Elena was nine years old when she first noticed the castle had grown a new hallway that shouldn't exist. She was the daughter of the royal cartographer, a man...
The winter came early to the village the year Thomas turned eleven. Usually, the first snow arrived after the harvest festival, after the crops were stored and the animals...
Lucy was ten years old when she first noticed the footprints were wrong. She'd walked the forest path a thousand times—it connected her family's cottage on the eastern edge...
Daniel was eight years old when he first realized his shadow was watching him. Not just following, the way shadows are supposed to—but watching. With intent. With awareness. With...
Robert lived in a village split in two by a wide, dark river. On the north bank lived about forty families, including his own. On the south bank lived...
Eleanor had been looking forward to festival day for three whole months. In the village where she lived—a bustling place of perhaps three hundred families clustered around a central...
Brother William was the youngest person living at Saint Aldred's Monastery, and some days he felt like the only one who remembered what silence actually meant. The other monks—twelve...
Henry had been a shepherd for exactly three months when he found the flute. Before that, he'd helped his father in the village smithy, pumping the bellows until his...
Thomas had always loved the old well. It sat at the very edge of his village, where the houses ended and the wild grasslands began. Nobody used it anymore—there...
Amara never meant to find magic that day at the market. She'd gone looking for salt and maybe some dried apples if the traders had any, but what she...
