“They say the Shroud claims those who look too closely, or those left undefended.”

  — From the Collected Fears of the Common Folk

  Night settled tight over the village, the cold so thick Eike fancied even the shadows recoiled from it, pooling instead near the door where the seams leaked a constant, needling draft. The fire corralled what little warmth it could muster, hissing low in its stone cradle. Lucy slept—if one could call it that—her breath thready, each inhalation shallow as a swallow’s wing.

  Eike sat beside her, elbows on knees, the old blanket stretched taut across his thighs. Every now and then, her cough rasped up from the nest of rags, worming through the silence until it burrowed under his skin. He turned the last stick of wood in the grate, watching the flames gnaw their way along the grain—slow, methodical, relentless.

  He remembered another night, years back, when the wind had screamed so hard against the shutters it sounded as if the world itself was being planed down to bone. He’d been small then, flesh thin and nerves raw, wrapped in his mother’s patched blanket that smelled of smoke and wool, the seams rough beneath his cheek. But the cold had found its way even then, clever as a weasel, creeping in under blankets and through the cracks where the daub had fallen away.

  His father’s cough had woken him, much as Lucy’s now, only deeper and not quite human. Like broken reeds rattling in the well. Eike remembered pressing his ear down into the mattress, hoping to smother the sound. But the cold and the cough gnawed through everything, as persistent as frost in the seams.

  He fingered the edge of the blanket now, twist of rough-spun wool biting his thumb. The mind, he thought, buried its sorrow deep—like old bones in frozen earth, hidden where fingers couldn’t dig. He closed his eyes and let the past pull him under.

  

  


  

  It was the dead of a colder winter—one that bit deeper, before the snow had learned to show mercy. Their cottage then was newer, the hearth caked in soot but not yet cracked, the air sharp with pine and something fouler, sour as a gutted hare left too long in the cold. He’d crept from his straw pallet when the voices started—muffled at first, but rising, leaking worry into every corner.

  His father sat hunched by the fire, arms wrapped round his chest, breath fogging in great, shuddering plumes. He was broad, once—a man who could sling Eike onto his hip and heft the last split log in the same breath. Now his skin drooped loose over sharp bones, and his eyes glinted like river stones under ice, catching the firelight without warmth.

  Eike’s mother worked over the boiling pot, hands red raw, lips moving in a ceaseless prayer. Every so often she would pause, press her palm to her husband’s brow, fingers leaving pale crescents in the sweat. When she caught Eike’s eye, her smile was quicksilver—there and gone, replaced at once by something brittle.

  “Go back, love,” she’d said, voice low and fierce. “This isn’t for young ears.”

  But fear made him stubborn; he’d tucked himself between the bench and the wall, a silent knot watching the grown world unravel.

  Later, the village herbalist arrived—Amalia’s father, tall and stooped, beard stuffed with clinging bits of snow. He brought a battered chest packed with boneset, willow-twist, and a stack of linden leaves crisp as old vellum. He set to with the surety of practice, filling the air with steam and the earthy stink of old cures. Eike watched, noting the rhythm of his hands, the precise way he measured out each tincture—as if the right sequence might unspool even the knotted string of death.

  But it hadn’t. The old man set his jaw, tucked his tools away, and shook his head, eyes haunted and tired.

  “Some sickness lives deeper than root or bone,” he’d said into the hush, his fingers already gathering his jars. “Earth gives, earth takes—sometimes not by our leave.”

  Eike’s mother bit her lip, turned from them both. She pressed a worn token—square of cloth stitched with blue thread—into his palm, her breath warm and trembling against his ear.

  “If the dark comes close, you keep this tucked. And hush. Don’t look to the windows. They see better through glass.”

  He remembered the shape of that fear—how it was larger than famine, sharper than a strap. In the days that followed, rumor stalked the house as thick as frost: some said it was just the sickness, others muttered about the Shroud, about marks no fever left. They whispered about the ill-luck that followed—animals found stiff in their pens, the churn refusing to give butter, bread that baked sour. Each calamity chalked up to the one sin they could never name aloud.

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  He’d stolen a look at his father, the last morning, when the light slanted through the slats and laid itself across the quilt. Purple-black hollows ringed the man’s eyes, a blotching that crept and spread, spidered from throat to chest like old bruises. They’d never spoken of it, not plainly. Not then, not since.

  

  


  

  Lucy coughed again, dragging Eike up through the memory like a fish through muddy ice. He wiped a sleeve across his mouth, grimacing at the salt-and-iron taste in the air. His eyes flicked to the window—the glass rimed thick enough to blur the world to a formless white.

  He shifted closer to the fire, hand hovering over Lucy’s brow. Too warm. The kind of fever that left skin burning and breath thin—too close a shadow to the one that stole his father. He turned that fear over, seeking the old amulet in the bottom of his pack. Blue thread, now faded and frayed, wound round a button. He pressed it into Lucy’s palm beneath the blankets, more out of ritual than knowledge.

  They said the snow kept secrets, deep and patient. That the Shroud haunted the spaces between moments, waiting for a door left unlatched, for a careless word. Eike knew the shape of that dread, saw it in the way Grayna’s eyes darted to the woods at dusk, in the sign Amalia made when the wind howled too wild—thumb pressed firm to her chin, fingers fanned like a ward.

  He’d seen the woods shift of an evening, the dark thickening behind brittle trunks, as if the snow itself breathed and plotted. Once, last winter, he’d tracked a hare to a bend in the pines and found only red spatters flowering on the snow where nothing should have bled. No tracks, no drag marks—just absence, biting and certain. He’d walked back faster than pride allowed, whispering old prayers he barely recalled.

  Tonight, the cottage felt smaller for it. Each pop and sigh from the hearth a promise or a warning. Eike topped up the water from a wooden bucket, careful not to disturb Lucy’s sleep, and stood a moment, peering out into the dark. The wind had dropped, replaced by a hush thick as candle wax. Somewhere, a dog barked once, short and afraid, then nothing.

  He remembered his mother’s words, years ago, after she buried her grief beneath layers of stone-faced resolve. “Folk who go calling in the snow at night are never themselves when they return. You keep to your own. Make your signs, mind your fire, pay the snow its respect.” She’d taught him the bitter lessons: leave offerings at the window on full-moon nights, turn your boots by the door toes outward so whatever comes hunting knows you’re already gone.

  Not all of it made sense. Maybe none of it did. But Lucy’s fever now had the same edge as then—reminded him fear could seep like groundwater, leave stains you couldn’t scrub no matter how hard you worked the rag.

  A knock startled both him and the coals—a series of taps, not the tally-men’s heavy-handed thump, nor Grayna’s familiar code. This was lighter, uncertain. Eike hesitated, hand closed tight round the poker. He moved to the door, heart beating dull and heavy.

  He found Amalia on the step, basket in hand, eyes wide, hair half out of her scarf.

  She glanced past his shoulder, voice just above a whisper. “Nearly turned back. The dogs started howling down-mill, and even the owls won’t call tonight. Thought—maybe you needed fresh spruce for her fever bath.”

  He ushered her in, barring the door swift behind, noting the way she touched thumb to her mouth as she stepped over the lintel.

  She knelt at Lucy’s side, hands brisk but gentle. “Bad?”

  “Worse.” Eike’s throat grated the word. “She burns. Cough’s harder each night. You know how folk talk—what they say happens to the weak in years like these…”

  Amalia’s face tightened, then softened. “Old fears run long this side of the mountain. The Shroud finds lodgings in rumor quicker than it does in bone.”

  Eike pulled the amulet free, displayed its frayed length. “Mother believed. Wouldn’t let us pass a night without the sign close as skin. Never said what she feared, not outright. Only…never went to the woods after dusk. Never, not since—” He stopped himself.

  Amalia placed a hand atop his. “They never name it, do they? Not truly. Only shapes in fog, lessons sung as lullaby. My father tried—when it took your—” She faltered, choosing her words as one chooses steps over thin ice. “He blamed himself all winter for not seeing what it truly was. But some things creep deeper than root. He brewed every tincture we had. Herbs can’t defend against shadows born of wanting or fear.”

  She busied herself with her basket, withdrawing a cloth wrap of spruce tips, a fist of dried nettle, a clay pot holding precious honey—medicine, hope, or ritual, it was hard to tell the difference anymore.

  “Lucy’s strong,” she said. “Children last longer than sense would say. You—” She hesitated, eyes searching him, “You should rest yourself, too. These ghosts feed easier on empty folk.”

  Eike allowed himself a humorless snort. “I’d rest if I thought the night would stay put. But if I blink and miss something—one crack left open, and…” He shook his head, watching Lucy’s breath. “She’s not going to end up like him. Not if I’ve got hands left to fight it.”

  They worked, side by side—steam rising from the boiled spruce, its sharp lateral scent scrubbing the stale air. In the heart of the hush, Amalia murmured old lullabies, each word tangled with the names of green shoots and soft rains—hopes for spring curling quiet in the cold air.

  When Lucy’s fever relented by shade—a bare point, but something—Amalia shrugged her scarf back up and made for the door. She hesitated, hand upon the latch.

  “If ever you hear voices, not ones you know—don’t answer them. Not in nights like these.”

  Eike nodded. He watched her step into the blanketing dark, her steps swallowed up past the thin spill of firelight at the threshold.

  He closed the door tight, wedged the old settle up under the knob. He sat by Lucy, watching her chest rise and fall, the world outside held at bay by little more than scorched wood and a fistful of fraying thread.

  Across the rafters, the shadows thickened, shaping and sliding like frost along the pane, obscuring what waited beyond.

  “Not this time,” Eike muttered, fingers hard about the amulet, the promise aching in his chest as old snow.

  Outside, the wind picked up, sifting snow in soft sheets against the stone—shh… shh… a whisper that promised secrets hoarded and old debts lingering in the white beyond.

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