouched—physically. But her mother knew. She knew the way only mothers do.
"You heard it," she whispered.
Evelyn nodded slowly. "It calls me."
Her mother's lips thinned. She looked older in that moment than she ever had. Not tired—burdened.
"Did you dream again?"
"Yes. The fire. The singing. She stood closer this time. I almost saw her face."
Her mother's hand trembled as she took the kettle off the flame.
"That shard—" she began, then stopped.
"It's part of me," Evelyn said, and her voice sounded like someone else's. "Isn't it?"
"No," her mother said immediately. "It shouldn't be. You're not ready. You were never meant—" She broke off, rubbing her palms together. "Listen to me. That Warden was broken. The core is fractured. That kind of power corrodes, Evelyn. It speaks with beauty and burns with ruin."
"Then why does it feel like I already know it?"
Her mother closed her eyes. "Because it knows you."
By dusk, the sky turned copper.
The village bells rang once. Then twice. Then didn't ring again.
It started at the eastern ward-line, where the trees grew too thick and the soil ran red with moss. The Echoed came silent—no howls, no stomps—just a thrum in the earth and a sudden absence of birdsong.
They weren't large, not at first. Small, pale-bodied things that slid along bark like shadows. The village dogs were the first to sense it. They howled. Then vanished.
By the time Evelyn stepped outside, the ward-posts were already flickering.
Torren grabbed her arm. "Run. Now."
"But my mother—"
"She said to find the river path. She'll find us. Go!"
The village erupted behind them—cries, snapping timber, the heavy thud of something vast and slow dragging itself from the treeline.
And behind it all, Evelyn felt the core singing again.
She ran.