Chapter 4 - First threads

Six months had passed since the naming day, and Eirian still hadn’t spoken a single word aloud.

In this new life, surrounded by a kind woman and a cautious man, she’d learned quickly that speaking too early—asking the wrong questions—might earn her more fear than trust.

So she stayed quiet and observed everything that surrounded her. Watched the way Sera’s voice softened when she passed herbs through the smoke of the hearth. She observed Orlen sharpening his tools, never quite averting his gaze from her. She didn’t think that he was being distrustful, but he was just wary, like he was waiting for something in her to change.

The truth was it already had.

Eirian had spent hours lying in her cradle and later sitting quietly on a woven mat near the hearth, studying the movement of mana through the walls. It pulsed gently; she could feel it breathing. It moved through the grain of the wooden beams and curled in the clay corners of the house like it belonged there, woven into every structure like thread through linen.

Her old world had felt colder; every ritual she performed had required effort—cleansing, alignment, spirit offerings, layers of tradition built on thousands of years of reverence.

Here, mana, or what she assumed to be mana, was different.

And that unsettled her more than she expected.

Eirian sat beneath the window where the sunlight filtered in through crooked slats and pooled across the floor in slivers. Her fingers—still small, still clumsy with the fine motor skills of a child’s body—brushed along the seams in the floorboards.

She could feel it again.

The thread, which sometimes appeared if she pushed her abilities, felt like a faint presence beneath her palm. As if some note were vibrating just under the wood, waiting for her to hum the right harmony.

So she tried.

She closed her eyes and imagined the sounds of home. Her mother’s voice during morning rituals. The cadence of their chants. The way incense smoke curled in time with whispered syllables.

She thought of the sound.

In her chest, something flickered.

It wasn’t the demon’s soul—that flame remained dormant, resting deep in the coil of her mana center. No, this was hers.

A thread that connected her to this world and maybe to her past life.

She pulled on it carefully, without wanting to do something with it, just to see what it was.

A slow breath.

Mana stirred beneath her palm.

The floor creaked—not from weight, but from pressure. From the whisper of potential. The dried leaf next to her toe twitched once, curling at the edge.

And then it was gone.

Eirian didn’t move for a long moment. She knew that maybe she wasn’t ready for this power; that knowledge didn’t make her smile; she simply noted the feeling. Filed it away.

The mana here was responsive, even if she could feel it everywhere. To use it was another matter. She had tried it before, but it didn’t work the way she wanted it to. She thought that maybe she needed something else, a structure that she could follow, maybe hand gestures or words. She didn’t know, at least not yet.

That’s what Sera, her new mother, used. Patterns and pacing. Tiny knots in red thread. Copper wire coiled clockwise. Bundles of herbs pressed flat beneath stones for exactly three days and no longer. The way Sera worked was about rhythm; all of her movements were like she had practiced them for many years. That level of familiarity or confidence wasn’t obtained quickly.

And the mana liked it.

Eirian opened her eyes and looked down at the scratch marks in the wood where she had idly drawn a half-circle with a stick earlier that day. She finished the pattern in her mind—closed the arc, visualized the cross-stitch through the center, and then the drop of oil her mother would’ve placed in the middle to ground the intention.

Mana tugged again.

Only lightly, just a ripple; it wasn’t much, but she knew that it would take time for her to be able to do something, for magic to happen, it needed understanding from her.

But she was still small. Still weak. Still physically limited. And most of the old tools she relied on—ink, sigils, bone dust—were absent or unknown here.

Eirian sat back and exhaled slowly, watching the light inch across the floor. Her mind kept working even when her hands couldn’t. She had to learn how to work with this world’s rules. To build her new vocabulary of power, gesture by gesture, note by note.

If she wanted to reclaim even a fraction of what she used to be, it wouldn’t come from brute effort.

It would come from listening.

From threading herself into the weave of the world one quiet breath at a time.

***

Morning came cool and bright, the kind that smelled of crushed mint and dew-slicked stone. Sera’s garden had started blooming in earnest—ironmint, duskroot, and queen’s balm. Mana curled around the leaves, low and sleepy in the cold air. The plants here held magic, even when Sera wasn’t weaving it directly.

Eirian sat bundled in a shallow basket near the porch edge, fingers wrapped around a loop of dyed wool. She wasn’t strong enough to stand unassisted yet—not that it stopped her from trying. But today, she wasn’t focused on motion. Today was about sensing.

Sera knelt not far away, speaking softly as she bound stems together with copper thread.

“One loop to hold,” she murmured, “a second to seal, and the third to teach it what to be.”

The herbs shimmered faintly when she said the last word. Eirian felt it in her chest. Not as a spell—there’d been no invocation—but as an echo. The world itself seemed to acknowledge what Sera had done.

She tried to mimic the movement in her lap, dragging the yarn into a lopsided figure eight. Her fingers twitched awkwardly. The gesture was clumsy, but she felt the thread tug against her mana like it wanted to form a path.

It failed, of course. The wool was just wool. She didn’t have any copper or plant resonance, nor any for anchoring.

But something inside her stirred anyway.

Eirian dropped the yarn and reached, carefully, toward the garden bed nearest her. Her fingertips brushed a stray peppermint leaf. The mana wrapped around it buzzed faintly, cautious and cold.

She didn’t try to take it. She just touched it—mentally, gently, letting her breath follow the rhythm of the leaf’s pulse. Inhale… exhale… wait.

The mana hesitated.

Then answered. Barely. Like a cat deciding not to run.

She smiled, just a little.

“Getting bold, are we?” Sera said, glancing over her shoulder. There was no accusation in her voice, only quiet amusement.

Eirian blinked innocently.

Sera grinned and reached into her basket. “Then I suppose you’ve earned this.”

She placed something on the mat beside her: a small charm—copper wire looped around a smoothed river stone, tied with a knot of lavender thread.

“For protection,” Sera said. “But I think you just want to know how it works.”

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She wasn’t wrong.

Eirian leaned close, studying the way the wire looped beneath the thread. The flow of energy ran through the stone, not around it. That was the secret. Focused channels. It was guided pressure; the person who made it had done it with care and love. She could feel it the moment she touched it.

The charm was simple but elegant. She could feel how mana moved through it, and that was because the arrangement let it flow naturally, the way rivers chose valleys.

That was the real art here.

Eirian glanced back at the ironmint.

She was starting to understand; looking at the way Sera moved the mana, it was about logic, the voice of the world beneath the patterns.

And soon—maybe not today, but soon—she’d answer it back.

***

The knock came just past midnight.

Eirian stirred in her cradle the moment it sounded. Something in the mana around the house shifted—tightened. It was like the walls held their breath.

Sera, who’d fallen asleep in the chair near the hearth, woke with a soft gasp. Her head snapped toward the door even before the second knock came. Orlen wasn’t home—he’d gone to the next village to trade for iron nails and pick up a bundle of rare roots that needed cold transport.

Which meant it was just Sera and Eirian tonight.

Another knock.

Sera stood, calm but alert, and crossed the room barefoot. She didn’t reach for a weapon—just opened the door with a hand hovering near her hip, where a small pouch of ground nightwort always hung from her belt.

A boy stood on the porch.

Eirian blinked hard to clear her vision and focus, recognizing him by the shape of his shoulders and the way his hands clenched and unclenched like he didn’t know what to do with them. The same boy who had given her the fox button during her naming day.

Tomas.

His face was pale. Eyes rimmed red. He was panting—whether from fear or running, she couldn’t tell.

“M-my mum—she—” He stammered. “The babies—they’re not—Sera, please—she’s bleeding—won’t stop—”

Sera didn’t hesitate. She scooped up her medicine satchel from the wall, already pulling vials from memory as she moved. “How far along was she?”

“Too early,” Tomas whispered, close to sobbing now. “They’re not ready—but she’s screaming, and my da doesn’t—he sent me. I ran.”

“Stay here,” Sera said gently, already lacing her boots. “Watch the little one.”

“I—I can’t—”

“You can. Just sit by the hearth. I’ll be back before dawn.”

“But—”

Eirian made a soft sound, catching both their attention. She could see how the boy was panicking and couldn’t think straight; maybe if she had his attention, something would change.

Tomas stared at her. His eyes wide, haunted, but clearer now.

He nodded.

“…okay.”

Sera wrapped a cloak around her shoulders and vanished into the night like a knife drawn from cloth.

The door closed, and for a long while, only the wind moved.

Tomas sat by the fire, knees pulled to his chest, his eyes flickering toward Eirian every few seconds like he expected her to say something impossible. Like she could.

She didn’t.

Instead, she studied him.

She could feel how raw the air was—how his mana sparked out in quick bursts every time he panicked. Untrained. Like flint, waiting for friction.

He didn’t know it, but the boy had potential; with a lot of training, he could become a powerful wizard.

She closed her eyes and listened to the night.

Hours passed.

***

The door opened just before dawn.

Sera stumbled through it, arms slick with blood, sweat darkening the collar of her tunic. Her satchel was open, its flaps crusted with dirt and crushed herbs. She didn’t even close the door behind her—just dropped her coat onto the bench and knelt on the wooden floor, breathing in slow, sharp gulps.

Tomas, still awake and hunched in the chair by the hearth, leapt to his feet.

“Sera—?”

“She’ll live,” Sera said, eyes shut, voice hoarse. “She and the babies both. But she’ll be weak for a while.”

He choked on a sob. “Thank the gods—”

“No,” she whispered. “Don’t thank them. Thank the bitterroot.”

Eirian, still in her cradle, didn’t move. But her attention snapped to Sera like a wire pulled tight.

Mana clung to her.

It clung to her skin like mist off a boiling pot—shimmering, twitching, raw. Not just residue. It had moved through her. It had answered her. And Eirian could see it, with that deeper sense—the same one that let her feel a charm’s breath or follow the curl of ironmint’s pulse.

Sera knelt beside the hearth and pulled out a bundle of dried leaves and copper needles. She lit a small burner, whispering into the flame in a voice too soft for Tomas to hear.

But Eirian heard.

A frequency that reached beyond shape, that told the mana where to go.

That was the real secret of Sera’s magic, she sang, and with her song she manipulated mana.

Eirian watched as Sera heated the needle and slid it into a dried root bulb that shimmered gold when pierced. A wisp of steam rose, fragrant and bitter.

She pressed two fingers to her own wrist and let the scent wash over her.

Eirian’s small hand clenched the edge of her blanket.

She had studied under a master of runes, sigils, and binding threads. She’d summoned spirits to light candles and pulled the truth from the mouths of liars. But she had never—never—seen a healer like this.

This was art.

And if she wanted to grow in this world—if she wanted to be more than just a host for a demon soul—she would have to learn to listen like this. To shape like this. To coax the threads around her into something real.

Tomas slipped out as the sun rose. He left without another word, the fox button he’d once given her still missing from his coat.

Eirian drifted between sleep and awareness, her mana tingling faintly in her fingers.

***

The tantrum started with a button.

Specifically, the absence of it.

Eirian had been playing with the carved fox button every morning since the naming ceremony. It wasn’t just a toy—it was her first gift in this world. She'd learned to roll it between her fingers, sense the slight etching along its back, and feel how her mana gently pooled into the grooves when she concentrated.

And now it was gone.

She had watched Tomas leave after the long night. Watched how he glanced toward her cradle before vanishing through the door at dawn. The button hadn’t been with him when he arrived.

But it was missing now.

She felt it immediately. Not with her eyes or her hands, but with something deeper—like a frayed thread inside her had snapped.

She searched for it mentally, combing the room with her developing mana sense. Nothing. The familiar pulse was gone.

At first, she was still. Processing.

Then the rage began.

A baby’s fury looked harmless from the outside: clenched fists, a red face, and hiccups that staggered the breath. But this wasn’t just a baby’s cry. This was a soul trained in ritual discipline, flooded with untethered mana and frustration, reacting to a sense of betrayal.

She thrashed in the cradle.

Her mana stirred in response. Her chest warmed.

The feather sat on the windowsill.

A small thing. Pale grey. Left behind by one of the housebirds that nested under the eaves. It had drifted in through the open window earlier in the week and rested there ever since.

It lifted.

Gently. Uncertainly.

As if caught in a breeze that wasn’t there.

It rose into the air, hovering just above the sill, spinning slowly in place.

Sera, across the room, paused mid-step. She turned her head sharply, her eyes locking onto the floating feather with an expression Eirian couldn’t read.

Then the feather dropped.

Eirian stopped crying.

The heat in her chest faded.

And her whole body sagged into the blanket like a puppet with its strings cut.

Sera crossed the room, quiet and slow.

She picked up the feather and turned it over in her fingers before glancing into the cradle.

Eirian didn’t look away.

Their eyes met—woman and child, both knowing what had just happened.

Sera smiled faintly.

“Well,” she murmured, slipping the feather into a tiny jar and sealing it with wax. “Looks like it’s time to start teaching you more than lullabies.”

She didn’t say anything else.

But that night, when she tucked Eirian in, she added a second thread to the charm above the cradle—this one copper, not twine. A conductor.

Eirian stared at it as it caught the firelight.

And in her chest, her mana purred—content, curious, and quietly, finally, ready to grow.