Chapter 6 - Protection

The wind shifted at dusk with a subtle lean in the air, as if something had turned its head toward the house and begun to take notice.

Eirian felt it first as a change in the weave beneath her cradle. The same wooden frame that had cradled her since the naming day now carried a faint vibration, like a harp string plucked too softly to hear but not too softly to feel.

She opened her eyes.

Sera was in the garden again, this time hanging bundles of duskroot along the southern wall to dry. Her footsteps moved in rhythm, purposeful and even. The wards above the windows glinted in the low sun, their copper threads slack with calm.

But the ground wasn’t calm.

Eirian sat up slowly, her hand curling over the side of the cradle, fingers brushing the ink from earlier.

The sigil she’d drawn had faded slightly—uneven lines, half-absorbed by the wood—but its core still held.

She could feel it now. The place where her mana had touched the cradle and left a memory.

That meant it had anchored.

She reached for it again—just a brush of her will, cautious, curious.

It answered with a faint pulse that felt reactive. Her mana flared gently in her palm.

It wouldn’t hold off another wraith. The wraith was not even close to being deterred. But it had linked.

That was enough.

She needed to do more.

This time, she didn’t use ink.

Her fingers found the soft charcoal nub Sera had forgotten on the hearthstone after recording herb yields on the storage wall. Eirian rolled it in her hand. It wasn’t precise—smudgy, thick—but it would suffice.

She knelt on the mat, pushing aside the small blanket draped over her lap. Her movements were still slow, still clumsy, but her intention was clear.

She began with a ring.

A closed loop, slightly misshapen, etched into the wooden cradle floor with a single unbroken stroke. Around that, she layered old designs from memory—ritual curves and inner spirals that once belonged to a fire-cleansing glyph. She simplified them, adapting to her limited space.

The final stroke was a split mark—half rune, half invention. A stitch between symbols, meant to warn.

As she worked, her mana stirred, like it recognized what she was doing.

When the sigil was done, she pressed both hands to it and let her breath deepen.

Her mana threaded through the charcoal.

The lines pulsed, faint and silvery.

It held.

And in return, she felt something else nearby—something watching again from the tall grass past the edge of the garden. Not the wraith. Not hostile.

But not human.

Just… aware.

A residual spirit?

A fragment of the world’s memory?

Or something older?

Whatever it was, it felt her presence now, just as she had begun to feel it, as two pieces of thread brushing in the weave.

Eirian didn’t reach for it. She didn’t want to provoke another visitation.

Instead, she pressed her fingers to the wood once more, this time gently, and whispered—not a chant, not a command, just a word from her first life. A name used to ask for guidance, never protection.

“Rheyen.”

The mana shifted.

The sigil shimmered once, softly.

Acknowledged.

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And then the presence faded.

***

When Sera returned from the garden, her arms full of fresh-picked herbs and her braid dusted with mint ash, she paused beside the cradle.

She stared at the mark Eirian had drawn.

Her eyes narrowed in thought.

She didn’t say anything.

Just reached out, brushed the charcoal lines with her fingertip, and gave a small, quiet hum.

Then she added a single strand of queen’s balm from her bundle and laid it next to the sigil.

A subtle acceptance, looking at Eirian with the soft glance of a woman who had seen more than she spoke and understood what it meant when a child learned the language of the world before she learned to walk.

That night, Sera didn’t add a new ward above the window.

She didn’t need to.

Eirian already had.

And the house felt safer for it.

***

The next morning, the air was bright with bird-song and cool with last night’s memory.

Sera was humming again—one of her softer tunes, the kind that lilted between breath and word. She always sang when she worked with balmroot or stirred the tonic jars along the shelf. Eirian had begun to recognize the difference between her songs—between the lullabies meant to soothe and the others meant to shape.

But today, Sera didn’t hover.

She left Eirian to sit alone near the hearth, propped upright by a cushion rolled tight beneath her back.

Eirian didn’t mind. She preferred it. After the sigil, after the wraith, after the long night of feeling everything in the dark—she needed silence to listen.

That was how her mother had taught her.

Listen first. Then act.

She closed her eyes, let her breath slow, and reached downward, into the layers of the world around her.

The house was quiet.

The cradle no longer pulsed with alarm. The mana within the walls had re-woven itself, even gathering faintly around the charcoal lines of her sigil. A tiny current of attention had settled there, like the house had finally recognized her.

It changed things.

And Eirian noticed.

More importantly, her soul noticed.

She could feel the shape of herself more clearly now, in the mana threads that responded when she thought in shapes.

Suddenly, she heard a sound; it was like a tone strung too tight, humming through the wood beside her—the memory of something used and left behind.

Her eyes snapped open.

The clay doll.

It sat near the hearth—a squat little thing, half-painted and chipped along one shoulder. Orlen had brought it home weeks ago with a mutter about barter deals and unnecessary gifts. It had been set there and forgotten, its painted smile dulled by soot.

But Eirian felt it now, the presence that contained it, a whisper of feeling; she stared at it.

The sensation was weak, scattered—like a breath that had been held too long and let out too slowly.

She reached out with her mana gently, and the whisper bloomed; it carried the impression of warmth, laughter, and muddy boots running down a hill. A child. The previous owner? A memory left behind, half-sunken in the clay like a thumbprint.

It vanished after a few seconds.

But it had been there.

Eirian rocked back slightly, stunned.

Her spiritual perception wasn’t just growing.

It was remembering.

In her old life, the most advanced practitioners could read the impressions left behind on sacred objects—spirit-touched blades, temple stones, and heirlooms. But they trained for decades. Honed their souls with trance and fasting and ritual baths.

Eirian hadn’t done any of that; she had simply listened, and the thread had sung back.

The implications left her heart thudding. If that was what this world’s mana allowed—impressions—then this new magic wasn’t lesser; it was richer.

She was still reeling when Sera approached.

“Found something?” the woman asked lightly, setting a pot of tea to warm on the coals.

Eirian blinked, looked at the doll, then back at her.

Sera tilted her head. “That old thing? I nearly threw it out yesterday.”

‘Don’t,’ Eirian wanted to say.

Instead, she simply reached forward and pulled it into her lap.

Held it gently.

Sera raised an eyebrow. “Sentimental already?”

Eirian said nothing.

But her fingers traced the doll’s edge. Slowly. Reverently.

The whisper was gone—but a thread remained.

A trace.

A way to listen.

***

That night, Sera added a fresh charm above the door, this one braided with the same lavender thread from Eirian’s sigil.

When she turned away from the cradle, Eirian whispered her first word aloud in the new world.

Just a breath, half-shaped in the quiet:

“Thread.”

And the world, for one still moment, heard her back.