The forest beyond Vaenmoor no longer felt like a place. It felt like a presence—watching, breathing, judging.
Ysel paused first, her lantern swaying as if reluctant to light the path ahead. The ground beneath her boots was damp, softened by the spring rains, but it was more than the wet soil that made her hesitate.
“Maelis,” she called quietly. “There are bones here. Arranged.”
Maelis stepped forward, her eyes narrowing. Faye, still holding the baby against her chest, tightened her grip. The strange hush in the trees hadn’t lifted since they left the cottage. Not even an owl dared to call.
They saw them then—pale white bones, snapped clean, lined in a near-perfect crescent along the mossy trail. At the center of the arc, a symbol scratched into the earth. It resembled the rune from Lyra's swaddling cloth.
“That’s... a ward,” Maelis muttered. “An old one. It's not meant to keep things out.”
“What then?” Ysel asked, already knowing the answer.
“It binds something in.”
A gust of wind flared the lantern’s flame, casting wild shadows against the trees. For a moment, it looked like someone moved between them—a figure, tall and bent, cloaked in bone-colored fabric.
Faye swore under her breath. “We shouldn’t have come this far.”
“We had to,” Maelis replied. Her voice wasn’t cold anymore, just tired. “But now we decide.”
She turned to Ysel and Faye, the weight of decades sitting heavy on her shoulders. “We can’t raise her in the village. Not when her very cry speaks the forbidden. Not when we don’t know who—or what—marked her birth.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Ysel met Maelis’s eyes, defiance flickering for a moment. “So you want to leave her? Let the forest have her?”
“No,” Maelis said. “We make the pact. The oath of the third breath.”
Faye’s eyes widened. “That’s outlawed. Since the old wars—”
“No one’s alive who remembers those laws,” Maelis said. “But we remember the magic.”
“The oath of the third breath,” Ysel whispered. “One to raise. One to protect. One to hide the truth.”
Maelis nodded. “We do this together. We do not speak her name. We raise her with care. And if the forest ever comes calling—we send her alone.”
For a long moment, no one moved. The wind fell dead again, as if the forest held its breath.
Then Faye stepped forward and extended her free hand, still holding Lyra in the crook of her arm.
Ysel placed her fingers over Faye’s.
Maelis followed, pressing hers over both.
Together, they whispered the old words, ones passed down not in books but in quiet, blood-bound ceremony:
"Three shall hold the fate of one—
By breath begun, by shadow done—
Should silence break and name be told,
The forest wakes, the pact unfolds."
The trees creaked. A crow called in the distance. Lyra shifted in her sleep, a low whimper escaping her lips—but no syllables this time. Just a sound, small and human.
And behind them, in the corner of Maelis’s eye, a shadow moved again. Watching. Waiting.
Elsewhere, Deep in the Bonewood...
The figure stood where the crescent of bones ended, unmoving beneath a tangle of hanging moss. The bones didn’t scare it. The warding symbol didn’t hold it.
It knelt slowly and pressed its hand to the soil, right where Lyra’s cry had echoed hours before. The earth was still warm.
“She has come,” it rasped, a voice that sounded like wind over graves. “And they have made the oath.”
Behind it, more shadows stirred—tall, narrow silhouettes with faces covered in stitched leather.
“The child must walk alone,” the voice said again. “Until the word is spoken.”
Then, slowly, it began to laugh.
Back at the Midwives’ Cottage...
Later that night, when the forest had returned them safely to the edge of the village, the three women laid Lyra back in the crib by the hearth. She opened her eyes just briefly. Faye could swear they looked like embers—not glowing, but deep and red in a way that didn't belong to a newborn.
Ysel tucked a charm beneath her blanket.
Maelis remained by the fire, silent. The oath had been made. The child was theirs now.
For better or worse.