The house is too quiet.
Even the wards sound tired, their hum reduced to a thin vibration under the floorboards. I sit at the kitchen table, tracing the edge of one of Grams’s rune sketches, following the loops and spirals until the ink blurs before my eyes. The candles burn low. Outside, wind presses against the windows, a restless whisper that won’t stop reminding me what’s coming.
Grams is asleep upstairs. Her breathing was shallow when I checked on her—each exhale a little slower than the one before. I know what it means. She’s pouring herself into the wards every night, trying to hold the edges of the Vein together, and it’s killing her.
I should be working. I should be doing something useful. But the runes on the page keep turning into meaningless lines.
Behind me, the floor crea
