Mira never told Kael about the shrine.
She passed it every fifth market trip, a simple stone hollow behind the weaver's alley, overgrown with moss and ignored by nearly everyone under forty. The runes there weren't legal — they pulsed in patterns too old for the licensing offices to recognize. Too clean. Too honest.
But every time Mira passed it, her pulse slowed. Her breath caught. And she remembered what it felt like to believe in gods no one else would name aloud anymore.
Noc'thera didn't have temples now. They had debts. Chains. Myths folded into lullabies and hushed before the children learned to ask what the words meant.
Mira still remembered.
---
That morning, Kael had stared into the mirror again.
Not long. Not obsessively.
But differently.
No child should have to study their own reflection like a riddle with no answer.
And yet — Kael did.
Every day.
And never once had they asked Mira why no one else seemed to notice the shifting skin, the changing eyes, the fact that people stared too long and never the same way twice.
Because Kael knew.
Mira felt it in her bones.
Her child was walking through this world with a silence shaped like a secret they had no words for yet.
---
She watched them run a fingertip along the edge of the basin, thoughtful.
Then they smiled — not at her, not at themselves. Just… to the room.
And walked out.
---
Later that day, Mira stitched leather into fresh herb pouches and tried to ignore the whisper at the base of her spine.
The one that always came when old magic brushed too close.
The one that told her: Kael has already crossed the line. You just didn't see when.
She put the pouch down and stared at her hands.
"You can't prepare a child for a war they don't know is coming," she murmured. "But you can teach them to run."
---
The elder's house wasn't listed on any census.
It didn't need to be.
People who needed her knew how to find it — up the ridge, beneath the old cliff-bark tree whose roots cracked the stone steps like the bones of the past refusing to stay buried.
Mira brought fruit soaked in firevine syrup and a woven bundle of bluewort leaves. Not offerings. Just… remembrances. Small tokens to say I remember where I came from.
The door creaked open before she knocked.
The woman inside was ancient. Not in the way humans counted — not frail or fragile — but settled. Rooted so deep into the earth of her bloodline that no one had the power to move her.
"Mira," the elder said. "You finally came."
"I said I wouldn't."
The elder nodded once. "And yet here you are."
---
They sat on cushions that smelled faintly of moss and mint. Steam rose from stoneware cups. No questions were asked yet.
But Mira's fingers wouldn't stop folding the hem of her sleeve.
Finally, she said, "My child sees things. Understands things they shouldn't."
The elder's gaze sharpened. "Magic?"
"No. Not yet. But the way they listen... like they already know what you're going to say. Like they're not just learning — they're remembering."
A long pause.
"You think the curse is active?" the elder asked.
"I think the curse is just the beginning."
---
Mira had tried, once.
Tried to see her child as they truly were.
She'd held Kael in front of the old iron mirror in their room — just to look. Just to reassure herself that the strange whispers around them were nothing but nervous gossip.
But what looked back at her wasn't what her arms held.
Not wrong. Not twisted. Just… off. Off in a way too subtle to name and too obvious to ignore.
It was a face she could love — she did love. But even in the mirror, the eyes didn't match. The posture shifted slightly depending on how she stood. The entire reflection felt like a guess her heart was making.
It took her weeks to admit the truth:
She could not see her child's real face.
Not even in reflections.
Not even as their mother.
The illusion was seamless. Beautiful, even.
But it wasn't real.
Only Kael ever saw themselves without the mask.
And that fact haunted Mira more than she dared to say.
---
"I want to protect them," Mira said, voice trembling. "But how do you guard something that doesn't want to hide?"
"You don't," the elder said gently. "You teach it when to speak. And when to wait."
Mira blinked. "You're saying I should just let this play out?"
"I'm saying… don't warn a star not to shine. But do teach it the names of those who fear the dark."
---
Mira walked home under a sky the color of rust and ash.
Dusk always made the town quieter — not silent, but breath-held. As if the buildings themselves were waiting for night to decide what kind of darkness it would bring.
She didn't stop at the market.
Didn't greet the lantern-lighters.
Didn't even wave to old Greya, who always sat on her porch knitting truth-strings into her sleeves.
Her feet carried her the back way, up the long curve of the alley near the baker's shed, through the herb garden, and into the house from the side door. No one saw her enter. That mattered.
Kael was asleep by then. Curled in the corner of the blanket nest they insisted on building each night near the fire pit, even when it wasn't cold. One hand clutched a wooden carving their father had whittled — something between a bird and a lion, though Kael had declared it a dragon and dared anyone to disagree.
Mira knelt nearby and just watched them breathe.
---
There was a part of her that wanted to wake them. Just to say something — anything — before the world pulled further out of reach.
But what would she say?
That their face wasn't theirs?
That no one could see them?
That the world feared things it couldn't understand, and destroyed what it feared?
No.
That wasn't a lesson you told.
That was a truth you prepared for.
---
She rose quietly, stepping across the worn floorboards to the storage alcove beneath the stairs.
There, behind the old tincture jars and dried roots, she pulled out a flat stone box wrapped in old healer's cloth.
Inside: a ring.
Simple. Dark metal. Barely a glint to it.
But the glyph on the inside — etched in lines too small for any commoner to notice — marked it as a Noc'theran oathband. A tradition so old it had become ritual, and then myth, and then forgotten entirely.
Worn by guardians.
Passed from parent to child when the time was right.
She ran her thumb over the band once.
Then tucked it in the satchel Kael kept under their blanket pile, between a cracked sketchpad and a string of lucky charms made from scavenged wire.
---
They wouldn't notice it yet.
Not until they needed it.
And when that day came…
They would not be alone.
Not truly.
---
Mira didn't sleep that night.
She sat by the window, watching the sky peel open to stars — the real ones, not the polished dome-lamps that lit the market square.
And she whispered to the dark, the way her grandmother once had:
> "If you hear me, old spirits — don't stop the storm. Just leave my child enough light to find their way through it."