"From blood, remembrance. From death, the gate."
There is no moon tonight. Only the cold.
In the center of the temple, thirteen robed figures gather in a ring, shadows stitched together by candlelight. Their faces are hidden beneath masks of bone and gold, carved with eyes that do not blink. Their voices do not rise. They descend, low and reverent, like earth falling into a grave.
On the altar of veined obsidian, an infant lies still.
Swaddled in ashen cloth. No talismans. No name. Only the mark. Cut into her skin with silver and salt, still weeping light.
She does not cry.
She only watches.
The High Voice steps forward, robes whispering. Her mask is older than the others, split down the middle, the crack held closed with a thread of golden hair. In her hand, she holds a long knife. Curved. Black as the void behind mirrors.
"The First must be willing," she intones. "The First must not weep."
The others bow their heads.
"From death, the gate. From silence, the name."
The High Voice raises the knife. The candle flames bow to her. In the deep silence of the room, something stirs.
One figure raises her head.
"There are other ways," she says.
The High Voice does not turn. "This is the way."
"She carries something older than the mark," the other says, "something older than the gate."
"She carries danger."
"So did we all, once."
The candle nearest the child gutters.
"You forget what this cost to bring forth," the second woman says. "She did not ask to be born with your silence."
The High Voice turns to face her. "You would call her mine?"
"No," the other says, "only that she is not only yours to end."
A blue light blazes from the child's hand. The altar cracks. The floor splits open beneath her. A yawning mouth of ancient stone, and from deep beneath the earth, a raw and hungry wailing rises.
She burns.
The gates swallow her.
The High Voice stumbles back.
The black knife clatters to the stones.
The light dies.