The sea was restless that night. Waves slammed against the cliffside as if the ocean itself wanted to claw free of its cage, sending spray high enough to mist the rooftops of the village. Lanterns along the square swayed on their hooks, their flames guttering as the wind pushed in from the shore. Somewhere, a shutter banged loose, its hollow thud echoing like a warning bell.

  I stood at the edge of the village square, my basket of herbs heavy on my hip, the woven handle biting into my palm. My eyes, traitorous as ever, were fixed not on the cottages glowing warm with hearthlight, but on the forest beyond the fields.

  The Duskwood loomed just past the last fencepost, its ancient trees rising like black ribs against the bruised purple of the sky. Even at a distance, it felt alive in a way nothing else did. The air around it always seemed thicker, darker, as if the light itself struggled to pass between those twisted trunks.

  Children were warned not to stray near the treeline. Not after sundown. Not ever, if their mothers had their way. I’d seen women clutch iron charms and murmur prayers when the wind shifted and carried the forest’s breath toward the village. Men spoke of it in low voices over ale, pretending disbelief while never quite meeting the woods with their eyes.

  But me?

  I’d been listening to those whispers all my life.

  They had followed me since childhood—soft, half-formed murmurs curling through my thoughts when I walked alone or worked late by candlelight. Sometimes they sounded like the wind. Sometimes like memory. And sometimes, like tonight, they were unmistakably something else.

  Help me.

  The words slid through my mind with startling clarity, not spoken aloud yet louder than the crashing waves below the cliffs. I froze. The basket slipped in my grip, dried leaves rustling as the handle nearly slid free.

  My heart stuttered painfully in my chest.

  I hadn’t imagined it. I knew that the way one knows when a storm is coming before the clouds gather. The voice was clearer tonight, closer, clearly urgent. It curled through my thoughts like smoke, clinging and impossible to ignore.

  I should have gone home.

  I should have turned away, crossed the square, and bolted my door against the night like any sensible woman would. I should have banked the fire, crawled into bed, and told myself exhaustion had finally made me hear things that weren’t there.

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  Instead, I took a step toward the fields. Then another.

  The grass was slick beneath my boots, dew soaking through the worn leather as I crossed the meadow separating the village from the woods. Each step felt heavier than the last, as though the earth itself were trying to hold me back. The air grew colder the farther I went, the salt tang of the sea giving way to damp loam and decay.

  That was when I saw it.

  Dark blood spattered across the grass, nearly black in the low light. It soaked into the earth in uneven patches, leading in a broken trail toward the forest’s edge. My breath caught painfully in my throat.

  “No,” I whispered, though to whom—or what—I wasn’t sure.

  Every sensible instinct screamed at me to turn back. Blood near the Duskwood meant trouble of the worst kind. Bandits didn’t hunt this close to the village, and animals rarely crossed the fields. But something like curiosity, duty, or perhaps something darker and older, tightened its grip around my ribs and pulled me forward.

  The whispers didn’t speak again. They didn’t need to.

  The forest swallowed sound as I crossed beneath its boughs. The wind died, the waves faded, and the world narrowed to the soft crunch of leaves beneath my boots and the pounding of my pulse in my ears. Moonlight filtered weakly through the canopy, silvering roots and stones, revealing more blood smeared across bark and ferns.

  And then I saw him.

  He was slumped against the massive roots of an oak older than the village itself, its trunk gnarled and split with age. A man, or something reminiscent of one, half-hidden in shadow, his head bowed, his dark hair plastered to his face with sweat and blood. Leather armor hung torn and ruined from his frame, cut deep in places I didn’t want to look at too closely yet.

  His blood, I realized distantly, my stomach lurching.

  I must have made a sound, because his head snapped up. Golden-brown eyes flashed open, sharp even through pain, locking onto me with startling intensity. For a heartbeat, neither of us moved.

  Then I saw the markings.

  Black lines coiled over his collarbone and up his neck, disappearing beneath torn leather. They weren’t painted or scarred—they shifted, slow and deliberate, like living ink beneath his skin. My breath left me in a shaky exhale.

  “Don’t scream,” he rasped.

  His voice was rough as gravel, scraped raw by pain or shouting—or worse. “If you value your life.”

  Fear finally caught up to me, cold and sharp. My heart thundered against my ribs, my body primed to run. And yet, my hands betrayed me. They tightened around the basket’s handle instead of dropping it. They ached to reach for him, to assess the wounds, to stop the bleeding before it was too late.

  I’d been trained for this since I was fourteen. Nearly ten years of poultices and sutures, of bone-setting and fever-breaking. Nearly ten years of being called healer, witch, miracle-worker—depending on who was speaking and how desperate they were.

  I swallowed hard and forced my voice steady. “If I meant you harm,” I said quietly, “you’d already be dead.”

  Something flickered in his eyes; surprise, maybe. Or relief. He exhaled through clenched teeth, his head falling back against the bark with a dull thud.

  Finally, I decided, the shadows had led me here. The shadows had led me to him. And for whatever reason, I found it within myself not to be afraid. I found it within myself to do what I had been trained to do.

  So I crouched beside him, setting my basket down in the leaves, and let my instincts take over as my fingers hovered over torn leather and blood-slick skin, already planning how to keep him alive long enough to ask the questions I knew this night would demand.