The bell rang once, stopped, then rang again—uneven, uncertain, like whoever held it had changed their mind halfway through.
I had been tracing the cracks in the stone step with my finger, pretending they were rivers on a map, when the sound reached me. It didn't belong to our afternoons. Our road was quiet by nature, the kind of quiet that settled into your bones and made you forget the world moved beyond the trees. I remember thinking, absurdly, that the bell sounded tired. When I looked up, Father was already there, standing just behind me, his presence so natural I hadn't heard him come out at all. His shadow slid over mine, longer than it should have been, even though the sun was still high.
The merchant didn't come closer. He stopped at the edge of the yard as if an invisible line had been drawn there. His cart was ordinary—too ordinary. Planks of mismatched wood, old rope knotted where it had snapped before, sacks that had seen too many seasons. But the horse was wrong. Its sides heaved, sweat darkening its coat, foam clinging at the bit as though it had been driven harder than it should have been. The man kept one hand locked around the reins, the other gripping his satchel strap so tightly the leather creaked.
He smiled when Father met his gaze.
It was a practiced smile. The kind meant to reassure, not to be believed.
They exchanged greetings. Polite. Normal. Weather, roads, the state of trade. The merchant spoke too fast, then apologized for speaking too fast, then laughed like it was a joke he expected Father to share. Father answered evenly, but something about him had shifted. His stance was different—weight balanced, shoulders set. Not welcoming. Guarded. I noticed because I was small and close enough to see details adults forgot children could see: the way Father's fingers flexed once at his side, the way his eyes never left the merchant's face.
The merchant's gaze kept sliding past him.
Past me.
To the house.
Each time his eyes flicked there, his breath stuttered, just a little, as if he were checking whether the walls were still standing. When he finally said the word, it came out fractured, like it hurt to let it exist between us.
"Celes—Celestara."
Celestara
The sound of it seemed to drain the warmth from the air.
Father froze.
Not the kind of freeze that comes with surprise, but the kind that comes with recognition. Like something long anticipated had finally stepped into the light. The merchant saw it instantly and rushed on, words spilling, tripping over each other. He talked about inns where conversations stopped when certain travelers entered, about routes he'd stopped taking, about towns where people pretended not to know that name even as they avoided looking at each other. He said he didn't know if the rumors were true. He said he wasn't accusing anyone. He said he just thought—he just thought Father should know.
He said he had children.
I waited for Father to laugh. To dismiss it. To say rumors grew teeth when left alone too long. He didn't. He listened. When the merchant finally fell silent, Father reached into his pocket and drew out a single coin.
Gold.
It caught the light in a way silver never did, heavy and warm even from where I stood. A coin like that could have fed a family for weeks. Father pressed it into the merchant's hand and closed the man's fingers around it before he could protest. The merchant's eyes widened, fear flaring sharper than gratitude.
"For the road," Father said quietly.
The merchant tried to refuse. Father didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. His hand remained there, steady, unyielding, until the merchant nodded, swallowing hard. The gold disappeared into his satchel like something illicit.
"Go," Father said.
The bell rang again as the cart turned, louder now, desperate. The horse surged forward, eager, hooves striking sparks from stone as if the ground itself wanted him gone. I watched until dust swallowed the road and the sound faded into nothing.
Only then did Father exhale.
He looked down at me, and for a heartbeat, something raw crossed his face—too fast to name. He rested his hand on my head, warm, grounding, familiar.
"Inside," he said gently. "It's getting late."
As we walked back toward the house, the word echoed in my mind, heavy and unfamiliar. Celestara. I didn't know what it was. I only knew what it did. I had seen grown men fear swords. I had seen them fear monsters and storms and hunger.
But I had never seen an adult afraid of a word.
And I understood, in a quiet, cracking way, that whatever it meant, it was already closer than it should have been.
The word stayed with me even after the door closed behind us.
Celestara.
I didn't say it out loud. I rolled it around in my head instead, testing its shape, wondering how something so soft-sounding could make adults stiffen like that. The house felt smaller than it had an hour ago, as if the walls had leaned in while we were outside. Mother looked up from the table when we entered, her eyes flicking from Father's face to mine. She smiled, but it came a second too late, like she'd rehearsed it after hearing footsteps.
That night, Father told me we were going to start learning new games.
He didn't call them lessons. He didn't call them training. He said games, and I believed him, because I wanted to. Because children want to believe adults when they offer explanations that don't hurt. The first game was about breathing. He took me into the clearing behind the house, where the trees grew close enough to make the air feel dense, and told me to run until my chest burned.
I ran.
At first it was fun. I laughed when my feet slipped on roots, when my lungs pulled in air too fast and too shallow. Then the burn came, sharp and immediate, like fire licking the inside of my ribs. I slowed instinctively, but Father's voice cut through it, calm, unyielding.
"Count."
I didn't understand why counting mattered when everything hurt. I counted anyway. One breath in. Two out. Three in. My vision blurred at the edges. My legs trembled. When I finally stopped, I bent over, hands on my knees, coughing like my chest was trying to escape me. Father knelt in front of me, level with my eyes.
"Again," he said.
There was no anger in his voice. That made it worse.
The games changed after that. Hide-and-seek, but not the kind where you giggle and peek through your fingers. This was about stillness. About pressing yourself into shadow until your limbs went numb. About learning how to slow your breathing until even you couldn't hear it. Father showed me how to place my feet so leaves didn't crunch, how to move only when the wind moved, how to become small without thinking about it.
I wanted him to smile when I did it right.
I wanted him to say good job the way he used to, the way he did when I finished chores or recited lessons. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he only nodded, eyes distant, already measuring something beyond me. I didn't understand what I was being measured against. I only knew that when he did praise me, warmth bloomed in my chest brighter than any pain.
The breath control game got harder. Holding air until my lungs screamed. Releasing it so slowly my body shook. Learning to endure the burning without panicking. There were days I cried afterward, face buried in my sleeves, ashamed of the tears. Father never scolded me for that. He just waited, hand resting on my back, solid and quiet.
I thought the goal was strength.
I didn't realize it was survival.
One evening, after I managed to disappear in the trees long enough that Father couldn't find me immediately, pride swelled so fast it hurt. When he finally called my name, relief and triumph tangled together in my chest. I stepped out, dirt-streaked and shaking, grinning so hard my face ached.
"I did it," I said.
Father looked at me for a long time.
Then he nodded.
I went to bed that night replaying the moment in my head, holding onto that nod like proof that I was becoming something good, something worthy. I didn't understand why Mother hugged me tighter than usual, or why her hands trembled. I didn't understand why Father stood in the doorway longer than he needed to, watching me breathe as if counting them silently.
I slept proud.
And that, I would learn much later, was what hurt the most.
The morning was quiet in a way that felt wrong.
I woke to the birds, but even they seemed tentative, like they had sensed something beyond the hills. Father was already gone when I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, leaving the house feeling larger, emptier, though I knew he was only out of sight. I dressed quickly, my fingers still sore from the exercises yesterday, the burn in my lungs a dull, persistent ache that made me remember the pride I had felt—and the way it had settled like lead in my chest. Mother hummed softly in the kitchen, stirring something thick in a pot, but her eyes kept darting toward the door, toward the road. That tension had a shape. I recognized it now. It was the same shape the merchant had left behind: stiff shoulders, furrowed brows, lips pressed too tight. Fear, quiet but deep.
It came first as a shadow on the road.
Boots before bodies. Armor before faces. I saw the glint of metal in the sun, the careful, deliberate weight of something that moved with purpose. I froze. My stomach twisted, the same cold flare I had felt when the word Celestara hung in the air. Father's hand was suddenly on my shoulder, firm, grounding, pressing me slightly backward without words. I shrank instinctively, knowing I was supposed to hide, supposed to be small, supposed to disappear without making sound. The lessons had been games. The games had been lessons. The lessons were real.
The squad arrived, more than I had ever imagined could move at once on our little road. They didn't speak as they approached. Not yet. The masks hid the expression that might have betrayed them, but I saw it anyway: eyes sharp, scanning, calculating, smiles that didn't reach the corners of the eyes. The boots struck the stones in rhythm, the sound heavy, deliberate. I pressed closer to Father, heart hammering against his side. Even standing, he seemed taller somehow, stronger somehow, the weight of him a shield I wanted more than air.
One of them stopped.
I didn't mean to notice, but I did. I can't unsee what a predator looks like when it has just caught the scent of a thing it isn't sure it will take. His gaze lingered on me, just long enough for my knees to quake, just long enough for my chest to tighten. The mask hid everything but the cold, the focus, the patience that had nothing to do with friendliness. I remembered the games—the disappearing, the holding my breath, the counting. It had all been practice for this. I didn't move. I didn't breathe more than I needed. I counted silently in my head. One… two… three… fourteen… twenty… thirty-two. Each number a lifeline.
Father didn't flinch. He didn't move. He simply shifted slightly, just enough for me to step behind him completely, like a shadow retreating into another. The operative's gaze followed me for a moment longer, then drifted back to Father. There was recognition in that look now, something heavier than curiosity. Respect? Threat? I didn't know. I only knew it carried weight. I wanted to look away, but my eyes were glued, memorizing every movement: the way the mask bent with the mouth as he breathed, the way the armor caught light in impossible angles, the careful, quiet smiles that belonged to no one at all.
The tension stretched between them and us. I felt it in my fingertips, in the curl of dust at my shoes, in the air we didn't move through. I wanted to say something, anything, but the words stuck in my throat. Even breathing seemed dangerous. The squad stayed a while, examining the yard, the house, the trees, as if counting us, assessing everything we might be hiding. Father never moved. Never shifted. He simply stood, tall and steady, an anchor against the storm I didn't yet have the words to name.
When they finally left, the sound of their boots fading down the road, I didn't breathe properly for a long moment. The air felt charged, as if every leaf, every stone had been touched by some unseen hand. I stayed close to Father, close enough to feel the slow, controlled pulse of his palm on my shoulder. I realized then that the games had worked, that my body knew instinctively what to do, even if my mind screamed for childish comfort. My chest ached not with pride this time, but with understanding. The world beyond our yard wasn't safe. The games hadn't been games at all. They were preparation, training me to exist without being noticed, to move unseen, to survive without being seen as more than a child.
I pressed myself closer to him and, for the first time in days, I allowed my pride to vanish entirely. I had learned well, but I had learned something heavier than triumph. I had learned the weight of eyes that see too clearly, and I had learned what it meant to shrink beneath them. The silence after they left screamed louder than their boots ever could.
When we returned home, the quiet had changed. The kind of quiet that usually felt safe, like dust settling on the table, now pressed against my ears, made me notice the faintest creak in the floorboards, the way the wind hesitated outside. Something had shifted. I didn't understand it yet, but I felt it in my stomach, the same way I had when the merchant had said Celestara or when the squad had passed through our yard like shadows with teeth.
Before we even crossed the threshold, a villager arrived. He stood at the edge of our yard, hunched, ragged, hands twisting the brim of his hat so tightly his knuckles shone white. His eyes flicked between Father and the house, and then, finally, they landed on me. He swallowed, voice thick with fear and guilt.
"Y-you shouldn't be here," he said. "Not—uh… not safe. They've taken… someone. Last night."
Father's hand tightened on the gate, wood groaning under his grip. I pressed closer to him instinctively, remembering the lessons, remembering how to shrink and hold myself still. The villager's words tumbled over themselves, apologies, half-explained truths, a confession that he had survived when another had not. When he finally fell silent, the yard felt louder than ever. The air pressed against my ears. The silence after his warning screamed more than any shout ever could.
The village man's warning lingered longer than his words. Even after he left, hurrying down the road like someone afraid of being caught in shadows, the sense of someone—something—taken pressed against the air around our home. Father's hand hadn't loosened on the gate until the dust from the road swallowed the man completely. I pressed closer to him instinctively, remembering the lessons I had learned in the clearing, the games that weren't games, the disappearances and the long, silent counting of my breath. The world outside our yard had teeth, and I had learned to shrink from them—but knowing didn't make it less frightening.
Inside the house, the tension thickened. Mother was already kneeling at the center of the living room, a small table pushed aside, candles forming a crooked circle around scattered parchments. Smoke curled from incense, thick and heavy, winding around her fingers as if alive. I could see the glow of the runes forming on the floor under her hands, soft and luminescent, each pulse in the air vibrating through my chest. Her voice started low, whispering strange syllables, but the words quickly grew faster, more forceful, deliberate. The papers around her were maps, letters, and small ledgers that smelled of old ink and dust, and with each incantation, she lifted one, let it hover for a heartbeat, and then dropped it into the flames. The crackle was sharp in the quiet room, louder than any shout, and each page curling into ash carried more than paper—it carried traces of lives, of truths, of decisions made long before I existed.
Father came in behind me, shoulders squared, eyes narrowing in that precise way I had learned to recognize: the warning that words alone could not carry. "Stop lying to the children," he said, his voice low, steady, but underlined with something that made even my own breath catch. It wasn't accusation—it was gravity pressing against gravity, the kind that leaves you standing still in the center of a storm, knowing that moving wrong could shatter everything. Mother froze mid-motion, hands poised over the flames, eyes widening for just a fraction of a second, and I saw her smile flicker and break, the practiced warmth faltering. The runes wavered with her hesitation, smoke twisting in confused curls around her fingers.
She didn't argue. She didn't retreat. But I could see it in her eyes: regret, fear, grief, and a fierce determination tangled together. Each document she burned was a choice, a truth erased, a life remembered only in whispers. The fire licked the papers hungrily, consuming names and dates, evidence of everything our household had tried to hide from the world. I felt my stomach tighten with every page that disintegrated, the heat brushing my cheeks, the smell of ink and smoke filling my lungs. Mother's hands shook slightly, just enough that I noticed, and she exhaled slowly, as if releasing not just smoke, but sorrow.
Father stepped closer, the wood of the floorboard creaking beneath his boots, eyes never leaving hers. "You can't hide it forever," he said, voice quiet but edged with warning. "Not from them, and not from us. Stop lying to the children."
Mother's head dipped briefly, almost in acknowledgment, almost in surrender, and then she rose, taller, fiercer, holding the last document in her hands. She extended it toward the fire, and I realized then that the burning wasn't just protection—it was penance. Each page was a life, each ember a memory, each curl of ash a truth rendered silent. The room seemed to breathe with the flames, smoke curling around us, heavy and tangible, pressing secrets into the corners, leaving only the raw, honest moment between my parents.
When the last of the papers had turned to ash, she finally looked at me. Her hands were red-tinged from the heat of the candles, eyes damp but clear. From the box at her side, she drew a pendant, small but weighty, and held it out to me. "This belonged to your grandmother," she said, voice barely above a whisper, trembling as it did. "It carries the watchfulness of those who came before you, the fear and the hope. It will remind you… to be careful, and to remember."
I took it, feeling the smooth, cold chain against my palm, the weight settling against my chest. Not heavy like the gold coin Father had given the merchant, but heavy in a different way—full of history, of responsibility, of the fear that had passed through generations, now pressed into my own body. Father spoke my name once, and only once, and it cracked in the air, sharp and intimate, like it carried the years of all he had endured, all he had kept hidden.
I pressed the pendant against my chest, and it was as if the ashes, the flames, the warnings, the vanishings outside the yard, and the whispered word Celestara all settled there together. I felt the weight of everything—lessons, survival, fear, and the fragile hope that sometimes, even in shadow, you could protect what mattered.
And in that quiet, glowing room filled with smoke, I understood: the world was not just dangerous. It was watching. And now, I was too.
"One more day," My mother had told Father. "Give me one more day."
But that day… never came.