Chapter 29

Days have routine. There’s light and there’s dark as we orbit the sun. Mornings can feel fresh, but the temperature increases the closer we get to midday and a little beyond. Then, as day slides into night, everything cools.

In the cottage, instead, it was growing colder as morning edged toward noon. Too cold for daylight. Too cold for the season and the time of day. Edmund sat by the hearth while the fire burned steadily, its heat reaching into every corner of the room except him. He held his hands out toward the flames and watched the light bend oddly around them, as if it refused to settle on his skin.

Agnes noticed. She noticed everything.

“You’re pulling away from what the fire gives,” she said quietly from the table where she worked herbs into a coarse paste. “That’s good. It matters. It means last night cut deeper than the first two threads.”

Edmund was not sure good was the right word. The space in his chest felt larger with every hour. It wasn’t empty, though. Emptiness might have been mercy. This was an absence, patiently worked into him by something that understood time was its plaything.

Something that was waiting.

Will paced behind the room, his boots tapping dully against the floorboards, unable to remain still.

“What if it comes before we’re prepared?”

Agnes didn’t look up. She was putting all her energy into the task at hand.

“It might. Just not this morning. The forest hates sun. Even thin winter light.” She paused. “This is the safest hour you’ll have.”

Edmund drew a breath, but it felt too shallow, not enough to sustain him.

“It doesn’t feel safe.”

Malcolm, standing near the window, turned.

“Lad, safety isn’t a promise. It’s a moment. That’s all anyone ever wins, just that moment and, with luck, another after it. Victory is victory, so take it.”

Edmund nodded. He saw the intent behind the words, even if they failed to reach him, like the fire’s warmth. It was as if a sheet of glass stood between him and the world. Voices were subdued. Touch was dulled. Meaning was muted.

Or perhaps he was the one growing indistinct. He closed his eyes. His inside answered the unspoken question.

Soon.

His eyes snapped open. Not yet. Not before the fourth thread.

Agnes wiped her hands on her apron and stood. Her movements were careful now, precise. She walked like someone who had spent every reserve she possessed over the last two days, but was dragging up further ones from places she’d forgotten existed.

“Edmund,” she said. “Stand. Slowly.”

He obeyed. His muscles protested, stiff from the hours drawn inward. The room swayed, though he suspected – hoped – the imbalance was his own. Agnes circled him once, then again, stopping in front of him.

“I need to know how far its reach extends now.”

“How do I find that?”

“It will answer before you do,” she said. “Close your eyes.”

He hesitated.

“Close them.”

He did.

The darkness behind his lids was incomplete. Something stirred just beyond perception, a faint disturbance at the edge of awareness.

“Don’t search for it. Let it be felt.”

That was the last thing Edmund wanted, but he, he complied. At first there was nothing. Then a distant pressure. A creature without teeth. A cold that didn’t chill, but lingered. Slowly, as if answering to being noticed, the hollow shifted. It made a sound, a strained creaking. He steadied himself.

“It’s awake.”

“Is it speaking?” Agnes asked.

“No. Not clearly.” His brow furrowed. “It’s watching.”

“How does something inside you watch?” Malcolm asked, frowning.

Edmund opened his eyes. Somehow, he knew the answer.

“Because it isn’t fully inside me. It’s leaning against me. Like a hand resting on the other side of a door. It’s… present but not fully here.”

Agnes nodded.

“The third thread weakened the latch. It knows another is coming. It will do whatever it must to prevent it.”

Will stopped pacing.

“Whatever that means.”

Before Agnes could respond, something tapped against the roof.

All sound in the cottage ceased.

Malcolm’s hand went to the poker. Will froze, eyes fixed upward.

Tap.

“Do not move,” Agnes whispered.

Tap.

Edmund’s insides answered. The recognition was welcoming. A tremor slipped through his arms.

“It isn’t outside.”

Agnes turned.

“Explain.”

Tap.

“It’s echoing,” Edmund said. “Through me.”

The tapping stopped.

Agnes stepped closer, her expression tight.

“It’s testing the tether. Measuring how much fear still feeds it.”

“I’m not afraid,” Edmund said.

There was a sharp, internal shift.

“Don’t lie to it,” Agnes snapped. “It reshapes lies faster than truths.”

Edmund nodded. He needed to not lie to himself, first.

“If the Binding’s weakened, why isn’t it striking now? Why wait?”

Agnes hesitated, and Malcolm answered.

“Because it needs consent. Not a corpse.”

“It wants him to choose!” spat Will.

Sickness rolled through Edmund. Agnes lifted the ritual bowl she’d been working with. The liquid’s surface quivered in the still air.

“It knows the last thread will sever its hold,” she said. “If the rite succeeds, it loses you.”

Edmund’s heartbeat thudded.

“And if it stops the rite?”

Again, Agnes remained silent. Will supplied the answer.

“Then it takes you before it can be continued.”

Edmund dropped into the nearest chair. His hands shook as he held them against his face.

“How do I fight something that uses what I can’t bear to remember.”

“By remembering what it is,” Agnes said, laying a hand on his shoulder.

He looked up.

“What?”

Her gaze softened, but didn’t yield.

“Not your son.”

The ache threatened to crush him.

Tap.

The sound came again, this time from the wall behind him.

Tap.

The internal void answered.

Tap.

Will’s voice cracked: “Agnes, if it gets through…?”

“It won’t,” she said, though the certainty wavered. “Not yet.”

The tapping ceased, to be replaced by a soft but solid knock at the front door. Edmund’s stomach turned. Not again. Not another voice.

Malcolm raised the poker. Agnes lifted both hands.

“No one moves.”

The knock came again. Three measured taps.

“Same pattern,” Will whispered.

Agnes looked at Edmund.

“Tell me what you feel.”

He resisted. Then failed. Inside answered him first.

“It isn’t the forest,” he said hoarsely, giving it voice.

Agnes’s eyes sharpened.

“Go on.”

“It’s someone already taken,” Edmund said. “Like Tom. Like Terry. Someone it owns.”

Will stiffened.

“Why send one of them.”

Edmund stared at the door. His heart worked painfully against his ribs.

“So I’ll open it.”

Agnes stepped between Edmund and the door, her hands on her hips, daring him to try something.

“If you do that, there will be no fourth thread. No rite. No return.”

“I won’t,” Edmund said.

He didn’t know if he was speaking to her, or to the thing waiting inside him. Or to himself. The knock came once more. It was quiet, simply announcing a presence instead of demanding entry.

“Edmund,” a voice breathed through the wood.

Not his son.

Not Helen.

A man’s voice. One he didn’t recognise.

“Let me in. You’re the only one who can.”

Edmund shivered as Agnes raised her voice.

“No one opens that door.”

Outside, the voice returned. It was softer, but had urgency.

“You don’t have much time.”

Edmund realised, with a creeping dread that settled deeper than fear, that it wasn’t threatening him.

It was warning him.