They say the soul remembers what the body forgets. And sometimes, a child is born carrying memories that do not belong to them.
But this story doesn't begin with the child. It begins with her mother.
Siana Serin was a quiet woman. Never loud. Never angry. The kind of woman whose gaze always drifted just past your shoulder, as if she saw something standing behind you, something you couldn't. On paper, she lived a simple life. Schoolteacher. Married. Predictable. But there was something in her blood that never truly slept. Something older than her name. Something is waiting.
She never told anyone about the dreams she had as a girl, the whispers in the walls, or the way mirrors blinked when she walked past. She learned to bury those things, to press them down and pretend they never happened. She told herself that if she just lived a normal life, kept her head down, and followed the rules, then maybe the past would stay buried too.
But fate has a long memory. And blood, no matter how long it sleeps, never forgets.
It started again the year she got pregnant. Her husband, sweet and a little too fond of old stories, insisted they visit her family's ancestral home. He said it would be good for the baby, a chance to connect with her roots. She didn't argue. She should have.
The house sat deep in the northern woods, where the fog clung low and thick, and the sun forgot to shine after midday. The village that once surrounded it was long gone, just fragments of stone, worn gravestones, and half-buried ruins. But the house was still there. A shell of black stone and sagging wood, its edges swallowed by moss. Above the door were carvings, spirals, runes, and symbols that seemed to breathe when the light caught them.
Her grandmother once said, "Those marks are older than our name. They keep the bad things out. As long as you never disturb them."
Siana never did. She was careful. But it didn't matter. Some things come anyway.
Three days in, her husband left to get supplies. The nearest town was over an hour away. He never came back.
Police came. Dogs, drones, the full search. But there were no tracks, no signs. His phone pinged once, deep in the forest, then silence. Like he'd stepped out of the world.
She stayed in the house one more night.
That was the mistake.
That night, the house breathed. Not the creak of settling wood or the groan of age, but a slow, deep breath. Like something beneath the floorboards was waking up. The fire snuffed out without warning. The windows fogged over from the inside. The air turned sour and thick, like wet earth and something rotting underneath.
Then came the whispers.
They didn't shout. They didn't rage. They simply whispered, Steady, endless, from the walls, the floors, and even the mirror above the hearth. Words in a language she couldn't name but somehow understood in her bones. Her skin prickled. Her heartbeat slowed. Something was watching.
She ran to the door, but it didn't open. It wasn't locked or stuck; it just… refused.
Then she felt it.
A pressure against her spine. A cold hand on her chest. A presence behind her, looming and wrong. It didn't breathe, but it hissed. And smiled.
She screamed. Then everything went black.
When she woke, the sun was up. The air was calm. The door opened like nothing had ever been wrong. But her wrist burned. And on it, faint but unmistakable, was a mark: a spiral inside a spiral. Pulsing gently. Alive.
She didn't speak of it. She packed her things and went home.
Weeks later, a doctor confirmed what she already knew.
She was pregnant.
She should've felt joy. Instead, she felt watched.
The farmhouse she moved into was far from town, surrounded by sunflower fields that stretched for miles. But the flowers began to wilt, even in the heart of summer. Birds never flew overhead. Animals skirted the property. Even the wind refused to blow near the house.
Inside, the mirrors cracked one by one. Doors opened when no one touched them. At night, something moved in the attic, pacing above her bed in slow, deliberate steps.
She tried to pray. Tried to pretend. But tonight, everything changed.
The sky turned black before sunset. The air thickened like molasses. The lights died without a flicker. Siana stood in the hallway, one hand clutched to her belly, breath shallow. The whispers had returned.
Then the shape came.
It stepped from the shadows, tall and veiled in smoke. No face, just a mouth, wide and grinning. It didn't walk. It floated. Wherever it passed, the walls peeled, and the floor rotted. Siana's eyes filled with tears that weren't hers. It had come for the child.
She tried to run. Screamed. But her body failed her. She collapsed.
And then, light.
Not from the world. Not from a lamp.
From him.
A figure appeared, standing between her and the dark. Eight feet tall, robed in white, armored in fire and memory. He carried a staff that shimmered with ancient light. His eyes were too bright to bear.
Not a ghost. Not a man.
Her ancestor.
Idran Serin.
"Touch my blood," he said, voice like thunder through the bones, "and you die forgotten."
The dark thing hissed. Not in fear. In fury.
Idran drew a circle of fire around them. Runes flared beneath their feet.
But he was fading.
"You must name her," he said, turning to Siana, his voice urgent now.
She couldn't breathe. Pain tore through her body, but she looked down—her child, half-born, already fighting to exist.
"Ayla," she whispered.
The name rang out like a bell. It echoed in the floorboards, in the trees outside, and in the sky above.
The dark thing screamed as it was dragged back into the shadows, burning.
Idran looked once at the child. "She will see what we could not. Walk where we could not. And end what we began."
Siana smiled, just once.
Then let go.
The light faded.
The child cried.
Outside, every sunflower in the field turned toward the house and bowed.
And far away, something ancient stirred. Something opened one eye.
The child had been born.
And the door had opened.
End of Chapter 1