The square was already full when they dragged Elara Morningstar through the streets.
Victor followed at a distance, still held by Mathew Reed, the chief's steward. The man's grip on his shoulder was iron, fingers digging in hard enough to leave a bruise, but Victor barely felt it because everything in that moment seemed distant.
This couldn't be happening. This was Ashfeld, the village where he'd grown up in. These were people his mother had helped. Martha Coldstone, whose daughter's croup Elara had cured last winter, she stood in the crowd, her face hard. Ben Barnley, whose broken leg Elara had set and treated until he could walk again, he carried a torch, the flames reflecting in his eyes.
The chief stood on the platform they normally used for market day auctions, his face carved from stone, and his son stood beside him, the boy Elara had saved barely two weeks ago. The boy wouldn't meet anyone's eyes.
They forced Elara to her knees in the center of the square. Her dark hair had come loose from its bun, hanging around her face in wild tangles. There was a bruise forming on her cheek from where someone had struck her. But her back was straight, her chin up.
"Elara Morningstar," the chief's voice boomed across the square. "You stand accused of witchcraft. Of using dark arts and unholy practices. Of consorting with evil forces."
"I stand accused of healing," Elara spoke loudly for all to hear. "Of saving your son's life when death was upon him."
A murmur rippled through the crowd and the chief's face darkened.
"You stand accused of possessing forbidden texts! Of practicing unnatural arts! The evidence was found in your own home!"
"A book," Elara said. "Just a book. Knowledge written on paper. If that makes me a witch, then burn every scholar and scribe in the kingdom."
"Blasphemy!" Someone shouted from the crowd. Others took up the cry. "Witch! Demon! Servant of darkness!"
Victor felt something breaking inside him. These people were stupid. Ignorant cattle, too frightened of what they didn't understand to use the minds God had supposedly given them. His mother had saved lives, had given everything to help this village, and they repaid her with this.
"The law is clear," the chief continued, his voice rising to drown out Elara's defense. "Those who practice witchcraft must be purged. The method of execution is the choice of the accused. Elara Morningstar... fire or stone?"
The square fell silent.
Victor's heartbeat grew faster. Fire or stone. Burned alive or stoned to death. What kind of choice was that? What kind of justice?
His mother's voice, when it came, trembled for the first time. "Please. I have a son. He's just a boy. Whatever you believe I've done, he's innocent. Let me live, and I'll leave. You'll never see me again. Just let me take my son and go."
"Fire or stone?" The chief repeated, unmoved by her pleas.
"Please!" Elara's composure cracked as tears ran down her face. "I healed your son! I saved his life! Doesn't that count for anything? Doesn't that—"
"Your witchcraft saved him so you could claim his soul later!" The chief's wife spoke now, her voice shrill with hysteria. "We know how your kind works! You heal them so they're in your debt, so you can call on them when the demons demand payment!"
"That's insane!" Victor shouted, finding his voice at last. "She's not a witch! She's a healer! She uses herbs and knowledge, not magic!"
Mathew Reed's hand tightened on his shoulder, and the steward leaned down to hiss in his ear. "Be silent, boy, or you'll join her."
"Fire or stone?" The chief asked a third time, his patience gone. "Choose, witch, or we'll choose for you."
Elara's shoulders slumped. When she spoke, her voice was barely audible. "Stone."
The chief nodded, satisfied. "Stone it is. Let it be done in the old way, as our ancestors commanded. Let all participate, that the guilt may be shared and the village cleansed."
Shared guilt, Victor thought with sudden, clear clarity. That's what this was really about. If everyone threw a stone, no one person was a murderer. The village could pretend they'd acted as one body, following tradition, doing what was necessary.
They were making a sacrifice to their own cowardice.
Men came forward with rope, binding Elara to a post that had been driven into the ground at the center of the square. She didn't resist. Didn't struggle. Her eyes found Victor in the crowd, and she mouthed three words.
I love you.
Then they brought the stones.
Victor realized that they'd been gathered beforehand. Smooth river stones, each about the size of a fist. Someone had taken the time to collect them, to prepare them, to ensure the village had the tools necessary to murder his mother.
The efficiency of it made him want to vomit.
"All must participate," the chief announced. "All must cleanse their hands in this necessary act. Come forward and take a stone."
They came. God help them, they all came.
Martha Coldstone, whose daughter Elara had saved. Ben Barnley, who'd walked again because of Elara's skill. Mary Jane, who'd called Elara a blessing when she'd delivered her baby safely. William Fletcher, who'd shared his harvest with them when times were lean.
One by one, they took their stones.
Victor watched their faces. Some looked sick, pale and sweating. Others looked eager, righteous, glad to be purging evil from their midst. Most looked blank, empty, as if they'd shut down everything human inside themselves to get through this.
And then he saw her.
The old woman. The one who'd given him the book.
She stood near the front of the crowd, and when her turn came, she stepped forward without hesitation. Took her stone with a steady hand. Met Victor's eyes across the distance and smiled, that same terrible smile she'd worn in the forest.
Victor's eye widened from the sudden crash of understanding.
This was her doing. All of it. She'd given him the book knowing what would happen. Knowing it would be found. Knowing his mother would take the blame. She'd set this in motion like a chess player moving pieces, and now she stood ready to throw a stone at the woman who would die because of her manipulation.
"Why?" Victor mouthed the word, though he knew she couldn't hear him.
The old woman's smile widened. Then she turned away, stone in hand, waiting for the chief's signal.
"Let God judge her soul," the chief said. "We judge only her crimes. Let it be done."
The first stone flew.
It struck Elara in the shoulder, and she gasped, body jerking against the ropes. The sound that escaped her was pain given voice, animal and human all at once.
The second stone followed... then a third... then they came like rain.
Victor tried to look away but Mathew Reed's hand forced his head forward and made him watch.
"See what happens to witches, boy," the steward hissed. "See what happens to those who turn from God's light."
Stone after stone. They struck her arms, her legs, her torso. Her nightgown bloomed red. She screamed, once, twice, then seemed to fold into herself, trying to make her body smaller, trying to protect her head and vital organs.
It didn't matter. The stones kept coming.
The crowd was silent now except for the terrible rhythm of stone hitting flesh, of bone breaking, of a woman dying by inches in front of her neighbors. Some people were crying as they threw. Others were praying. The old woman's face was serene, almost beatific, as her stone found its mark.
And Victor couldn't look away. Reed's hand kept him there, kept his eyes forward, forced him to witness every moment.
His mother's movements grew weaker and the sounds she made grew softer. Blood ran down her face from a cut above her eye, making her look like something from a nightmare.
This was how knowledge was rewarded in Ashfeld. This was how brilliance was treated. This was justice, village-style... quick, brutal, and utterly certain of its own righteousness.
Something inside Victor began to change.
The anger he'd felt earlier, the outrage, the disbelief. It was transmuting into something colder. Something harder. Something that looked at this scene and catalogued every face, every person who threw a stone, every coward who participated in this murder.
He was eight years old, and he was learning what the world really was.
His mother's body sagged against the ropes and her head hung forward, dark hair obscuring her face. She wasn't moving anymore.
The chief raised his hand, and the stoning stopped.
Father Wilkins, the village priest, stepped forward. He was an old man, thin and bent, who'd always seemed kind in his sermons. Now he approached Elara's body with a bowl of holy water, murmuring prayers as he sprinkled it over her.
"Bless this soul, O Lord, though it sinned in life. Grant it mercy in death. Cleanse this place of evil. Amen."
"Amen," the crowd murmured as Elara's body jerked.
For one impossible moment, Victor thought she was alive, that somehow she'd survived. Then he realized it was just muscles spasming, nerves firing randomly in the aftermath of death.
His mother was gone.
"Cut her down," the chief ordered. "Burn the body. Scatter the ashes outside village lands. Let no trace of her witchcraft remain."
"What about the boy?" someone asked and all eyes turned to Victor.
He stood there, looking small, with blood and tears on his face and murder in his heart. Looking back at them with eyes that had aged decades in the span of an hour.
The chief studied him for a long moment and Victor could see the calculation in the man's face. The boy was Elara's son. The boy had been caught with the book. The boy was clever, unnaturally clever, in ways that made people uncomfortable, in ways that could allow him hold meaningful conversations with an elderly person as though he was one.
The boy should die too.
But the boy was eight years old, and even Ashfeld had limits to its brutality.
"Leave him," the chief said finally. "He's just a child. Without his mother's guidance, without her evil teachings, he'll either find proper faith or perish on his own. Either way, the problem solves itself."
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd. A few voices rose in protest. "Shouldn't they be thorough, shouldn't they purge all the evil," but most seemed relieved. They'd killed a woman today. That was horror enough. Killing her child would just haunt them in ways even shared guilt couldn't absolve.
Then Mathew Reed released Victor's shoulder.
"Go on, boy," he said, not unkindly. "Go home. Or wherever. Just... go."
Victor walked forward on numb legs as the crowd parted for him like water around a stone. No one met his eyes. No one spoke to him.
He passed within three feet of his mother's body where Blood pooled beneath her, soaking into the packed earth of the square. Her face was turned away from him, and he was grateful for that small mercy.
He walked past the old woman who watched him with those sharp eyes, studying him like he was an insect under glass.
"Potential," she murmured, just loud enough for him to hear. "Yes. So much potential."
Victor kept walking.
He walked out of the square, down the main street, past his ruined cottage with its broken door and scattered herbs. He walked until the village was behind him, until the sounds of the crowd faded to silence.
Then he stopped at the edge of the forest and looked back.
Ashfeld sat in its valley, peaceful in the morning light. Smoke rose from chimneys. Birds sang in the trees. It looked like any other village, like a place where normal life happened, where normal people lived normal lives.
It was a lie. All of it.
Victor understood now, with the brutal clarity that trauma brings. The world was not rational. Knowledge was not valued. Brilliance was not rewarded. People were not good, not deep down where it mattered. They were animals dressed in human skin, terrified of anything they couldn't understand, willing to murder to maintain their comfortable ignorance.
His mother had been exceptional, and they'd killed her for it.
He was exceptional, and they'd let him live only because killing a child was a step too far for their weak consciences.
But they'd left him alone. Orphaned. Eight years old with no money, no food, no shelter, and winter coming.
They'd left him to die slowly instead of quickly. That was the real mercy they'd shown.
Victor's hands clenched into fists as his nails drew blood from his palms.
He would survive. He didn't know how yet, but he would. He would live through this, through all of it, and he would become something these ignorant animals couldn't imagine.
He would become someone who never depended on their mercy again.
Someone who never begged.
Someone who made the world afraid of him, not the other way around.
Victor Morningstar walked into the forest, eight years old and utterly alone, and behind him in Ashfeld village, they burned his mother's body and went back to their lives, confident they'd done the right thing.
They were wrong about so many things.
But they were right about one: they would never see Elara Morningstar again.
What they didn't know, what they couldn't know, was what they'd created in her son.
That knowledge would come later.
Much, much later.
When it was far too late to matter.