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Three years researching people who'd vanished from Victorian records. Hundreds of names, seventy-three locations, patterns that no one else believed were real. My colleagues had called me obsessed. My advisor had warned me I was chasing ghosts, that I'd never get my PhD if I kept pursuing a thesis no one would take seriously.

But I hadn't been able to stop. Something had driven me to keep digging, to cross-reference census data and parish registers, to document every disappearance with meticulous precision. Like I'd known—on some level deeper than conscious thought—that I would need that proof. That I would need to understand exactly what had happened to these people.

Because without that knowledge, I wouldn't be able to help them now.

I was a historian. I'd spent years documenting the dead, the disappeared, the deliberately forgotten. And now I was being asked to save them. I'd been preparing to rewrite history itself. I just hadn’t known it.

I glanced at the sun high in the sky filtering through the canopy. How much time had passed? I needed to get back before August realized I was gone.

The group moved carefully, their steps practiced and quiet. The Weavers had long learned how to slip through the woods unnoticed, their presence barely more than a breath against the wind. I stayed close to Lorien, whose warmth and patience had already begun to ease some of my nerves.

“You’ll come back tomorrow?” she asked.

I nodded. “I need to learn more about this magic that has been hiding inside of me.”

She gave a small smile. Then, a shift—sudden and unmistakable.

A tense ripple moved through the group. Someone ahead of us stilled, their body going rigid. Lorien sucked in a sharp breath.

“Run,” one of the Weavers whispered, barely more than a breath. “They’re here.”

My pulse slammed into my ribs.

The Witch Hunters.

Panic struck like a lightning bolt. The others reacted instantly, vanishing into the trees like ghosts. I turned to follow, but Lorien grabbed my arm.

“Not that way,” she whispered harshly, shoving me toward a thick patch of underbrush. “Hide. Stay down and do not make a sound.”

“Lorien.”

“Now.”

I hesitated for only a second before scrambling into the brush, pressing myself against the damp earth. My heart thundered in my chest as I forced myself to stay still.

Lorien turned to run.

She wasn’t fast enough.

A figure lunged from the trees, tackling her to the ground. She thrashed wildly, her cry cut short as the hunter wrenched her arms behind her back. Metal glinted in the filtered sunlight—iron manacles, thick and cruel.

The moment they snapped around her wrists, Lorien went rigid. A sound escaped her—half gasp, half sob—like something vital had been severed.

“There will be no mind games from you today, Weaver,” the hunter growled, cinching the iron tighter.

She thrashed, wild and desperate. But she was outnumbered and the iron had already done its work. Her magic, whatever she might have used to escape, was gone.

I crouched behind a fallen elm, briars snagging my skirt. I dug my fingers into the dirt, forcing myself not to make a sound.

“Take her to the clearing.”

I froze.

That voice. Unmistakable.

August.

He stepped into view, his sharp gaze flicking to Lorien, then surveying the area like he expected others to still be nearby. His posture was composed, unreadable, but I could see it—the way his fingers twitched slightly at his side, the way his jaw tightened just a fraction.