Prologue

Screams draw a tongueless acolyte to a dungeon cell where a Lyverian prisoner has birthed a silver-eyed infant. Sacton Crain and Mother Vona declare the child an abomination and order it sacrificed to The Eating Woods. After a Vonkovyan prisoner aids the birth, Sacton Crain slits the mother’s throat. With her dying breaths, the mother grips him and utters a prophecy of ancient power, decay, and blight before dying; the Vonkovyan is then murdered to silence witnesses.

Tasked to abandon the infant, the acolyte—Eleanor—carries the basket through a frigid, moonless night to the forest archway of bones. Haunted by a spectral lure in her mother’s voice, ravens harry her back as she wavers. A horned, bark-skinned wrathavore seizes Eleanor’s wrist and yanks her through the archway, leaving the baby alone at the threshold.

Nearby, The Crone Witch hears the wails and discovers the infant with silver eyes, recognizing a foretold arrival. When a hunter and his son approach, the father orders the child left for the woods. The boy, tempted to mutilate the baby, is stopped by The Crone Witch, who curses him with the mark of the ancient gods and a doomed fate, sending him fleeing.

The Crone Witch warms and wards the baby by conjuring a black, silver-tipped rose that roots on the child’s chest under raven watch. Pressed by a persistent raven, she agrees to find shelter, then dulls the baby’s telltale silver eyes with blood-curse magic to a winter gray. She leaves the protected infant at Godfrey Bronwick’s doorstep with a knock, entrusting the prophesied child to a secret life among villagers.