The girl was born with her mouth sewn shut.

Not with thread, but with magic. Woven runes, etched in ash, sealed her lips the moment she drew breath.

“Silence is safer,” the midwife said. “For her, and for us.”

They named her Callyn, though she never heard it spoken kindly. Her world was gestures and glares, her voice a caged bird behind pale skin.

But when the curse unraveled on her sixteenth birthday, the first word she spoke bloomed into flame.

The second word cracked stone.

The third made her mother forget she ever had a daughter.

They feared her when she was silent.
They would come to fear her more now that she could sing.