The woods beyond Vaenmoor were not unfamiliar. The villagers foraged at the edges, hunted when need pressed too hard, and prayed at the shrine where roots split the stone. But there was a border no one crossed—not marked by signs or fences, but by feeling. A shift in wind. A silence that struck too deep.

  That place was known only in murmurs.

  The Hollowing.

  Maelis stood at the boundary now, cloak heavy with dew, Lyra strapped to her chest. The child was silent, wide-eyed beneath layers of wool. Faye and Ysel flanked her, one holding salt in a pouch, the other grasping a dull-bladed sickle.

  “Are we really doing this?” Ysel whispered.

  “We’ve already done more than most would dare,” Maelis replied.

  Beyond them, the forest dimmed unnaturally. The air didn’t grow darker—it grew thicker. Sounds seemed to get swallowed before they reached the ear.

  They crossed the threshold.

  With each step, the world changed. Trees twisted into unnatural shapes, their branches curling like fingers caught mid-twitch. The soil pulsed slightly beneath their boots, as if something just below was breathing.

  Lyra stirred against Maelis’s chest—not in discomfort, but in… anticipation.

  “She’s guiding us,” Maelis murmured. “I can feel it.”

  Faye held out the bone-thread map. The lines etched in the bone shimmered faintly, pointing toward a copse of trees twisted into an arch.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “It’s taking us straight through that,” Faye said, her voice hollow.

  “No turning back now,” Maelis replied.

  They entered.

  Deeper in, the Hollowing felt like a memory that didn’t belong to them.

  The light bent strangely. Leaves rustled even when the wind was still. Once, Ysel saw a hare scurry past with antlers instead of ears. She didn’t tell the others.

  Every so often, Lyra would emit a tiny sigh or coo—and each sound caused some small shift in the forest.

  Once, the bone-thread map pulsed in Maelis’s pouch just as they crossed an old creek bed—and the water began to flow backwards.

  “It’s like the land is listening to her,” Ysel muttered.

  “No,” Maelis corrected. “It’s remembering her.”

  The statement hung uneasily in the air.

  After what felt like hours, they reached it.

  A hollow in the earth, surrounded by thorned trees and flat stones shaped like shields. The pit at the center yawned open—too round, too smooth, as if carved by something patient and old.

  At the edge of the pit sat a stone altar, cracked through the middle.

  Faye moved first, setting the bone-thread map upon it.

  Immediately, the ground trembled.

  Lyra let out a sharp coo—not distressed, but commanding.

  The wind howled.

  Then, a voice—not spoken, but pressed into their minds:

  “She is returned.”

  All three midwives staggered back.

  “What was that?” Ysel gasped.

  Maelis stepped forward, face pale but calm. “A memory of the forest. Not a voice, not a being. An echo.”

  The pit began to glow faintly with a pale violet light. At its center, something floated.

  A spindle.

  Thin, black, metallic—etched with symbols that matched the bone-thread.

  Maelis reached for it. Lyra reached too.

  Their hands did not touch it—yet it responded.

  The spindle spun. Just once.

  And from its spin came a spark of light that painted the earth in moving lines—a map of Vaenmoor, of the forest, of paths unseen.

  Then it was gone.

  The spindle dropped. Dead again.

  But not Lyra.

  She blinked slowly, then laughed.

  A real, clear baby’s laugh.

  And all at once, the trees seemed to shudder—as if they’d been holding their breath.

  Faye turned to Maelis. “What was that?”

  Maelis didn’t answer.

  Because she wasn’t sure.

  But somewhere inside, she feared it was the first key in a lock better left unturned.