Chapter 11 - Between Worlds

The merchant had appeared in the village again. The first time he had come, everyone had been really excited for the new products that they would have the opportunity to buy. With time, the merchant had established loyal customers; one of them was Sera, who always bought different plants for her own use, but this time was different. She had come after the insistence of Eirian for the past couple of months to buy her different things.

That morning the square was empty, and by noon, his cart stood like a crooked tooth in the center of the cobblestones—covered in patched canvas and odd bundles, all swaying in the breeze like they might take flight if given permission. His name, if he gave one, was never the same from one villager to the next. Some called him Thatch. Others claimed he was a former city archivist, disgraced for selling cursed items. Children whispered that he talked to birds when no one was looking.

Eirian didn’t care what his name was. She only cared about what she saw.

She and Sera had come early, hoping to avoid the crowds. Eirian’s shopping list was tucked under her arm: three long fox feathers, two strips of dried ash bark, and powdered gold leaf—if he had any that wasn’t spoiled or fake. Sera already looked all over the products; she noticed that this time the merchant hadn’t brought her any new plants or seeds, casting suspicious glances at the bundles tied in triplets. The row of stitched dolls hung from the cart’s side like shrunken guards.

“How can he forget about my order?” she murmured. “You truly can’t trust anyone. These kinds of sellers are always half-truth and full-price.”

Eirian barely heard her. Her eyes had locked onto something near the cart’s rear.

A lantern.

It hung from a splintered post jutting out above the canvas canopy. The frame was made of bone—real bone, she could tell, bleached white and grooved like finger joints. The ribs curved in on themselves like something that used to breathe. Inside, a dull wick burned without smoke or scent, just a low, constant hum—too soft for ears, but not for her.

It was humming to her threads; those were floating around the lantern and were behaving strangely, as if they were trapping something.

She stepped closer before she meant to.

“Careful,” the merchant said suddenly. He had appeared beside her like a puff of smoke, his voice smooth as silk dragged across stone. His smile was thin, unreadable. “Some things don’t like being noticed.”

Eirian looked up at the lantern. The closer she stood, the more the hum vibrated in her chest. Her fingers twitched at her side.

“What is it?” she asked softly.

“Old,” he replied. “Older than the war. Older than any school of magic still allowed to name itself. We call it a Bone Lantern. Though that’s just a name. Names don’t tell you what things are, do they?”

She didn’t answer.

The hum grew sharper. Her fingers lifted.

Don’t touch it, a thread warned.

She touched it anyway.

Her skin brushed the lower rib of the frame—and the world bent sideways.

Sound vanished.

The square disappeared.

In its place came a scream.

A soul-cry, piercing and endless, like someone drowning in a well that had no water—only darkness, coiled and deep. She saw nothing, only the sensation of struggle. Of something trapped. Clawing at the edges of itself.

Help me, please.

The voice came jagged, with different emotions at the same time, but mostly she could feel fear and suffering.

Eirian stumbled back, gasping. Her legs almost gave out. Sera caught her by the arm.

“What did you touch?” Sera demanded. “Eirian—your eyes are bleeding.”

Tears of blood were streaming down her face. Hot and wet and salt-stained, but she couldn’t stop them.

The merchant smiled wider. “It does that to people. Spirit-hum’s a cruel thing when bottled too long.”

Sera stepped in front of her like a shield. “What in the name of the Grove are you selling? Is that cursed?”

The merchant tilted his head. “If you believe in curses, then yes. If not, it’s just an echo with teeth. I’d part with it for four silvers.”

Sera scowled. “Four silvers for a screaming soul? That’s robbery.”

“Depends who’s screaming.”

Eirian stepped forward again. “We’re buying it.”

“No, we’re not,” Sera said sharply. “You’re shaken. You touched something you shouldn’t—”

“I heard her,” Eirian whispered. Her voice trembled. “There’s someone in there, Sera; I know that she’s trapped.”

Sera hesitated.

“Even if you’re right, it’s forbidden. These kinds of tools—they’re outlawed. They’re from the Golden Order.”

“The Golden Order?” Eirian echoed.

Sera turned to her, low and tense.

“They were spirit-binders, dangerous ones. They believed suffering made magic stronger, that trapping souls in objects could make them holy, even if they needed to kill innocent people so they could experiment with their souls. The kingdoms burned their monasteries for it. That thing—” she pointed at the lantern “—should be buried.”

“She’s in pain.” Eirian whispered, as if tormented with the idea of ignoring the suffering of an innocent soul.

Sera didn’t speak.

The merchant leaned on his cart. “Maybe she is. I know that would be my case if I was the one who had been there for such a long time. I’m surprised she can still scream; honestly, someone may think that she would be extinguished by now.”

Eirian looked up at Sera. “Please. I don’t want to use her in some way. I just want to free her.”

“You don’t know how.”

“I’ll find a way. But if we leave her here, someone else will buy it. Or he’ll burn it.”

The merchant gave a polite shrug.

“Can’t sell it if no one wants it. Can’t keep what no one buys. Fire does clear up room,” he said with a clear mind; apparently he didn’t have a single remorse in his head.

Sera’s jaw tightened, and her hands clenched; the attitude of the merchant was getting on her nerves.

She glanced down at the bundle in her basket—the feathers, the ash bark, and the other things Eirian had begged her for over the last few months since the merchant started visiting their village.

So many strange requests lately.

She sighed.

Then, finally, she pulled four silver coins from her satchel and placed them gently on the cart’s edge.

“Nothing extra,” she told the merchant. “And we never met you.”

He gave a courteous bow. “What a pleasure it’s been.”

Sera took the lantern, wrapping it in cloth, careful not to touch the bone frame. She handed it to Eirian like one might hand off a newborn fire.

They walked home in silence.

The lantern hummed faintly beneath Eirian’s arm, like a sorrow that hadn’t forgotten itself.

***

Night came after a long day. The wind had calmed by the time Eirian slipped outside, carrying the Bone Lantern wrapped in its cloth shroud.

The garden behind the house was quiet—overgrown in the corners, wild with herb shoots and forget-me-nots. Sera had gone to sleep already, after a long day of watching coins disappear into strange tools and stranger intentions.

Eirian waited by the old ash stump, where the stones were warm from the day’s sun and the spiders built their tightest webs.

She unwrapped the lantern slowly.

The bone was smooth beneath the cloth. Carved ribs curled in symmetrical arcs, each etched with runes that resembled tear tracks—like sorrow made into script. The wick inside no longer burned, but the frame still hummed, faint and restless.

She set it down in front of her, crossing her legs beneath her cloak, and pulled the Mugu from her satchel.

The merchant had called it a shaman’s bell, but it wasn’t truly a bell. It was a hollow disc made of horn and copper, with two tiny clappers suspended inside. When shaken, it made no sharp chime—only a low, echoing ring, like a memory calling itself back from the end of a hallway.

She had bought it on instinct.

Now she understood why.

Eirian held the Mugu in both hands and let her breath slow. Her mana stirred. Threads moved.

Then she rang the Mugu.

Once. Twice. Three times.

The sound was soft—barely enough to wake a bird. But the threads in the lantern responded. They pulsed and vibrated in synchrony with the bell. One by one, the runes on the lantern began to glow faint blue, like they were being remembered.

Eirian didn’t speak aloud.

Her will shaped itself into intention; she was trying to reach the soul with her bare hands, but she was being rejected.

“You don’t belong in a cage,” she tried to reassure the soul inside the lantern; maybe with her approval she could do something about her situation and set her free. Eirian knew that nobody deserved what the soul was being submitted to: to suffer in silence for eternity with no way out of that hell.

A hum inside the lantern answered, and the threads outside rippled.

She pressed her hand to the base of the lantern, but nothing happened.

“I can help you with that,” she heard the demon spoke in her mind.

At first, Eirian didn’t know how to respond to his proposal.

“Why would you do it?” She finally asked.

“I feel a connection with the lantern, all of my memories are very vague, maybe with it I can understand something about them.”

She tried again with the help of the demon, and her soul slipped—just slightly—through the seams between what was bound and what was breaking.

The garden faded.

The lantern grew tall.

The space inside unfolded into a hall of cracked glass and flame-shadow. Air that wasn’t air. A feeling of cold sorrow pressed into her chest, and there, in the center, knelt a woman.

Her robes were torn priestess garb, silver-laced and bloodstained. Her hair hung in braids heavy with ash, and her face—

Her face was too human.

Eyes swollen from weeping, lips cracked from prayer, hands clasped in desperation around a charm that had long since lost its light.

She looked up when Eirian appeared, as if she had been waiting.

“…I prayed someone would hear me,” the woman said. “I don’t even know how much time I have passed inside the lantern.”

Eirian moved closer and knelt.

“I did,” she said. “I heard you.”

The woman’s smile was small.

“They told me the Order was wrong; my family tried to warn me; they said that binding spirits would bring ruin. I didn’t want to believe them and stayed with them.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re young; why is someone so young inside this place?”

Eirian tilted her head. “You shouldn’t be here either.”

They stared at each other.

Then the woman reached out; she was offering her hand to Eirian.

Eirian could see that in her hand was an owl mask; it was like a tattoo, stitched from shadow and echo and something that felt like memory.

“I left this behind,” she whispered. “Take it; it’s all I have left that’s still clean.”

Eirian grabbed her hand, and she could feel a small sting in her palm, like the bite of a spider. The moment her fingers closed around the gift, the lantern screamed.

The object was starting to succumb in real time; both of them could see cracks all over the place surrounding them. The more time that passed, the more the cracks expanded.

Its runes flared in violent blue, then white, then a burst of different colors.

Glass-sharp light cracked through the vision.

Eirian’s back arched.

Her body snapped into the waking world as the lantern exploded outward—bone splinters flying like moths, swallowed in light.

She hit the ground hard.

Her breath punched out of her lungs, the Mugu rolling into the grass. Threads tangled and snapped around her like seaweed in a riptide. Her fingers burned.

A mark glowed on her palm—the same that the woman had in hers, bright gold against her skin, pulsing with aftershock.

And then, like a wave retreating, it faded.

All at once, it was over.

Silence reclaimed the garden.

The lantern was gone. Only fragments remained, strewn across the roots of the ash stump—blackened, useless. The hum had vanished.

And Eirian lay still, chest rising in shallow bursts.

She closed her eyes.

Sleep took her after the tiredness of the day was upon her.

***

She dreamed of a lake.

Its surface was silver—too smooth to be real, reflecting a moon that seemed too large for the sky. Trees lined its banks, their trunks pale as bone, their branches draped in moss that shimmered with bioluminescence.

There was music; it sounded like a mystic song, one that was directed for the gods.

And with that song, there was someone dancing with it; it was a woman, but something in the way she moved her body was different; she felt stronger than a normal one. She wore an owl mask now—woven in feathers of black and white, with a beak that pointed toward the stars. Her body moved in slow, ceremonial arcs—her arms carving patterns into the air, each step measured like a heartbeat.

Eirian watched in stillness, transfixed.

She knew, deep in her marrow, that this was not just a dream.

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It was a message, a clue.

The soul she had freed had left this behind, a memory-gift stitched into the thread of sleep. It was a clue for a ritual; in it, she needed to dance. A path could be followed with it.

The woman turned once in her rhythm and looked toward her. Though her face was hidden by the mask, Eirian felt the gaze, a warmth passed through her, and a thought bloomed fully formed:

‘This is the first key.’

To what?

She didn’t yet know.

But it was something that would let her shape the world.

Or survive it.

***

She woke at dawn, lying still in the half-light, her fingers curled into the blanket like roots into soil. The smell of ash clung to her sleeves. The Mugu lay beside her bed—untouched, but warm. Someone must have brought her inside the house and put her in bed; it probably was Orlen after seeing how Sera was worried about her.

She opened her hand.

The rune was gone.

But she could still feel it, deep beneath her skin, a power that she didn’t fully understand was calling to her.

The sun rose gently, golden and harmless.

“Did you figure it out something about your memories?” Eirian asked out loud.

“No, but maybe the person who made the lamp can show me something.”

“That… could be difficult,” Eirian understood that she should treat carefully her interactions with the demon, she couldn’t help him blindly, but she also didn’t want him as an enemy, especially if he was going to continue to live inside her.

“I know,” That was that the demon said before going silent again, they rarely interact with each other, Eirian didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

She moved through the house like someone walking in the echo of a dream. She brewed tea. Fed the birds. Swept the porch without being asked. Then she stood at the threshold of the garden, fingers trailing the edges of her cloak, and said, very quietly:

“I want to go to the lake.”

Sera, kneeling by the herb bed, looked up sharply.

There were moments—rare but unmistakable—when Eirian’s voice carried a weight. She understood that something with the lantern must have happened for Eirian to speak that way; her words transmitted that she wouldn’t accept a no for an answer.

Sera set down her shears and wiped her hands.

“I’m coming with you.”

Eirian didn’t argue. That, too, was unusual.

They walked in silence through the thinning woods, past the place where children built pebble towers and the tall grass whispered secrets. Eirian moved without haste.

Sera followed, keeping three paces behind.

She had seen Eirian perform things that should not be possible—healing that broke rules, visions pulled from air, and threads that no mage’s books could explain. But something about this was different.

More than magic, older than spells, she always knew that Eirian was different, more special than all the other kids, and it wasn’t the blind belief that all mothers have for their children; this was different.

When they reached the lake, the wind was still, with its surface unbroken; a single waterbird glided across it, too far away to matter.

Eirian turned to her and unwrapped the satchel from her shoulders.

Inside was the mask.

It wasn’t just a costume or a child’s craft; everyone who saw it could tell that it had weight, a special meaning. That mask was made of flower-pressed wood darkened to the hue of wet bark, shaped into the likeness of an owl’s face. Vines curled around its edges, woven through with small feathers—each one enchanted, plucked from the merchant that had come to their village. A foxtail thread circled its crown, trailing like a blessing or a binding.

The eyes of the mask were wide and hollow, lined in soot.

The Mugu bell was tied at her wrist with green thread.

Sera swallowed.

“Eirian… What is this for?”

Something was telling her that she shouldn’t look directly at the mask, but her eyes continued to be pulled in that direction.

“This mask is the one that I’ve been working on for the past months,” Eirian said, lifting the mask. “You should know about it; I didn’t do it in secret.”

“I know, but…” Sera didn’t know how to continue; she had indeed seen Eirian make the mask, but after she incorporated the feathers, it felt different—at least before, she didn’t feel any pull from it.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Eirian said with a smile on her face as if she wasn’t the child and Sera the adult in charge of her.

And with that, Eirian stepped barefoot onto the moss-ringed stones near the lake’s edge, bowed her head, and began to dance.

***

Sera’s POV

Sera held her breath; she had seen folk dances, of course. She’d sung the old planting hymns. But this—this was not that.

The moment she saw the way Eirian moved, she knew that this was a ritual.

Every movement was deliberate, slow but precise, drawn from a rhythm from another world. Eirian raised her arms skyward, then lowered them in sweeping arcs. Her feet pressed into the ground with care, as though measuring the heartbeat of the earth. The Mugu at her wrist gave off a low, pulsing ring each time she turned.

The sound vibrated in Sera’s chest.

Then Eirian began to sing.

The words were foreign—melodic, lilting. Not the cadence of this land. Not any dialect she’d heard from travelers or priests or even books.

It wasn’t the melody of a girl raised in the valley.

It was older. Drenched in mourning and hope.

The lake responded.

Wind rose from the east, curling across the water and whipping through the reeds.

The sky dimmed slightly, as if it was recognizing Eirian’s presence; clouds were covering the sun, and thunder could be heard in the distance.

Birds screamed in the trees and scattered. The surface of the lake began to ripple, as if a magical creature was trying to come up for air. Light stirred in its depths. There was a gentle radiance akin to sunlight glinting on silver.

Sera’s heart beat faster.

‘What am I watching?’ she thought.

And then: ‘Is this blessing… or danger?’

Each motion of the dance pulled her deeper; it was hypnotizing to watch. The mask settled like a second skin. In Sera’s eyes, that mask looked alive; it wasn’t the creation of a little girl from a forgotten village. A sacred entity was dancing in front of her, calling for something she couldn’t comprehend, moving forces in the universe.

Everything looked magnificent in her eyes; it didn’t look out of place, as if Eirian had been dancing in this place for centuries, and Sera was the one who was out of place.

Eirian’s voice sounded different with the song; sometimes it was like a deep voice from an elderly man, other times a seductive voice of a woman, or a sweet voice from a child playing with their friends. The wind lifted her cloak and hair. The lake shimmered. The threads were calling.

Sera watched how Eirian took the final step. The ritual was in the final stage, and she wanted to know what would happen when it was completed.

Eirian’s hand touched the water, and she went still, frozen like a statue.

Unknown to Sera, Eirian’s soul was traveling across worlds.

***

POV Eirian:

Somewhere else.

A lantern hissed in its bracket.

She was not in the valley anymore; the moment she touched the water, something powerful came through her body and took her to a different place. Turning around, she could still see the lake, but in front of her there was something else, something she recognized from memory. She couldn’t resist and took a step to the front.

A shop surrounded her—cramped and warm, filled with scrolls, charms, dried herbs, and hanging feathers. The smell was incense and copper and grief; it was a shop that she would never forget. She spent many years inside it, after all.

Behind a low desk, a woman sat, hunched over parchment, drawing a talisman with fingers stained in ink and wax. Her hair was black, streaked with gray at the temples, and braided into a crown. Her eyes were sunken, focused.

Beside the talisman was a photo of a girl with familiar eyes.

‘That’s me…’ Eirian thought. ‘Or it used to be me.’

The girl she had been before the crossing, before death, before that fateful encounter with the demon.

Eirian’s throat tightened.

She tried to speak—but she had no mouth here. Only presence.

The woman paused for a moment, as if she had detected something close to her; her brush trembled a little, and then she looked up.

Her body stiffened.

A breeze swept through the shop—where no windows had been open, the woman hated when her talismans were sent flying all over the place if she was occupied making them, some papers rustled, the feathers lifted, and a mirror shattered in the back.

The woman stood slowly.

“I feel you,” she whispered. “Spirit… are you here?”

She walked to the back of the shop and stepped into a ring of ash and chalk—an old diagram etched with holy ink and worn by repetition.

‘That’s new,’ Eirian didn’t recognize everything that was at the back of the store; this place used to be a warehouse where they saved the customers’s requests.

Candles lit themselves the moment the woman walked near them. She came near a cabinet, and from there she retrieved a bell and a blade, those articles Eirian had only seen when her mother used to perform a ritual.

She put herself in the middle of the diagram and raised both bell and blade together in the air.

Then she sang.

And as her voice pierced the veil, her eyes closed—

And she appeared before Eirian.

They stood across from each other, on the threshold between two worlds; the lake behind Eirian glowed softly, and the spirit shop behind her mother flickered with incense and memory.

Eirian stared.

And the woman gasped.

Tears welled immediately from the woman; she couldn’t believe what was in front of her. She had dreamed and asked for something like this for years, and finally the gods were listening to her. She dropped the knife and the bell; both clattered to the floor.

“My daughter…” she whispered. “You’re here. You—oh, you’re real.”

Eirian nodded slowly.

“I tried,” her mother sobbed. “I tried to find you. After the ritual—after the fire—I knew your body was gone, but your soul... it couldn’t have just vanished. I dreamed of you for ten years. I looked in every spirit text, every rite of crossing, and every map of reincarnation.”

“Fire?” Eirian asked in confusion. “Mom, what are you talking about?”

“You don’t remember… The moment the spirit entered your body, we continued with the exorcism. I saw how you tried with all your might to stay with me, but…” She was silent for a moment, as if it was difficult for her to continue with her story. “When everything failed, the person who hired us set the house on fire.”

While she said the last part, she started sobbing and threw herself to the floor.

“I tried… I swear that I tried…” She continued to repeat while sobbing.

“Mom,” Eirian said before kneeling in front of her mother and hugging her.

“I wanted to bring your body outside, but before I could manage to get out of the house, I lost consciousness, and a firefighter brought me outside.”

“It’s okay, Mom, you don’t need to blame yourself; I’m alright.”

“I thought that you were lost, that your soul couldn’t cross to the other side and you were wandering in some place without knowing how to leave.”

“I wasn’t lost,” Eirian said softly. “Just… far.”

They stood together for a few seconds, just hugging each other.

“You don’t need to come back,” her mother said, stepping closer. “I just needed to know. I just needed to see that you were safe.”

“I am,” Eirian said. “I have a family here. I’m not able to call them Mom and Dad, but I truly care for them. That new place is strange and dangerous, but that world is where I was supposed to be from the beginning.”

“Really?”

“Yes, if you were here you would be fascinated by that place.”

Her mother wiped her eyes. “Then I’ll come to you.”

Eirian’s heart lurched.

“What?”

“Don’t you see?” the woman whispered. “If you could find me… then the thread runs both ways.”

Eirian’s pulse thrummed like the lake itself, rising and falling with a rhythm no heart could claim. The world around her was both vast and narrow, a stitched seam between two realms, and she stood in the center of it like a knot in a thread.

Her mother stepped forward again.

“I can trace it,” she said, her voice raw and reverent. “This bond. You opened it—I can find the place it leads.”

Eirian’s mouth opened, but the words came slowly. “You don’t belong there; you have your own life here. With this store, you could continue to solve all kinds of mysteries.”

“I don’t belong in this one without you; if you ever have a daughter, you would understand,” her mother said. “That life—my life—ended when yours did. The only reason I’m still breathing is because I knew something bigger had happened. I knew you weren’t gone.”

Eirian’s throat tightened.

She remembered her mother’s hands. Not the ones in this spirit place, but the ones from her old life—ink-stained and always warm, always reaching. The lullabies. The little shrine beside her childhood bed. The taste of honey and salt after fever.

And yet… that child was gone.

“I’m not the same girl you lost,” Eirian whispered.

Her mother flinched, like the words had cut. “You don’t…?”

“I remember everything of being her,” Eirian said. “But that life—my first life—ended when the ritual failed.”

The woman stepped back now, her expression stricken.

“I have a new life here,” Eirian continued, voice trembling. “I have people. I have… a path I don’t understand yet, but it’s mine. If you come through, you’ll break it.”

“But I could help you,” her mother said. “I have knowledge—tools—things you were never meant to bear alone.”

“I’m not alone,” Eirian said. “And this magic… it’s not meant to be used like that. You taught me that, didn’t you? Threads aren’t meant to be pulled to pieces.”

Her mother looked down. “I thought… maybe…”

She trailed off. A breeze moved between them, tugging at the edges of the space, urging it closed. The mirror between worlds had begun to fracture, silver cracks racing outward.

“I’m glad I saw you,” Eirian said. “I’m glad you saw me. But this isn’t your life. It’s mine.”

Tears welled again in her mother’s eyes, but this time she didn’t argue.

She simply nodded once. “Then I’ll let go. But if the thread ever needs to stretch again… I’ll be waiting.”

Eirian reached out—not with her hand, but with the spirit behind her breath—and offered a final thread of warmth.

The woman caught it.

And the connection broke.

***

The world rushed back.

The mask fell from her face the moment she came back to her senses, and the wind died down, calming itself as if there was never a storm in the first place. Eirian could see how the lake had gone still once again.

She collapsed to her knees, her chest rising and falling in ragged bursts.

Behind her, Sera had not moved.

She had watched it all.

And now she stepped forward, slowly, and knelt beside her girl.

“I don’t know what that was,” Sera whispered. “But I felt it, in my teeth. in my bones.”

Eirian’s voice was hoarse. “It was a goodbye. One I didn’t know I needed.”

Sera wrapped her arms around her without another word.

For a long time, they sat at the edge of the lake—woman and child, mystic and hearthkeeper—watching the sky ripple with windless clouds and knowing the world had shifted again.

***

That night, the house felt different.

Sera had lit a candle and tucked a blanket around Eirian’s shoulders, but the warmth didn’t quite settle. The fire crackled softly in the hearth. The Mugu bell sat beside Eirian’s bedroll, still and silent now, as if it too had spent all its voice in the ritual.

She sat cross-legged in the dark, her owl mask on her knees. It smelled faintly of rain and crushed petals.

“I thought I wanted answers,” she whispered to it. “But maybe what I needed was closure.”

The mask didn’t reply, of course, but something in its carved eyes seemed to listen.

The memory of her mother lingered, like an old song that had finally finished its last note.

She hadn’t realized how much weight she still carried from the life before. The longing, the unspoken grief, the ache of something unresolved. She thought she’d buried it when she was reborn, wrapped it in soil like a forgotten root.

But Roots remembered.

Even across worlds.

She reached for her journal—a stitched collection of scraps, dried leaves, pressed flowers, and scribbled thoughts—and opened to a fresh page. Her hands still trembled, but the ink didn’t falter as she wrote:

“I saw her. She hasn’t changed. But I have.

I’m not a girl lost between worlds anymore.

I am the thread that ties them.”

A soft knock came at the doorframe. Sera stood there, a mug of warm elderflower tea in her hands. She didn’t say anything at first. Just came and sat down beside her.

“Hey, sweetie, how are you feeling?” Sera asked with worry in her voice.

“I’m alright… just a little overwhelmed by everything that has happened lately.”

“Try to rest; tomorrow is going to be a new day, and I’m sure you’ll feel much better.”

Eirian sipped the tea. The warmth spread slowly this time, like fire catching damp kindling.

“Actually, there’s something you should know…” Eirian whispered she had taken her decision to open up to her new parents.

“What is it?” Sera said while getting closer to her and sitting by her side.

“I…” There was some doubt in her voice, insecure of what she would say next. “I remembered my past life.”

There it was, she finally said it.

“You scared me for a second, sweetie,” Sera said with a smile on her face.

“Are you not surprised?”

“Well, your father and I always knew how you were different from the others; you never cried like most children, and the way you talk and behave is too mature for your age. I’m your mother; of course I knew there was something going on.”

Suddenly, Sera surrounded Eirian with her arms, and she stayed there for a few seconds.

“I want you to know that no matter what, you will always be my daughter.”

“Mom…”

For the first time since she was born, Eirian called her ‘mom.’ It never mattered how much Sera insisted that she should call her that way; Eirian always insisted on calling her by her name. A part of her hadn’t let go of her previous life; she felt guilty for calling someone else that way besides her first mother, but things were different now. She was trying to connect with her new parents.

“I think I understand now,” she said. “Why the lake called me. Why the lantern shattered. The world let me see her because I was finally ready to let her go.”

Sera nodded, her fingers absently smoothing the hem of her sleeve.

“I understand.”

“What about Orlen? I mean… Dad.”

“I want to see the face he makes when you call him that, but you shouldn’t be worried. He loves you, even if he has difficulties showing you his affection. You know how much time he spends in his workshop, trying to make new weapons all the time, and spending little time at home.”

‘Oh, oh, she sounds upset,’ Eirian thought.

“Is Dad in trouble?”

“You bet he is. I told him that he should be here earlier today so he could eat with us.”

Noise came from outside the house; someone was entering, and Sera got closer to start reprimanding his husband.

Eirian glanced toward the window. Somewhere outside, a crow cawed, sharp and lone. The wind was shifting again.

She set the owl mask gently aside.

The mask. The Mugu. The lake. The woman in the mirror. All of it had been part of a path, and now that path led forward.

Tomorrow, she would walk it again. Eyes open. Thread in hand.