Mira always believed in dirt.
Not the polished, enchanted soil the richer cities bragged about. Not the clean, ribbon-wrapped market herbs grown under mage lights.
She believed in the kind of dirt that stained skin and kept secrets. The kind that clung to your elbows after a day spent digging for root-bark in a silent grove, where even the wind didn't speak.
That was the kind of dirt she trusted.
And it was the kind her child was born into.
---
She knelt in the garden behind the tannery—if the patch of warped soil and stringy sprouts could be called that—while Kael sat beside her on an overturned bucket, watching a trail of ants with solemn curiosity.
"You don't have to sit still," Mira murmured.
Kael didn't answer. Just tilted their head.
"I'm not making you help."
"I'm watching," Kael said, voice light and serious at the same time.
Mira paused.
Then smiled, but didn't ask what they were watching for. Kael had a way of answering questions like they'd already been asked twice.
---
The garden was stubborn. The tannery's runoff soaked the dirt with alkaline filth, and nothing she planted grew the way it should. But she kept trying. Not because they needed the herbs—though that helped—but because it grounded her.
The world was always looking for reasons to uproot Noc'thera. The least she could do was give something roots.
---
Kael reached out and touched a sprig of redgrass.
"You're going to tell me that one's poisonous," they said.
"I was," Mira answered. "It looks like sorrowvine, but it saps mana through skin contact."
Kael didn't pull away—just moved their hand to the stalk instead of the leaf.
"You're not supposed to know that," Mira said.
Kael smiled slightly. "I listen."
It was the kind of answer a smart child would give.
But Kael wasn't just smart.
They were sharp. Tuned.
Like a chisel made to shape something no one had drawn yet.
---
That evening, Mira watched Kael sleep and tried not to name the feeling in her chest.
It wasn't fear.
Not quite.
She'd grown up knowing what fear was—walking with her head down, dodging the eyes of mages and city guards, hiding her skin beneath gloves in towns where her race was called plague-blooded.
She knew fear like an old scar.
This was different.
It was like seeing a candle burn underwater.
It shouldn't be possible. But it was. And the longer she watched, the more afraid she was of what might come looking for that impossible light.
---
Tarren was out reinforcing the door locks. Again.
He didn't say much these days. Just listened, observed, kept weapons closer than before.
He hadn't told her everything. She didn't push.
Because she hadn't told him everything either.
Like how the old woman at the market had bowed to Kael yesterday. Not just politely—reverently. And whispered, "Returner…" under her breath before scurrying away like she'd said something dangerous.
Like how a street vendor dropped his plate when Kael laughed and looked at them like they were a ghost.
Like how every week, she remembered their face differently.
---
But Mira never spoke those things aloud.
Because naming things gave them weight.
And weight was the last thing Kael needed.
---
The next morning, they left the tannery and walked toward the eastern edge of the city where wild growth reclaimed half-forgotten temples. Mira liked to gather herbs there—ones that didn't survive in her garden but still sprouted in places the city ignored.
Kael walked quietly beside her, hand in hers.
Halfway there, Kael stopped. Not like a child distracted by a bird or shiny stone.
Stopped.
Looked.
Tilted their head.
"What is it?" Mira asked gently.
Kael pointed to a crumbling statue half-swallowed by ivy. "They used to worship something here."
Mira nodded. "Lots of gods in the old days."
"Not gods," Kael said softly. "Something older."
Mira's skin prickled.
She knelt beside them. "Who told you that?"
Kael didn't answer right away.
Then: "No one told me."
Just that.
And they kept walking.
___
By the time they returned from the temple ruins, Mira's satchel was full—soulmoss, damp-thread fern, dry-cling bark, and one rare stalk of silverbite she hadn't seen since she was a teenager. She hadn't meant to stay out so long, but time bent strangely when Kael was near. The walk back to their flat felt longer, heavier.
Kael stayed close, but not like a child seeking safety.
More like a shadow that chose to remain.
---
The city had changed.
She noticed it in small things. The way people crossed the street when they saw her coming. The way whispering didn't stop when she passed. The looks people gave Kael—longer now, tinged with confusion or awe or quiet fear.
People used to look through Noc'thera.
Now they looked at her child.
And that was worse.
---
She stopped by the herbalist co-op before heading home.
Old Harna was there, as always, hunched behind her grinding bowl like a bird guarding a nest.
"Back from the ruins?" Harna croaked. "You've got swamp spirit all over you."
Mira smiled politely. "Better that than tannery fumes."
Harna gave a bark of laughter. "True enough."
Kael stood beside her, still and quiet.
Harna's smile faltered.
Her eyes lingered too long on the child's face.
"You know," she said slowly, "there's talk about a cursed one wandering the Eastend."
Mira's shoulders tightened.
"Oh?" she said casually. "What sort of talk?"
Harna leaned in. "Shifting face. Glowing eyes. Some say they saw their dead spouse in the child's smile. Others say the kid's hair changes when you look away."
Mira did not flinch.
She looked down at Kael, who was watching Harna without blinking.
"They say it's a blessing," Mira said softly. "Not a curse."
"Same thing, sometimes," Harna muttered.
---
They left soon after.
As they walked, Kael asked, "What did she mean? About curses?"
Mira didn't answer right away.
Then she said, "People like to explain what they fear."
"And she fears me?"
Mira looked down at them. "No. She fears what she doesn't understand. There's a difference."
Kael didn't nod or question it. Just accepted it. As always.
Mira wanted to believe that was a sign of trust.
But deep down, she feared it was something else:
That Kael wasn't asking because Kael already knew.
---
That night, Kael played alone in the far corner of the flat with a circle of pebbles and string. They arranged each stone with careful intent, forming shapes Mira couldn't recognize—never the same twice.
She didn't ask what it meant.
She just watched, and when Kael caught her gaze, they smiled.
"Making friends," they said.
"Are they real?"
Kael tilted their head. "Not yet."
Then went back to placing stones.
---
When the lanterns were dimmed and the city quieted, Mira pulled a thin journal from the false panel in the cupboard.
She'd started writing in it before Kael's birth, when the curse began to reveal itself and the midwife swore she'd seen a different child in every blink.
Now she only wrote once every few weeks.
Tonight, she wrote more than usual.
> Kael is not like other children. I don't mean gifted. I mean sculpted—like someone poured starlight into clay and whispered truths before the clay cooled. I don't know who they'll become, but I don't believe I was given this child by accident. Still, I worry that I'm not enough. That I'll miss something vital. That I'll wake one day and find I've only ever seen the surface.
Today, Kael spoke to an old statue and told me gods are not what they used to be. I don't know where they heard that. I don't think they did.
She paused.
Then added:
> If there's something watching them, I hope it sees me watching back.
---
The last thing Mira did before sleep was kiss Kael's forehead and whisper an old prayer in Noc'theran:
> "Grow as the roots do—quiet, slow, and deep enough to split stone."
Kael didn't stir.
But for a heartbeat, Mira swore they smiled in their sleep.
---
The next day, Mira took Kael to the outer gardens near the flooded quarter — not the wild temple ruins this time, but the small green area tended by refugees, outcasts, and elders. The kind of place where no one asked where you were from, as long as you didn't ruin the roots.
They kept mostly to themselves. Mira exchanged cuttings with an old dwarf woman named Jarla who only spoke in whistled phrases and partial Common. Kael wandered toward a cluster of kids playing with chalk and stones.
Mira let them go.
---
Ten minutes later, she saw it happen.
One of the children — a sharp-faced boy wearing a rich-faded tunic — stepped back as Kael approached, eyes narrowing. He whispered to another boy, who looked at Kael, blinked, and then flinched like he'd seen a ghost. A girl nearby gasped.
Kael paused.
Looked at them.
Then turned and walked away.
No tears. No slump. No reaction.
Just… stillness.
Too practiced. Too knowing.
Like it had happened before. Like it wasn't even worth explaining.
---
Mira walked to Kael slowly.
They didn't look up when she reached them.
"They saw something," Kael said quietly.
Mira sat beside them. "What do you think they saw?"
Kael didn't answer.
So she asked a different question. "What did you see?"
Kael's voice was flat. "I saw a test. They failed."
It didn't sound angry. Just tired.
Mira reached for their hand. "You don't have to carry that weight."
Kael looked at her, finally. "I don't have to. I already am."
Mira looked away, throat tight.
She didn't know what scared her more — what the children had seen…
Or the fact that her child wasn't surprised by it.
---
That night, Tarren returned late with fresh fish and mud-stained boots. Mira didn't tell him what had happened in the gardens. She didn't need to. He felt it in the air.
When Kael fell asleep, Mira sat at the table and folded her hands.
"You've felt it too," she said. "The way people look at them."
Tarren nodded. "They flinch. Or they stare too long."
"It's not normal."
"Neither is Kael."
Mira winced.
"I didn't mean it cruelly," he added. "But they're not what we were. Not even close."
Mira glanced at the small bed where Kael slept, curled around a rolled blanket like it was armor.
"Do you think they're dangerous?"
"No," Tarren said.
Then, after a long silence, "But I think the world is dangerous to them."
---
Before bed, Mira opened her journal one last time that week. Her hand hovered above the page for a while before she wrote anything.
> The world speaks one language now. That's what they say. One tongue. One nation under heaven. But that's only true for those who hear what's on the surface.
I speak the old words still. Quietly. Half-pronounced. Half-sung. I think Kael understands them more than they should.
Tonight I whispered a lullaby in Noc'theran. I thought I made it up. My grandmother used to hum it, but never sang the words. When I finished, Kael whispered the final verse.
A verse I never taught them.
I don't know what that means. I don't know if I should be afraid. But I do know this:
Our child is listening to more than the world has taught them. And something is listening back.
She closed the book, hiding it behind a loose stone near the hearth.
Then she lay beside Kael and held them gently, as if her arms could stop prophecy.
---
Outside, the city of Kevarith slept.
But somewhere deep below its roots — beneath stone and blood and bone — something remembered the old songs.
And waited.