The ruins faded behind them, swallowed by frost and shadow, but Elira's mind stayed rooted there.
She didn't speak much as they walked — not because there was nothing to say, but because the questions in her head had no language yet. Beside her, the boy kept pace in silence, his small feet crunching through snow, his eyes ever-watchful.
They hadn't found his father.
They hadn't even found a trail.
And the strangest part?
Elira couldn't shake the feeling that there was never one to begin with.
*
The two of them stopped before dusk at the edge of a pine clearing, an old hunter's cabin tucked between the trees. Abandoned, but still intact. Elira pushed open the creaking door and swept the dust from a corner as the boy sat near the hearth, hugging his knees.
He hadn't cried.
Not once since the chapel.
That unsettled her more than any scream might've.
Elira lit a small fire, sharing a pouch of dried meat and bread between them.
She finally asked, "What's your name?"
"Tovin."
She nodded. "Where were you and your father headed?"
He paused. "He never told me."
"Do you remember where you were before the chapel?"
His fingers twitched. "We kept moving. Different roads. He said it wasn't safe to stay anywhere long."
"Because of vampires?"
Another pause. Then, "Because of everyone."
*
Later, when he was curled beneath a tattered wool blanket she found in a chest, Elira stepped outside. The night was cold but quiet, the stars above clearer than they had any right to be.
She breathed deeply, the pendant at her chest pulsing faintly — not with magic, but with memory.
The boy's story didn't add up. Not because he was lying.
But because there were too many blanks.
Too few memories.
Too many rehearsed lines.
And something else — something beneath the surface, like a reflection beneath ice. She didn't have the name for it yet. But it felt… placed.
*
In her dreams that night, fire whispered through trees.
And a voice — not her mother's, but ancient, like earth cracking beneath old spells — spoke a half-sentence she couldn't finish.
"The boy… was never lost."
She woke at dawn to find Tovin already awake, sitting at the window.
"You don't sleep much," she murmured.
He shrugged. "I dreamed."
"Bad?"
"No," he said. "Just… strange."
She moved beside him. The morning light caught the side of his face — too pale, too still. Like a reflection that hadn't quite decided whether it was real.
He turned to her suddenly.
"Can I stay with you?"
Elira blinked. "What?"
"You're going somewhere," he said. "So am I. I just don't know where yet."
There was no fear in his voice. Only certainty. As if the decision had already been made, and she was only just catching up to it.
Elira hesitated.
This wasn't her plan.
She was a witch marked by fate, cursed by forgotten magic, chased by riddles and shadows.
She had no room for strays.
And yet—
"Yes," she said. "You can stay."
*
Long after he'd returned to sleep, Elira sat by the fire, staring into the embers.
Tovin hadn't cried for his father.
He hadn't asked to find him again.
And deep down, Elira sensed what she couldn't yet face:
*There had never been a father.*
Whatever brought Tovin to the chapel — and into her path — had been orchestrated long before they met.
By design.
By prophecy.
By something older than both of them.
And now, for reasons still buried in ash and blood, the two of them were bound