“Every bargain struck in the Shroud is written in blood, whether you see it or not.”

  — Attributed to Xchistle Trotiega

  The croft had sunk into hush, wrapped tight in night that gnawed at its seams. Outside, winter crept silent over the field, twisting every bare bough and length of split fencepost into hunched, otherworldly shapes. Within—the fire snapped frugal, licking thin at the logs, painting the pitted hearth in restless orange and blue. Shadows leaned together in the corners, thickening as the glow swayed.

  Amonvae sat between pane and flame, posture straight as a cresset, her hands folded loose in her lap. Her profile—knife-sharp, unreadable—spoke not of patience, but of inevitability. Eike hunched across the low table, his boots leaving muddy ghosts on the worn board, neck guarded, eyes darting wall to door. The mug in his grip had cooled; the herbal tang of her brew still lurked in the back of his throat, unfamiliar and half-menacing.

  Silence strummed the room. Outside, wind tumbled snow against the shutter—shh… shh… like breath caught at the turn between hope and surrender.

  Amonvae’s gaze lingered on the frost webbing the inside of the window. “Folk here call the Shroud a curse,” she murmured, “a fog that eats what survives winter’s bite.” She watched the cloud of her breath vanish into the dim air, and then continued, “But it’s not just that. It’s a boundary—thin as paper in places, impenetrable elsewhere.” Her eyes fixed on Eike now, steady as iron. “Some drift through, never learning its name. Few are born marked—open both ways, as you are.”

  Eike gripped the mug tighter, knuckles blanching, her words scraping at memories he’d tried to bury. “Save your tales for those who buy potions and hang their hopes on charms,” he muttered, though the veins of frost under her fingers unsettled him. “I tend my own, thanks.”

  Amonvae traced the rim of her mug with a deliberate fingertip. “You know what I mean. When the world shrinks close as breath, and the air thickens—when your voice breaks something in you it never should, and you can’t recall or mend it.”

  She reached into her satchel, produced a stone the size of a walnut—ordinary, pitted, river-worn. She rolled it onto the battered table between them, fingers lingering not quite a second before pulling back.

  “Watch,” she said.

  The fire popped. Eike glanced from her hand to the stone, then back, jaw set as if bracing for a blow.

  Amonvae murmured—not in a tongue Eike knew, but the cadence was sharp, each word clipped as wind at dawn. She spread two fingers. The air around the stone shimmered, the candlelight bending in a sudden draft that ran counter to the room’s chill. Frost bloomed across the stone’s surface—then split, curling away in feathered patterns. Slowly, the stone stretched—roots writhing from its base, a stalk of something impossibly green spiraling up, uncurling slender leaves into the warmth. The scent—raw, grassy, like the first cut of a thawed field—rippled out, impossible in a room abandoned to winter.

  Eike flinched, eyes wide, face gone gray as last year’s ash.

  The stalk withered—folded back upon itself, leaves shriveling, stem snapping. The stone dropped to the tabletop with a dull, living weight. Silence returned, thicker; the demonstration ended with nothing but dust and the taste of green fading.

  Eike’s breath rattled in his chest, heart hammering, the memory of living grass sharp as hunger at the back of his tongue. He barely noticed Amonvae, his pulse loud in his ears.

  Amonvae’s face did not change. “The Shroud is not kindness. But neither is it empty. It gives and devours alike. You are Shroudborn, Eike. That is what calls you—what answered in the moot hall, what lies behind the fever that won’t break in this village.”

  He stared at the ruin of leaf and rock, hands spread wide on the rough grain of the table, fighting the urge to recoil. “What do you want from me?”

  “Only what is already yours,” she replied, matter-of-fact. “You can lash out at it. Deny it. Pretend it is the fault of someone else. Or you can learn to wield it—shape it, rather than be shaped. Left untrained, it rots. And when it rots, everything near you risks being pulled under.”

  He shook his head, jaw working side to side, an animal resisting the yoke. “No. I’ve seen how that ends. My father caught the Shroud, or whatever you call it. Lost him, lost half the house, long before any magic made me interesting. The power didn’t save him; it ate him. Ate us all, if I’m honest.”

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  Amonvae nodded, as if she’d expected nothing else. “The Shroud claims what is untended—so do all hungers. But your fear is misplaced. Your father drowned because no one answered. Because fear kept him locked behind walls, not because he dared. If you do nothing, you may outlive your luck, but you will not keep your sister, your home, even your name. The Shroud does not wait for your comfort.”

  He clenched his fists, breath coming sharp. “And what if I refuse? Walk away? I’ve done nothing but survive the best I know.”

  Her voice dropped—a note colder than before. “This is not a contract you break by walking home or praying for spring. The power is awake in you. What you do with it will write itself onto those around you, no matter your intent. Ignorance is not innocence.”

  Eike rose, the legs of the bench scraping stone. “Is this the part where you tell me my sister will die if I do nothing? That the only way through is to gamble with whatever blood-starved gods you serve?”

  Amonvae’s lips twitched, not unkindly. “She is dying, Eike. By inches, by cold and ignorance. Your choice will not change the winter—but it will change whether she has any spring to see.”

  He turned from her, fists flexing, standing between lamp and door, shadow thrown long against the wall. The handle bit freezer into his palm, but he did not move. Outside, the wind spun wild, as if cackling at them both.

  He longed for the world before—before grain ruined itself under his stare, before villagers crossed themselves as he passed, before Lucy’s cough took on the rough, relentless cadence of his father’s. What he craved was time unwinding itself, the Shroud reduced to a tale meant to frighten children at dusk. He craved a role not marked by dread or magic, but the ordinary surety of a brother, a son—a man whose hands knew honest dirt and whose back ached from honest labor.

  Yet all his longing could not thicken the soup, nor still Lucy’s shivers, nor melt the iron band tightening around each waking thought.

  He faced her at last, voice cut by stones. “Suppose I say yes. Suppose I let you teach me.” He hesitated, choking down the taste of surrender. “What’s the cost this time?”

  Amonvae stood—her cloak sliding soundlessly to her ankles. “Every bargain in the Shroud is written in blood,” she said, the proverb as old as stars, “whether you see it drawn or not. You will change. That is the only promise I can make. But you will do so with purpose, not in helplessness. Your sister’s path may open, or it may only grow clearer. But it will be yours—not handed to the snow, or to the Duke, or to fear.”

  A long silence collected between them, so dense Eike felt he might choke on it. He weighed pride and need on his tongue—found pride had grown thin as the gruel he scraped from his bowl.

  “Not yet,” he managed, thickly. “Let me—” He could not finish. Could not say, Let me bury myself in hope, one last time.

  Amonvae’s expression did not soften, but neither did it close. “Winter’s grip tightens nightly. Come again or send for me. But do not wait until all bargains are struck by someone else.”

  He left, the croft’s door cracking behind him on a gust that found its way under every seam.

  

  


  

  The cold outside was a living weight—clawing down his shirt, gnawing the skin raw between fingers, wedging each footfall deeper into the ruts old boots had carved. The night pressed in, wind howling over the frozen fields. Winter Claw itself was cloaked, as though hiding from the promise of what had passed between stranger and outcast.

  Eike arrived home by muscle memory, shed snow and suspicion at Grayna’s threshold. Inside, Lucy coughed—thin, unyielding. He bathed her brow, reheated what broth he could coax from the coals. By candle, he saw how she shrank into herself, hands curled, breath rasping, blue string amulet twined to bone.

  He pressed his forehead to the worn wool of her blanket, letting the ache press in, hollowing him out. The old routines—the endless chores of hope: boiling water, turning her, measuring out tinctures by the thinning candle—felt as empty as the wind clawing at the shutters.

  Days closed in, thick as fog. He moved through them on habit: tending Lucy, stoking dying fires, watching the village watch him—a wraith haunting thresholds, the center of rumor and reluctant gifts. Amalia came, once, arms burdened with white cloth and strips of bitter bark; Grayna left bread, crust edges hard as old secrets. Neither stayed long, nor spoke much.

  One morning, Lucy’s fever spiked, painting a harsh bloom across her cheeks, her voice cracking as she called out—though never for him, not anymore. The boundary between sleep and sickness blurred, the room thick with the sour tang of vinegar rags and dying light. Eike stared at the lamp as it guttered low, the ache of failing her settling in his chest, cold and numbing as snowmelt running in under the door.

  As dusk thickened, he crouched beside her, hands cramped round themselves, spine bent beneath the impossible weight of needing to save what could not be saved by grit or hope alone.

  He remembered Amonvae’s words—each syllable heavy as river stones he refused to lay down.

  You can shape it, she had said. Or others will shape what’s left of you.

  He looked at Lucy’s face—sharp angles, bruised shadows cast by the weak lamplight—and knew his own choice had been written in him already. There was no field to return to; the world before had vanished with the thaw.

  He bent, part prayer, part curse, and whispered, “I’ll find a way. Curse it all, I’ll find it, even if it damns me.”

  The wind clawed at the window. The candle flame twitched and struggled. In that moment before true dark, the blood-road ahead—dangerous, but open—seemed the only one left.

  

  


  

  In the empty croft, Amonvae cradled a cup of water in both hands, watching her reflection blur and sharpen with each ripple. She smiled—thin, exhausted, cunning. The night pressed close around her, dense with waiting. She listened for the small sounds—wood settling, wind sighing in the chimney—trusting that soon, another, heavier knock would come.