Mara sat upright in bed, eyes fixed on the same corner of the ceiling she had been staring at for hours. The burned charm from the bird still rested in her palm. The stone was warm now, like it had absorbed the heat of her restless grip.
The silence in her room was thick. Not peaceful. But she got used to it.
She knows that kind of silence doesn't wait for dawn.
She heard the wind whistle outside the window, though the trees weren't moving. She waited for something—anything—to tell her that she hadn't just imagined the girl at the post station, the silver eyes of the crow, or the growing pressure in her chest every time that symbol reappeared. But nothing came.
Her fingers curled tighter around the objects in her hands. She didn't notice her own nails digging into her skin. Then...
Mara stood.
Her feet made no sound against the old floorboards as she moved toward the desk. The lamp flickered once when she reached for it, casting shadows across the walls like long, watching limbs. She lit it anyway and pulled the notebook from the drawer.
It was the same one she always used when she couldn't sleep.
She flipped through pages filled with ink-smeared thoughts and half-formed drawings. Some were scribbles she didn't remember drawing. A few symbols matched the one she had seen.
The same curve. The same three lines. Always in the margins.
She hadn't drawn them.
Outside her window, the air changed. Not colder. Not warmer. Just... different. As though the house was no longer alone.
Mara froze.
There was no knock. No footstep. No creak.
But she felt it. Someone standing beyond the walls of her room. Not in the hallway. Not in the yard.
Closer.
She turned slowly. Her eyes found the window again.
It was closed.
She stepped toward it anyway, as if pulled forward by a thread she couldn't see.
The glass reflected her face, pale and drawn in the lamplight. But something else moved in the reflection.
A shape. Barely visible.
It was gone before she could focus.
Her heart was racing now, not from fear but from something deeper. Recognition. Like a piece of her had just brushed against something it had always known but never seen.
She opened the window.
The night air pampered her face. Still, nothing moved.
But the world had shifted.
A sound...too faint to be a voice, too sharp to be wind, drifted in. A whisper. A presence of something or someone trying to speak.
She pressed her palm against the window frame.
The stone and charm in her other hand pulsed once, faintly.
Then again.
She pressed the side of her face against the window frame.
This time, she heard it clearly.
A girl's voice.
Not the same as the one from the post station. This one was younger. Or older. She couldn't tell.
"Mara!"
She didn't speak. She didn't breathe.
The voice was gone.
The objects in her hand were now cold.
She stepped back from the window, closed it, and returned to her bed. She didn't sleep. But she isn't even afraid. Afraid? No. I can't describe this feeling too.
Not even when the first pale light of morning touched the corners of the sky.
She didn't need to anymore.
Whatever was coming had already begun.