"We came to give her brother a gift from her heart. And you've turned it into a trial."
His hand reached inside his coat.
And pulled it out.
A stone.
Small.
But wrong.
Not warm. Not cold. But pulsing.
Veined like flesh. Metal-like in its shimmer.
As sun dipped and moon rose, the stone drank both—turning them into a sick violet glow that slithered across the ground. The light warped the space around it, soft and trembling, like the world itself was holding its breath.
The applause turned chaotic—shifting from mockery to madness.
The crowd surged, muttering, murmuring, stumbling toward something none of them could name.
Then:
"Pah! Pah! Pah! Pah!"
Again—louder. Closer. Right beside him.
He turned. She was already there.
Lines etched like cracked clay. Eyes like dry wells that had seen too much. Her mere presence splintered the gathering. Several villagers vanished from the edges without a word.
She wasn't just someone.
She was the village.
His fingers slipped on the staff. Doubt gripped his chest—but he pushed through it. He had Eva's dream to protect.
Her voice erupted again.
"You—he brought the curse. And now he brings her. The girl who shouldn't exist. The girl we silenced once before."
The words struck the crowd like gunfire. Faces turned. Eyes narrowed.
But he wasn't looking at them anymore.
He was looking at her.
Eva.
On her knees, bleeding. Gasping.
And still—not broken.
Then, she moved.
At first it was a tremor. Then her spine straightened. Her breath deepened. She placed her palms flat against the earth—not to push away, but to pull strength from it.
The crowd jeered louder now. Yelled curses. Threw words like stones. But none of it pierced her.
She rose—not with grace.
With force.
Her body screamed. Her blood roared.
But she stood.
And then—something changed.
Not in her.
In the air.
A pressure fell across the field, crushing and unseen. Not a wind. Not a sound.
A presence.
Like something had entered the space without stepping through any door.
All movement ceased.
Children hid their faces. Women held their breath. Dogs whimpered. Birds grew still.
Then came a whisper:
"Eva… is that you?"
It came from deep inside the crowd.
A voice that had been missing—
And now returned at the worst possible time.
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Faces once taut with judgment now bore a strange luminescence. The purple-gray light from the stone didn't just reflect—it clung. It deepened every crease, sharpened every shadow, and coated skin like ash from another realm. It made the living look carved from bone and dusk.
No one moved.
No one spoke.
They couldn't.
Their eyes locked on the stone—not from fear, not from wonder, but from something older. Something primal. It bypassed thought and hooked into instinct. A memory that belonged to neither dream nor waking. As if they weren't seeing the stone for the first time—but remembering it.
He gripped it with both hands now. Firm. Reverent. The way one might cradle a heart torn from a chest. His eyes never left it. Not showing it—protecting it. Possessed by it.
Above, birds began circling. Not frantic—measured. Wide spirals in perfect formation, like sentinels caught in a gravitational pull. The sky seemed to strain beneath them, thickening like wet cloth. The moment trembled on a wire.
Even the old woman—his grandmother—froze.
Her mask cracked.
Her mouth parted. No sound. Her tongue had failed her. For once, she couldn't speak it away.
Then—one voice. Then many.
"…What is that?"
The question was everywhere—dozens of voices speaking in eerie unison. It wasn't a question anymore. It was a confession. Their tones didn't just carry fear—they were fear. Raw, metallic, ancient.
Something in the stone called them. And something in them answered.
The elders—those with skin like dry riverbeds and eyes dimmed by time—began to tremble. Not all. Just a few. But their pupils shrank to pinpricks. Their jaws twitched. They knew. Oh, they remembered.
Then—lips moved.
Not willingly.
It began as a murmur. Then grew.
The language wasn't human. Not truly. The syllables scraped against the air, crooked and ancient, as though the stone itself were dragging the words through their throats.
"Vora nai, etha sun, mora kel, tira dun.
Brasa kelth, fira mon, sela durin, vola thrun.
Thren vos, thren kelth, thren borun, thren asha.**"
The wind slowed. The light changed.
Sky turned a sickened gray, then bled into an unnatural hue—something between dusk and decay. Not quite purple. Not quite gold. It hovered in the air like a memory you could touch but never name.
The stone's glow dominated. Shadows twisted unnaturally. Birds stuttered in midair like broken kites caught in invisible wires.
Eva stood motionless.
Her lips—unbidden—began to move.
She resisted. Clenched her jaw. But pain lashed through her skull like wire tightening around bone. Each time she tried to stop, it punished her. Her knees trembled. Her hands trembled.
And then—
"STOP!"
Her voice cut through the chant like a blade forged in light.
The world shattered.
People dropped. Some gasped. Some fled. Even the sky recoiled. The birds scattered like torn pages in a storm.
Silence fell—heavy, smoking, torn.
Eva clutched her face. Her palms bore faint red marks—like burns. Her breathing was shallow. Her pupils twitched, unfocused.
She stepped forward.
Each movement was crooked, strained. Her legs buckled like a puppet with tangled strings. Something unseen yanked at her body. She moved—but not of her own will.
The crowd watched, silent.
The chant had ended—but the stone's grip had not.
Behind her, the light began to die.
Not suddenly. Not completely. But like embers starved of air. The strange sky dimmed in kind, reluctant and resentful, as though the world itself was being forced to let go of something it didn't want to release.
Only now—without the blinding light—did the stone reveal its true shape. Jagged on one side, smooth on the other, it shimmered like glass pulled from deep beneath a volcano. Not polished, but forged—as if some unseen force had pressed time itself into its core.
Eva stepped closer.
Her breath slowed. Her chest calmed. Something shifted inside her—recognition, or perhaps surrender. She reached out.
One finger.
Barely a brush.
The stone pulsed.
Once.
Hard. Clean. As though it had recognized her.
The man holding it staggered. Shocked.
The stone had only ever responded to elevation—held high, fed to the heavens. But now it shimmered low, by her touch, drawn not to height but to her. His hands trembled. His thoughts faltered.
Then—movement.
Behind them.
His grandmother.