The bells had already begun to toll when they reached the edge of the woods.
Each peal rolled through the valley like the heartbeat of a dying god low, distant, and heavy enough to make the air tremble.
Rain fell in hard, wind-slanted sheets, hissing against the trees and turning the dirt road to a sucking mire. Each step Joseph took tore another chunk of mud from the earth. His boots were long ruined, his legs shaking beneath the weight of the woman in his arms. His cloak, once thick wool, was soaked through, clinging to him like a second, colder skin.
Rebecca's head rested weakly against his shoulder, strands of dark hair plastered to her cheeks. Her breath came shallow, ragged each one a wet gasp that misted against his neck. He could feel the tremors in her body; every cry she tried to hold back seemed to tear at her ribs.
Above them, the world had lost its color. The eclipse had swallowed the sky whole a dull, bruised black that made even the rain seem darker. The air was thick with the smell of earth and iron, of wet leaves and far-off smoke. Somewhere behind them, dogs barked. Somewhere closer, men shouted.
"Hold on," Joseph murmured, tightening his grip as he trudged forward. "Just a little more, love. The river's close."
Rebecca gave a sound that might have been a laugh if not for the pain behind it. "You said that an hour ago."
"It wasn't raining like this an hour ago," he said, forcing a smile she couldn't see. His voice cracked halfway through.
The next wave hit her then sharp and cruel and she doubled over in his arms with a strangled cry. He stopped, nearly dropping her, and pressed his forehead to hers. Her skin burned.
"Not yet," he pleaded. "Please, Rebecca… not now. We just need to make it to the ferry."
She shook her head, eyes glassy with tears. "It's too soon, Joseph. I can feel it."
He didn't answer. Couldn't. His throat had closed around something that might have been a sob.
Behind them, a shout carried through the rain the sound of men, armored and relentless. Torches bobbed between the trees like dying stars.
"Run!" someone barked from the darkness. A deep voice, commanding. "They can't have gone far!"
Joseph's heart lurched. He turned off the road and into the woods, half sliding, half running through the underbrush. Branches whipped against his face. His boots found stones and roots that tore at his soles, but he didn't stop. The forest closed around them, a wall of dripping leaves and shadows.
When he dared to look back, the torches had reached the bend in the road too close.
He found a hollow beneath an old oak, its roots tangled like the ribs of a buried giant. He lowered Rebecca there, his hands shaking so violently he could barely untangle her cloak. The sound of the bells seemed to fade, replaced by the rush of rain on leaves and the harsh rhythm of her breathing.
"Stay with me," he whispered.
She laughed again, weaker this time. "I'm trying, Joseph. Saints forgive me, I'm trying."
Her hand found his cheek, fingers trembling. "Don't let them take it," she whispered. "Promise me."
He stared at her, uncomprehending. "Rebecca, no"
"Promise me!" she hissed, her eyes fierce even through the pain. "If it's born on this day… if the sun still hides, you must not let them take it. You've seen what they do."
Joseph swallowed, his throat raw. He had seen. Everyone had. The gallows fires. The quiet processions. The infants wrapped in white and carried to the pyres "for the good of their souls." The priests said the eclipse made monsters of those born beneath it. Leapborn, they called them. Marked by darkness.
"I promise," he said finally, the words tasting like ash.
Rebecca shuddered, her grip tightening on his arm. "Then stay with me. Please."
Her next cry tore through the rain. Joseph fumbled for the knife at his belt not a weapon, but the dull, curved kind a farmer used for cutting rope or bread. He didn't know what to do with it. He wasn't a midwife, wasn't even sure how to help. He had only ever built walls, plowed earth, prayed when he was told to.
Now, all he could do was kneel beside her as she labored in the mud, his cloak spread beneath her, the rain washing blood and sweat into the earth.
The forest around them held its breath. Even the thunder seemed to wait.
Then, with one last desperate sound part scream, part sob the child came.
A small, wet bundle, slick with rain and blood. A voice that shouldn't have been able to cry that loud in a world that had lost all light.
For a long moment, Joseph just stared. The sound of the rain returned, and with it, the slow, awful silence beside him. Rebecca's body had gone still.
"Rebecca?" he said softly.
Her eyes were open, unfocused. Her lips moved, barely a breath. "Joseph… the river…"
And then she was gone.
He sat there in the mud, holding both of them one cold, one warm until he couldn't tell which tears were his and which were the rain.
The rain did not stop. It fell like the sky itself had opened and chosen to drown the world.
Joseph sat there for a long time, too broken to move. The body of his wife lay beside him, her skin already losing its warmth, her lips parted as though she were still trying to whisper something he could not hear. The child whimpered weakly in his arms, a fragile, shivering thing wrapped in his cloak.
He stared down at it through the veil of rain.
Tiny hands. Closed eyes. A thin cry that wavered in the air like a dying candle flame.
Rebecca's face flickered before him her smile on their wedding day, her laughter by the hearth, the way she used to hum when she worked the garden. All of it dissolved into the sound of rain and bells and the faint, distant barking of hounds.
"Why now?" he whispered. "Why here?"
The child stirred. Its small fingers grasped at the air. Joseph's jaw clenched. He looked away, his throat thick.
"You shouldn't have come into this world," he muttered, voice cracking. "Not tonight. Not beneath this cursed sun."
He rose, stiff and trembling, and pressed a kiss to Rebecca's cold forehead. Then, with the dull, mechanical movement of a man long past exhaustion, he gathered his things. His satchel. The knife. The baby.
The forest seemed to close around him as he left the hollow, swallowing her grave beneath rain and shadow. There would be no marker, no prayer. Only the sound of the storm and the echo of his promise.
---
By the time he reached the river, night had fallen or perhaps it had never been day at all. The eclipse still ruled the heavens, a black disk where the sun should be, casting the world in a dim red gloom. The water churned like molten iron beneath the false light, swollen by the rain.
Joseph stumbled down the bank, boots sliding in the mud. His breath came in ragged bursts. His arms ached from holding the child, but he couldn't bring himself to let it go.
When he reached the edge, he sank to his knees and stared out across the water. The far shore was lost to mist, faint torchlight glimmering through it the outer docks of the Eastern marches, if he was right. Beyond that, safety was a lie. But perhaps a quieter kind of death waited there.
The child whimpered again. He looked down.
It was quiet now, watching him. Its eyes were open a pale, silvery color that caught the dim light in an unnatural way. Too bright for any newborn. Too aware.
Joseph's breath caught in his chest.
"Saints preserve us…"
He tore his gaze away and stood, swaying. "You're one of them, aren't you?" His voice was barely a whisper. "A Leapborn."
The word seemed to hang in the air like a curse.
He took a step toward the water. Then another. The cold lapped at his boots, then his knees. His hands shook so badly he almost dropped the child by accident.
He held it out before him, over the dark, swirling current. The rain beat down harder, masking the sound of his sobs.
"I can't," he said. "I can't let them find you. They'll burn you, or worse." He choked on his words, his eyes red and raw. "Rebecca… forgive me."
For a heartbeat, he saw it clearly the way it would go under, the way the current would take it, the way no one would ever know.
But then the child made a small sound.
A breath. A coo.
And in that fragile sound, something broke inside him.
Joseph fell to his knees in the shallows, clutching the child against his chest, crying until his voice was gone.
"No," he rasped. "No… I can't. I won't."
He stayed like that for a long time, until the rain softened and the world seemed to exhale. Then, through the mist, he saw it a flicker of firelight on the water. A boat.
---
It was a small fishing vessel, its hull low and weather-worn. The man aboard was old and narrow-shouldered, his face hidden beneath a wide hat. He guided the boat with the ease of long habit, his lantern swaying from a pole. When he saw Joseph on the bank, he hesitated, then steered closer.
"You've no business out here, stranger," the old man called over the rain. His voice was rough as gravel. "The storm's bad enough without chasing ghosts."
Joseph rose shakily, clutching the child close. "Please," he said, his voice hoarse. "I need passage. Eastward."
The fisherman frowned. "No ferries run this night. Not during the black sun."
Joseph pulled something from his satchel a pouch that clinked faintly. "Gold. Enough for silence and passage both."
The old man studied him, then the bundle in his arms. He spat into the river. "You're running from something."
Joseph's eyes were hollow. "Aren't we all?"
For a moment, the only sound was the rain and the creak of the boat. Then the old man sighed and extended a hand.
"Get in before I change my mind."
Joseph stepped into the boat, the wood rocking beneath him. As they pushed off, the current took them swiftly. The forest faded into darkness behind them, the torches now distant sparks swallowed by the mist.
He sat there in silence, the child pressed to his chest, the fisherman's lantern swaying softly between them.
Somewhere overhead, the eclipse began to wane, a faint ring of light bleeding around the black sun. But the darkness did not lift.
And as the river carried them east toward the wild lands where no church dared rule Joseph looked down at his sleeping son and whispered the only thing he had left to give him.
"Percival," he said. "Your name will be percival."