The morning Ma taught Akilliz how to brew Calm Tea was the last morning everything felt safe.

  Sunlight poured across Lumara's market square, warming the frost-kissed cobblestones and making the whole village feel like it was wrapped in a soft golden blanket. Akilliz walked beside his mother through the bustling crowd, their wicker basket bumping gently against his hip. Glass vials clinked softly inside, each one filled with remedies they had brewed before dawn.

  At thirteen, he was all knees and elbows, sandy blonde hair sticking up no matter how many times she tried to smooth it down. But his hands were steady when he helped her arrange the potions on their small cloth beneath the old oak tree.

  "Remember the order?" Elowen asked, testing him like she always did.

  "Feverfew Kiss for coughs, Dusk Draught for sleepless nights, Glowpetal Salve for wounds that won't close clean." He pointed to each vial as he named them. "Blue, violet, and red."

  "Perfect." She squeezed his shoulder, pride warming her dark green eyes. "You've got the sight for it, Aki. Most folk around here can't tell potions apart until they taste them."

  The villagers came as they always did. Not in a rush, but steady.

  Old Cobb arrived first, leaning heavy on his walking stick. His gnarled fingers were wrapped in a dirty cloth, fresh blood seeping through. "Cut m'self on the plow blade, Elly! Stupid, at my age. Got anything to help?"

  "Of course we do. You aren't stupid, you're just stubborn." She smiled warmly and he nodded. "Let me see it."

  Elowen unwrapped the cloth with gentle hands, examining the wound. Deep, but clean. She dabbed Glowpetal Salve along the cut, humming softly. Three notes, rising and falling. The bleeding stopped almost immediately, the edges of the wound beginning to knit.

  Old Cobb whistled low. "Magic in them fingers, Elowen."

  "Just the herbs doing what they're meant to." She waved it off, pleased to see him well again. "Keep it wrapped clean for three days. A sack of barley when you harvest is payment enough."

  Next came Widow Bess, her scrawny goat in tow. The animal looked half-dead, ribs showing through patchy fur. "Won't eat. Just stands there like it's given up."

  Elowen knelt beside the goat, running her hands along its flanks. She glanced at Akilliz. "What would you use?"

  He thought hard, remembering the journal entries she'd made him copy. "Ground yarrow and... blessed thistle?"

  "Exactly right. Thistle drives out parasites." She mixed the remedy right there, crushing dried herbs until they released their sharp scent. She hummed while they dissolved. The mixture took on a faint golden glow.

  The goat drank it eagerly.

  "Three days," Elowen told Bess. "He'll be chewing through your fence by week's end."

  Bess pressed a still-warm loaf of bread into her hands. "Bless you, dear."

  By midday, their vials were nearly gone and the basket held payment in bread, cheese, dried sausage, and a small pouch of copper coins.

  "Good work today," his mother said, pressing two coppers into his palm. "Get us something sweet, will you?"

  Akilliz grinned and darted to Tild's bakery cart near the town's main well. The old baker's cinnamon rolls were legendary, always glazed thick and still steaming.

  "Two, please," Akilliz said, sliding the coppers across.

  Tild wrapped them in cloth, wheezing out a laugh. "Your ma's potions saved my hide last winter, boy. These're on me. Tell her I said thanks."

  He brought them back triumphantly. They sat on the stone bench beneath the oak and ate in comfortable silence. The glaze was perfect, sweet and sticky, and his mother laughed when it got all over his chin.

  "You're a mess," she said, wiping his face with her sleeve.

  "You've got some too!" he pointed out.

  She did, right at the corner of her mouth. They both laughed, and for a moment everything was simple. The market hummed around them. The oak's leaves rustled overhead. Somewhere nearby a child squealed with delight.

  His mother hummed that three-note tune again, soft and wandering. The herbs in the basket glowed brighter, and he felt the magic in it, small and warm as the sun on his shoulders.

  "Aki," she said quietly, still smiling. "Remember this. Magic isn't about power. It's about care. You hum to the herbs because you want them to grow, not because you can make them. That's the difference between healing and hurting."

  He nodded, not fully understanding but tucking the words away like coins in a pocket.

  "Now come on. Your pa will want lunch, and I need to gather nettles before dusk."

  They walked home together, basket light, hearts lighter.

  He didn't know it was the last time he'd see her smile like that.

  Evening came with lengthening shadows.

  "Aki," Ma called from the garden where she was bundling dried thyme. "I need feverfew and wild mint from the upper woods, past the clearing. Can you gather some before it's fully dark?"

  He looked up from where he'd been oiling the sword he and Pa had forged together last month. "Now? It's almost dusk."

  "The wild herbs are strongest at twilight. You know the path." She smiled, but something in her eyes looked distant. "Take your knife. And the basket."

  She caught his hand as he passed, squeezed it once. "Be careful, love. The mountain has old things living in it. Things we stay far away from."

  "Yes, Ma." He nodded before running off. She ruffled his hair as he headed away.

  The words should've been a warning he heeded.

  The southern woods of Frosthelm stood silent and watchful. Akilliz knew these woods like the back of his boots. He'd walked this path a hundred times gathering herbs for Ma. But tonight the familiar trail felt different.

  The clearing ahead should've been empty except for wild thyme and feverfew.

  Instead, a crooked cottage squatted in the center like a broken tooth.

  The shack hadn't been there yesterday. Couldn't have been. Smoke curled from a chimney that leaned so far sideways it seemed held up by stubbornness alone. Green light pulsed from the windows, and even from twenty paces away, he could smell it. Burned sugar and rotting flowers, sweet and wrong.

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  The forest had gone quiet. No birds, no wind, no sounds except his own breathing.

  Turn around. Go home.

  But there, half-buried beside the door, sat a flat stone carved with a symbol that hurt to look at. The rune twisted, folded in on itself, seemed to move when he wasn't looking straight at it.

  Something about it whispered "valuable" in a voice he couldn't ignore.

  He knew what he should use it for. Ma had been drinking her own cough medicine lately, and it never seemed to work the way he thought it should. Which was rare for her. Dark circles under her eyes, the weakness she tried to hide. A stone like that could probably buy real medicine from the cities down the mountain.

  His feet moved before his brain caught up.

  The door stood open like a mouth.

  Inside, jars lined the walls. Things floated in murky fluid, pressing against the glass with too many fingers. Bundles of herbs hung from rafters, tied with human hair, gray and brittle. A cauldron squatted over a fire that burned purple and wrong, flames licking upward in silence.

  The air tasted like licking a copper coin.

  On a table in the center sat another rune stone, bigger than the one outside. It glowed steady and bright, and something about it made his teeth ache.

  Don't touch it. You know better.

  But his hand was already reaching. The stone was warm. Almost hot. The moment his fingers closed around it, he knew he'd made a terrible mistake.

  Light exploded.

  White and green fire raced up his arm, burning cold instead of hot, and for a horrible moment he couldn't let go. The door slammed shut behind him.

  In the sudden silence, he heard breathing that wasn't his own.

  Slow, wet, and patient.

  "Thief."

  The word slithered out from the shadows near the cauldron, cold and pleased.

  She stood between him and the door now, though he hadn't seen her move. A hunched crone in patchwork rags that might've been velvet once. A hat of raven feathers drooped over an eye that was black as a frozen well.

  But it was her hands that made his breath stop. The fingers bent backward at the joints, too many knuckles, too long. When she flexed them they made soft wet popping sounds that made his toes curl.

  "Trespasser," she continued, voice scraping like rusted hinges. "In the domain of the Baroness of Boils and Blights, Countess of Curses Most Calamitous, Mistress of—"

  Akilliz lunged for the door.

  His hands hit wood that had turned to iron. He yanked, threw his weight against it. Nothing.

  Behind him, the witch laughed. It sounded like breaking glass wrapped in wet cloth.

  "Oh, the little sprout wants to run." She took a step forward. Her shadow moved wrong, stretching too far, reaching with fingers her body wasn't using. "But thieves must pay their tolls, yes? The mountain always collects the marked."

  Shadows peeled from the corners like living things, coiling around his ankles. Cold sank through his boots, into his skin, all the way to bone.

  He kicked, jerked backward. The shadows tightened.

  His hand found the small knife at his belt. He yanked it free and slashed wild.

  The blade passed through shadow like cutting smoke.

  "Iron doesn't bite shadow, slimy sprout!" The witch's grin widened, showing teeth that were too sharp and too many. "Nothing you have can help you now."

  She raised one hand. Those backward-bending fingers flexed, and darkness surged from her palm like oil spilling upward.

  The shadows around his legs yanked hard.

  He went down. His head cracked against the floor, stars bursting across his vision. He thought he was going to die. The knife skittered away into darkness. Blood tasted sharp where he'd bitten his cheek.

  The witch loomed over him, blotting out the purple firelight. Her shadow fell across his face, and where it touched, it burned cold.

  "Shall we begin?" She leaned close enough that he could smell her breath. Old feet and grave dirt. "I haven't cursed a child in ever so long."

  She began to chant.

  The words weren't in any language he knew, but they scraped against the inside of his skull anyway. His vision blurred. The room tilted. Something in his chest tried to pull free.

  No. No no no—

  Desperate, terrified, Akilliz did the only thing he knew how to do.

  He hummed.

  Three notes. Rising and falling. The same tune Ma used when asking herbs to share their strength. His voice came out broken and thin, barely audible over the witch's chanting.

  But the dried herbs overhead heard it.

  They shivered. One bundle began to glow. Then another. The fireflies in their jar started buzzing frantic against the glass.

  The witch paused mid-chant. "What—"

  He hummed louder. Poured everything he had into those three notes, even though it felt like his chest was tearing open.

  The jar of fireflies cracked.

  They burst free in a swarm of golden light. One of the herb bundles caught fire, orange and clean.

  The rune stone blazed.

  Light poured from it. Not green this time, but white-gold, the color of sunrise on snow. It washed across the shack in a wave, and where it touched, the purple fire died. The shadows shrieked loudly and fled.

  The witch screamed too.

  Her body sagged, rags sloughing away like wet paper. Her skin bubbled, turned gray, started to melt. Mud welled up around her boots, climbing fast.

  "No!" She clawed at the air, those weird fingers grasping. "Not yet! I wasn't finished-"

  The mud closed over her chest, her throat. Her eyes found his. They were melting too, running down her face in black streams, but somehow they still saw him.

  "Eternal footwarts, little thief." The words bubbled out wet. "May they send you into madness." The mud closed over her chin. "But that's just the beginning! The mountain marks its own boy... It always-"

  She sank.

  The last thing visible was her too wide and too sharp grin, stretching wider even as the mud swallowed it whole.

  Then she was gone.

  The fire died and the door creaked open on its own. Cold night air that smelled of pine and clean earth rushed inside.

  For a long moment Akilliz just lay there on the floor, shaking so hard his teeth chattered. He couldn't get enough air. Couldn't stop seeing those disgusting fingers bending backwards.

  Then pain flared in his right foot.

  Sharp and sudden, like a red-hot nail driven straight through to bone.

  He gasped, unlaced his boot with trembling fingers, and pulled it off.

  There, on the bottom of his foot, a wart had formed. Dark red, the size of a copper coin, throbbing with its own heartbeat. As he watched, tiny black veins spider-webbed outward from it, just beneath the skin.

  The itch started immediately. Deep and maddening.

  He ran.

  Branches whipped his face several times. Roots tried to trip him. His foot screamed with every step, but he didn't stop until Lumara's lights appeared below.

  He hit the cottage door so hard it slammed against the inside wall.

  "Ma!"

  His legs gave out halfway across the threshold. Elowen dropped what she was holding and crossed the room in three strides, hands on his face, his shoulders, checking for injuries.

  "Aki? What happened?"

  He tried to answer. Got as far as opening his mouth before everything came pouring out. Not words. Just gasping, hitching sounds that might've been her name.

  "Torin!" Her voice cracked sharp with command.

  Pa emerged from the back room, hammer still in one hand, soot streaking his face. He took one look at Akilliz shaking on the floor and his expression went hard.

  “What was it boy? See some wolves, or a bear?”

  Ma pulled him against her chest, one hand stroking his hair. "You're safe. You're home. Show me what hurts."

  He pointed at his foot with a shaking hand.

  She pulled off the boot carefully. Her breath caught when she saw the wart, those black veins spreading underneath. For just a moment, her face went very still. Very pale.

  Then she was moving again, grabbing fish-tape from the high shelf. It was a black goop that smelled like the worst parts of low tide, and she spread thick over the wart. The itch dulled fractionally.

  "What happened?" she asked again, softer. "Can you tell me now?"

  Torin raised a knowing finger, “Bet it was wolves then.”

  Akilliz frowned. The words came easier when he spoke to his ma, though they still shook. The shack that appeared from nowhere. The rune stone. The witch with her backward fingers. The curse. How she'd melted into mud still grinning.

  When he finished, his mother was quiet for a long moment.

  Then she pulled him close and held him tight enough that he could feel her heartbeat.

  "Witches and their curses," she murmured finally. "Always so dramatic."

  But her voice sounded wrong. Thin.

  "Will it go away?" Akilliz asked.

  "We'll draw it out slow." She pulled back enough to look at him. "You're safe now. That's what matters."

  But when she stood and turned away, he saw her wipe something from the corner of her eye.

  "Get him to bed," she told Torin quietly. "I need to check something."

  Pa scooped Akilliz up like he weighed nothing and tucked him under blankets. "Sleep if you can, boy. Your ma will fix this. Damn witches. "

  He couldn't sleep. And from the main room, he heard his parents talking in voices they thought were too low to carry.

  "—not natural, Elowen. Shacks don't just appear—"

  "I know what it means, Torin." Ma's voice was tight. "I know."

  "Then we need to do something-"

  "We do nothing. Not yet." A pause. "It's just a mark. We'll handle it."

  Silence.

  Then, quieter: "How long do you think we have?"

  "I don't know. Maybe weeks till it calls. Maybe less."

  "And the cough? Is it—"

  "Don't. Not yet. Let me have a few more days before we..."

  She didn't finish.

  The sound of footsteps. The back door opening, then silence. Then. the distant ring of Pa's hammer from the forge. Steady and relentless. Like he was fighting something that wouldn't die. He always swung hard.

  Akilliz lay in the dark, foot throbbing, and tried not to think about what "maybe weeks" meant.

  He didn't sleep.