The sun had not yet risen, but the village square was already alive with the murmurs of elders and children. I should have felt warmth, but the chill had rooted itself in my bones. Even at ten, I understood what this morning meant.
They called it protection. They said it was a way to save the village from the calamity my father had foreseen. But protection, I learned quickly, has a sharp edge, and it cuts closest to those it claims to shield.
I knelt in the center of the stone circle, my wrists bound and my back straight, as the elders began their chants. The words were ancient, a language that seemed to twist itself around the air and settle like dust in my chest. My fingers itched to run, to tear at the ropes, but every instinct told me to stay. That was the first lesson: obedience does not guarantee survival.
The first elder stepped forward, a man whose eyes had once been gentle when I followed him to the river to learn the charms. Now, they glinted like shards of obsidian. In his hand, he carried a knife, not sharp enough to kill, he said, but precise enough to mark. To carve. To bind.
"Do you understand why we do this?" he asked, voice low, almost a whisper.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. "To protect the village," I said. My voice trembled, but it was the correct answer. There was no other.
He nodded. "Yes. The calamity comes for all. Not for some. Not for none. But if we anchor it… perhaps it will pass through you, and leave us intact."
Anchor it. Those words made no sense, but my father's warnings echoed in my mind. He had spoken of visions. A shadow sweeping over our homes, families vanishing in the blink of an eye, a world unraveled. And now, here I was, the vessel of their hope, and perhaps the instrument of their doom.
The carvings began. The knife traced the lines along my bones, hot pain that did not burn but settled deep, threading itself into my marrow. Every symbol pressed a weight I could not lift, every line a promise I had not made. Yet, somewhere in the edges of perception, something stirred—something I could not name. It whispered in the spaces between the chants, a vibration in the chest and mind that should not have been there. I closed my eyes, but the feeling persisted, a pulse like a heartbeat that was not mine.
I did not yet know it, but the charm had gone beyond intention. The elders had sought to contain calamity, to bend fate to their will. But fate is a living thing, and it resists commands. In the carving of the final symbol, the unintended consequence unfolded. The anchor had gained consciousness—not a being as we know it, not a god, but something that learned as it formed, something that existed in the spaces where chance and choice collide. It had no name. It had no desire for freedom. It only existed, and it required me.
When the ritual ended, I expected gratitude. I expected relief. I got silence. The villagers clapped lightly, some of the children stared, their small hands covering mouths as though they had seen a ghost. My mother stepped forward, eyes wide, and her lips quivered, but she said nothing. The elder who carved the last mark looked at me, his eyes bright with triumph, and then he turned away, muttering words I did not understand.
I stood, my joints stiff, my chest aching with a pressure I could not explain. And then, the first real consequence came. Old Haru, the man who had taught me the songs of the river, collapsed across the square, clutching his chest. The crowd screamed, but the elders hushed them. They said it was a test, an imbalance that would pass, but I knew immediately: the charm had worked. Just not for who they expected.
Something inside me stirred. A voice, not my own, precise, calm, and indifferent, said:
> "So they chose a child."
I froze. My heart stuttered. The words were not malicious, but they carried a weight that pressed against my ribs. I understood, before I even dared to act, that I had been made a warden, not a victim. To use the power the elders had unknowingly created would cost someone. That was the second lesson: choice comes with sacrifice, and you cannot choose without consequence.
I knelt beside Old Haru. The warmth of the village's hope pressed against me, a burden I could not escape. I placed my hands over his chest and focused. It was instinct, a thread of will tethered to the runes in my bones. The pulse of the unintended entity aligned with my heartbeat. I felt it whisper, not words but logic, a calculus of life and death. I pushed. Pain blossomed in my back. Heat lanced through my fingertips. And then it stopped. Haru gasped, eyes opening wide.
The villagers exhaled. Relief. But the relief was shallow. Behind their smiles, a shadow lingered. Someone else collapsed. I did not need to look to know who. The trade had been exact, as the unseen intelligence calculated. The cost had been paid. And I had paid it.
I rose, knees trembling, hands slick with the residue of power I had barely understood. The entity stirred, patient, observing, weighing. It had no name, but it had presence. It had no purpose, but it had logic. And it had chosen me.
The elders gathered around, murmuring congratulations. They did not see, could not see, the thread connecting the boy they had marked and the collapse of life before them. I saw it. And in seeing, I understood the first truth of the curse: survival is never free. The watchers never bargain. The consequence always collects.
And in the deepest corner of my mind, where the presence waited silently, I whispered a thought I did not dare voice aloud:
> "If I must live as warden, I will live on my terms. And one day, the village will understand the price of their salvation."
The sun rose fully then, pale and indifferent. It illuminated the carved lines in my skin, the pulse beneath my ribs, and the beginnings of a power I did not yet control. The world had shifted. The villagers believed they were safe. They were wrong.
And so it begins.