The moon hung low over Lera, swollen and pale, as if holding back a secret it could no longer bear. Its cold light spilled over rooftops and fences, stretching long shadows that clung to doorways and slipped under eaves. The air had teeth. It bit at skin and crept under cloaks, the kind of cold that made breath sting in the throat and settle heavy in the chest.
Somewhere in the woods, a branch gave way. One clean crack—too close to feel like distance.
Lera was silent. Not peaceful—silent. The kind that presses against the ribs and makes every heartbeat feel loud enough to be heard. No owls called. No dogs barked. The trees didn't whisper. The leaves did not move. The world wasn't only quiet. It was waiting.
Inside a wooden hut at the village edge, Mara labored.
Her body fought itself—muscles locking and shuddering, skin slick with sweat that cooled too fast. Some beads ran hot into her hairline; others chilled her spine. Her hands clutched the bedframe. The wood bit back. Splinters worked deep into her palms, but she didn't feel them over the roar of pain.
Her breath came ragged and uneven. Each inhale scraped her throat. Each exhale shook loose from somewhere aching and sore. The pain came in waves, cruel and without rhythm, all needles and fire stitched underneath her skin. Once, her leg kicked hard against the footboard. After that, her body trembled and went still.
The room stank of iron and smoke and bruised herbs. Bitter roots, crushed juniper, burning sage—scents layered on top of one another until breathing felt like swallowing dust and ash. Candle stubs wavered in the hearthlight, their flames tall and thin, throwing shadows that stretched too far and moved too slow.
Daren knelt beside her. His hand wrapped around hers—rough and calloused, big enough to close over her knuckles. Those hands had buried blades in the hides of wolves, gripped a spear through winter storms, set broken fence posts while rain soaked him to the bone. They had never trembled like this.
He had faced wolves. Faced men whose eyes promised death. Faced nights where wind knocked the door like a fist. None of that had prepared him for the look in Mara's eyes.
Pain lived there. Exhaustion that reached into the bone. And something deeper, colder—fear. Fear of not surviving. Fear of whatever was pushing its way into the world. Fear for the small, fragile thing they had waited for through long months of sickness and hunger and hope.
"You're almost there," he said. His voice cracked, thin against the heavy air. "Hold on."
Her lips parted, but no sound came. Her lashes fluttered, sticking to damp skin. Her fingers twitched around his.
The midwife worked without a word. She was small and spare, the lines in her face cut deep as if carved by wind and time. Her hands were steady and warm. She moved like someone who had been in rooms like this more times than she cared to count—rooms where life bargained with death while the fire burned low. Her mouth shaped a constant murmur, low and even. It wasn't prayer. It was older than prayer. The sound curled under the clatter of breath and pain, a thin thread tying the room to something that wasn't outside.
Out beyond the walls, the moon dimmed. A star blinked out. Then another. The sky seemed to draw breath—not with light, but with weight, as if the night itself were gathering itself to listen.
The midwife's eyes flicked to the window. Her whispering tightened. She didn't look away again.
Something was wrong. She felt it. Daren felt it too—he could taste it, bitter along his tongue, like metal.
The air thickened. Smoke hung low, moving in slow, strange curls that refused to rise. The fire hissed and muttered in the hearth, giving light without warmth. Every creak of the walls sounded sharp and out of place. The wind outside did not stir. But the shadows inside leaned, as if they were paying attention.
The next pain broke over Mara without warning.
She screamed—a sound dragged up from somewhere far below her lungs, old as the world. Her back arched. Her fingers clawed at the bedpost. Sweat ran down her temples and stung her eyes. Her voice tore itself thin, then broke, and for a breath's length there was no sound at all but the rattle of air in her chest.
"Push," the midwife said. Her voice cut clean through everything else. "Now."
Mara pushed.
Her scream dragged into a low, shaking moan, then collapsed into silence. Her whole body shuddered. Stilled. Her chest rose once. Twice. Each breath wet, shallow, as if the air had thickened to syrup.
Daren leaned close. Panic climbed his throat like a fist and lodged there. Her face looked too pale. Her skin felt too cold. Her lips were nearly colorless. Fear gathered in him until it crowded out every thought.
"Just a little more," he whispered. "Stay with me. Please."
She gasped and coughed. Blood touched her mouth, a dark smear against white skin.
Then—
Lightning. A single blade of white, clean and thin, slashed across the clear sky. No thunder. No cloud. There and gone.
Silence followed, heavier than before. It settled over the roof and pressed into the corners, a blanket smothering every careless noise.
And then—the cry.
A newborn's cry, high and fierce, bright with life. It split the stillness like glass breaking. The sound rang through the hut, sharp and wild. It did not ask permission. It arrived.
The midwife caught him. He was slick and red and astonishingly warm, a small, kicking thing wrapped in blood and newness. She swaddled him in cloth that smelled of dried juniper and myrrh and smoke—old protections, layered in habit and hope.
Her mouth pressed flat. No smile. A tightness lay along her jaw. She did not say what settled behind her eyes.
"It's a boy," she said.
Mara stirred, as if pulled back by the sound of the cry alone. Her arm lifted, weak as a reed, trembling in the air. When they laid him on her chest, she let out a breath that wasn't relief so much as surrender. Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes and cut clean tracks through sweat and grime. Her hand, shaking, found the curve of his back. She felt the small shoulders, the fast flutter of his breath, the stubborn heat of him.
Daren looked at the child.
And went still.
The baby's eyes were open. Not cloudy. Not drifting. Open and fixed—two polished pits of black. Not grey. Not brown. Black as a moonless well. They did not waver. They watched.
The hair on Daren's neck prickled. Something deep in his chest tugged tight, a feeling like standing at the edge of water that had no bottom.
The fire in the hearth flickered, drawing thin. The shadows stretched again, slow and deliberate, leaning toward the bed as if pulled.
Outside, no wind moved. But the silence felt full, as if the world were crowded with unseen witnesses holding their breath.
The midwife tied the cord with quick fingers and wiped her hands on a cloth gone brown at the edges. She glanced at the window once, twice, then again. Her whispering returned, softer now. Not for Mara. Not for the boy.
For whatever waited past the walls.
Daren swallowed and found there was no spit to swallow with. Words rose and fell uselessly in him. His hand tightened around Mara's. He felt the tremor in her fingers answer his.
He had stood with death before. He had met it in doorways and fields and cold rivers. He had guarded people he loved from the reach of blades. But this—this was not a fight he knew how to meet. There was no enemy to point to, no shape to push away. Only a weight in the room, and a pair of black eyes that did not blink.
The boy's mouth opened and closed, rooting, impatient. His cry softened into something like complaint. The sound proved he was small and human and hungry. It did not undo what else he was.
Mara cupped his head. Her thumb traced the damp hair plastered to his scalp. She kissed his forehead—salt and smoke and the copper taste of blood in the air—and closed her eyes. "Silas," she whispered, voice frayed. "Silas."
The name seemed to settle on him, a blanket against the cold.
Daren tried it in his mouth, quiet, as if speaking too loudly might break something fragile. "Silas." The syllables steadied him. Not much. Enough to breathe.
The midwife's mutter dwindled into silence. She straightened, joints clicking, and let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. She touched the baby's foot with two fingers and flinched, just barely, when Silas's eyes tracked her and did not look away. Then she wiped the bedframe clean where blood had dried, set the bloody cloths to soak, and fed the fire a thin stick that smoked and refused to catch.
"Wrap him tight," she said. "Keep him warm."
Her voice was flat, but her gaze kept returning to the window, as if expecting a face to press itself to the glass. As if expecting the night to answer back.
Mara pulled Silas closer. Daren tucked the blanket around them both, careful not to touch the soft place where the cord had been tied. His fingers brushed the baby's heel—hot and tiny and impossibly real. He felt that heat climb up his arm to his chest, burning a path through the cold lodged there.
He looked at his wife, pale and fierce with love, her lip trembling as she held their son, and he understood a simple truth: whatever had shifted outside, whatever had come in with the boy, he would stand between it and them until he could not stand anymore.
In the quiet, a candle sighed. Wax slipped and pooled. The fire found a seam of resin and hissed, but its warmth still seemed to stop just short of the bed. The smoke curled, unfamiliar shapes briefly forming and vanishing like thoughts you can almost catch.
Silas blinked, slow, unbothered. His mouth worked. His hand opened—fingers no thicker than twigs—and closed on nothing. His eyes stayed black. Watching. Taking in a world that had paused to feel him arrive.
He had not only entered it.
He had changed it.
The night didn't just watch.
It listened.