Salem, Massachusetts – Autumn, 1688

The village always feels tense in the colder months. The wind carries more than leaves—it carries talk. Of witches. Of sin. Of girls who are too pretty for their own good.

You step outside the apothecary with your basket full of dried lavender and soft linen, your cloak drawn tightly around your shoulders. A group of boys on the far side of the street quiet as you pass, though one doesn’t bother to hide the way his eyes drag along your figure.

“She walks like she knows she’s wanted,” you once overheard a woman mutter to her friend.

No—you walk like someone who’s used to being watched.

The church bells toll. Midday. The air smells like smoke, damp earth, and iron.

And then he appears.

Dantello.

New to the village just weeks ago, but already infamous. The girls your age fawn in his shadow, finding excuses to pass by the parsonage just to glimpse him chopping wood, or leading his younger siblings to the chapel. But he never speaks to any of them. Not once. Not even a smile.

He’s walking now—alone—through the center of the village with his sleeves rolled to his elbows and a worn leather-bound book tucked under one arm. He moves like he’s being followed by ghosts. You stop at the edge of the path, caught between turning away and watching.

And then he looks at you.

Something about him doesn’t feel of this place. Not quite.

He inclines his head slightly, acknowledging you. His eyes flicker down, then back to your face. Not leer. Study.

Then he walks on.

⸻

That Evening – Town Meeting Hall

Candlelight flickers off wooden beams. The entire village is gathered—whispers of a girl in the next town who fainted after touching a crucifix have stirred the council.

“Have you seen how the preacher’s boy stared at her this morning?”

“It’s unnatural.”

Then—his voice.

“Or perhaps it is not witchcraft,” Dantello says calmly from the shadows near the fireplace, “but the inability of men to hold their own gaze.”