The first snow fell as Joren stepped into the world, two breaths too late. It came in silence, slow and unhurried, like a benediction or a warning.

One flake landed on the curve of the dead woman’s shoulder, where her gown had torn away from the rope that bound her to the post. The fire had gone out, but the air still stank of smoke and scorched cloth. The woman’s body hung from the post, half kneeling, slumped forward, rope biting into her blistered wrists. Her hair, soaked and matted with blood, drifted like thread in the wind. They had carved a cross into her chest. The cuts went deep, as if slashed with fury and hate.

He hesitated for a moment and looked around. They had all left, gone back to their huts, their turf fires, their small lives. They had left her when the wind began to smother the flames and made watching uncomfortably cold.

He stepped closer to confirm her death and froze when he saw the blue-tinged little hand under her rough-spun woollen skirt. She must have given birth with her last breath. The baby lay in the ash at her feet, half-swaddled in the bloodied scraps.

A little girl.
Not crying. Not moving.

Her skin had the wrong hue, too grey, too still, like time had already started forgetting her.

He was only meant to observe, to confirm the location, the purging, the echo-point.
No interference. No retrieval.

The Guild would never authorise a lift this deep into the past. But he had read the records. He had seen what the Guild had done, what they had erased. He had seen the line in the redacted file:

“Residual thread anomalies consistent with Tier-3 Echo-Seed classifications traced to Glanfeyne burnings, 1663-1666. One anomaly unaccounted for. Time travel authorised to confirm purging from approved timeline.”

He dropped to his knees, the wind keening through the bare trees above. His breath misted in the air. The child’s lips were blue. He pressed two fingers to the baby’s chest.

Nothing.

The snow caught in her mother’s hair.

If he lifted her, he couldn’t unlift her. If he took her, the thread would shift. The Guild would never forgive it. But the snow kept falling. And she was still warm. His fingers trembled as he unhooked his coat and wrapped her inside it, pressing her to his chest, trying to share his warmth. Her tiny face nestled under his collarbone.

Still no sound.

Please, he thought, I know I don’t belong here, but neither does she. He stood, turned away from the pyre, and tapped the device at his belt. It flickered once. Then again.

And in the moment before the world blinked out, he felt it.

A breath against his skin.

Then the cry. Small. Sharp. Alive.

He didn’t know her name.
But the world would.