**CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Voices Raised, Shadows Chosen”**

  By the time Anna reached the Fest hall that evening, dusk had settled like a bruise across the valley. Lanterns glowed weakly in the snow, casting trembling halos on the path. The whole village had come, crowding together beneath the high beams of the hall where Faschnat masks still hung like silent witnesses. The bonfire ashes had been swept away, but the scent of smoke lingered like a memory of something the villagers wished they could erase.

  Anna slipped inside, keeping her hood low, her body tense. She felt, more than heard, the shift in the room when she entered. Eyes tracked her like wolves watching the weakest deer. Whispers bloomed at the edges of the hall.

  “She was at the Bauer house this morning…” “She said Hans wasn’t right—how would she know?” “Bad luck came when she came.” “Her husband died mysteriously too…” “Maybe she carried something here.”

  Anna kept her eyes forward, jaw tight. Lena’s warning that morning—someone’s watching—echoed in her mind like a bell.

  At the front of the hall, Elder Dietrich stood beside the makeshift council table, supported by two younger men as if the weight of the village pressed physically upon him. His face was stern, haunted, yet steady.

  “Let us begin,” Dietrich said, tapping his cane once. “We have lost three. A fourth is missing. The sickness spreads fast. We must speak with calm minds and careful words.”

  But Jonas Neely stepped forward before Dietrich could continue. His boots thumped against the wooden floor. His face was red with cold and self-importance. His eyes locked on Anna like a hawk finding prey.

  “Calm minds?” Jonas barked. “While demons walk in our streets? While our neighbors die in their beds? Calm minds won’t save us.”

  A rumble of agreement moved through the crowd.

  Dietrich lifted a hand. “We do not know what this is yet.”

  Jonas sneered. “Maybe you don’t. But I know enough to see a pattern.”

  Anna stiffened.

  “She came here,” Jonas said, pointing straight at her. “And the valley changed.”

  A sharp intake of breath rippled across the hall.

  Anna forced her voice steady. “Jonas, your hatred of outsiders is older than the sickness.”

  “My hatred is for danger,” Jonas snapped. “You brought strange stories with you. A husband dead in a way no one explained. Ill luck following you like a shadow.”

  “My husband died in a mine,” Anna hissed. “Half the state knows such tragedies.”

  Jonas stepped closer, looming larger. “Then why did you run from Welch? Why did trouble follow you up the mountain?”

  “Enough,” Dietrich said warningly.

  But Jonas had the crowd now—fear bending them like wind bending tall grass.

  “She’s seen things,” Jonas continued, “before the rest of us. She knew Hans was sick. She warned her children to hide. She barricaded her home before anyone else thought to do so.”

  He turned to the crowd, raising his arms. “Why? How did she know?”

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  Because Lukas saw Hans. Because Lena sensed danger in her dreams. Because Anna had lived through a mine disaster and learned how to listen to dread like most people listened to rain.

  She opened her mouth—but Jonas cut her off with a triumphant shout.

  “Unless she brought this thing with her!”

  A woman cried out: “God protect us!”

  “They came sick from Welch!” someone yelled. “Maybe she’s cursed!” “No—maybe she speaks to things in the dark!”

  Anna felt the walls closing in.

  Lena had been right.

  Someone was watching her.

  Someone who wanted her gone.

  Dietrich slammed his cane against the floor, the sound echoing like a rifle shot. “No one in this valley blames a mother for trying to protect her children!”

  “You would defend her?” Jonas snarled. “Over your own people?”

  “Anna is our people,” Dietrich snapped. “She has worked beside us, grieved with us, carved with us—”

  Jonas cut him off. “She came from the coal country. They say strange sicknesses grow in those mines. Men lose their minds. Men walk after they die.”

  The hall turned cold.

  Anna’s breath left her lungs.

  The memory of Markus lying on canvas, the dust in his lungs, his hand gone cold in hers—it crushed her chest like stone.

  “She didn’t come here alone,” Jonas said, voice lowering, turning almost serpentine. “She brought that darkness with her. She carried it into our valley.”

  Anna shook her head slowly. “No.”

  Jonas’s smile was thin as a knife.

  “Yes.”

  He jabbed a finger at her.

  “She saw the signs before the rest of us. That means she knows more than she’s saying. She knows the cause.”

  The crowd pressed closer, fear turning eyes sharp.

  Dietrich stepped between Anna and the mob. “No one touches her. She is under my protection.”

  But Jonas spread his arms. “You protect the threat, Elder. The rest of us will protect the valley.”

  “Jonas,” Dietrich growled, “you tread dangerously close to sedition.”

  Jonas leaned forward, breath seething. “And you dangerously close to foolishness.”

  Whatever thin thread held order snapped.

  Voices erupted:

  “Anna brought this!” “She’s the curse!” “She must leave!” “Exile her!”

  Anna looked around, chest pounding. She saw in every face the same fear she had felt that night in Welch when the sirens howled and the mine collapsed—a fear that needed someone to blame more than it needed the truth.

  Lena and Lukas would not survive exile.

  “Enough!” Anna cried, stepping forward. “If you want a monster to blame, look outside your doors. Not at me. Hans walked in death—I wasn’t anywhere near him!”

  But the room was too loud to hear reason.

  Jonas raised his hand, quieting the mob.

  “Tonight,” he said, “we choose who stands with the village—and who stands against it.”

  Anna stared at him, understanding dawning too late.

  He wasn’t afraid of her.

  He wanted her gone.

  Because fear gave him power.

  Because scapegoats gave him an audience.

  Dietrich stood firm, but his voice held little weight against the rising storm. “No decision will be made tonight. We will reconvene in the morning.”

  Jonas’s lip curled. “The morning may come too late.”

  Anna backed toward the door.

  Eyes followed her like knives.

  As she stepped outside, the cold hit her like a slap. Snow swirled in the wind. Shadows stretched long across the path.

  For the first time since she arrived in Helvetia, she felt hunted.

  Not by the dead.

  By the living.

  Under the darkening sky, Anna pulled her hood tight and hurried home—knowing full well that Jonas Neely had turned the valley into a powder keg.

  And she was the spark he intended to ignite.