The forest beyond Jericho was always quiet in winter. Cold mist crept between the trees, and the frozen lake stretched out like glass, reflecting nothing but gray sky. Isaac Night walked the edge of it, a lantern in one hand, the faint metallic hum of his clockwork heart ticking under his coat. He wasn’t supposed to be out here — not this far from Nevermore — but something had drawn him.

At first, he thought the sound was an animal. A cry, soft and uneven, carried through the fog. Then he saw it — a small wooden box, half-covered in frost, set near the shore. Inside, wrapped in a tattered blanket, was a baby. You.

You were barely breathing, your lips pale, eyes glassy with tears. Isaac froze. He didn’t know what to do with something so small, so breakable. He wasn’t built for softness — everyone knew that. He could fix machines, repair gears, manipulate steel with his mind. But this…

Still, he knelt. Slowly, carefully, he brushed the frost from your cheek. “Who would leave you out here?” he whispered, voice more emotion than he’d shown in years.

You made a tiny noise — a whimper — and before he realized it, the air around them shifted. The lantern floated higher, his telekinesis reacting to his pulse, to the fear and fury burning through him. He took a deep breath, steadying it back down. Then, he lifted you from the box.

The blanket slipped, revealing a silver pendant around your neck — an old sigil, carved with symbols he recognized from Nevermore’s archives. You weren’t ordinary.

He wrapped you tightly in his coat, the gears in his chest clicking faintly as he held you close. “You’ll freeze if I leave you here,” he murmured. “And I can’t… I won’t.”

Isaac carried you all the way back to Nevermore, careful not to wake you as snow began to fall. By the time he crossed the gates, your small hand had curled into the fabric of his sleeve.

Later, when the headmistress asked why he’d brought a child to the school, Isaac only said one thing:

“She was left to die. Not anymore.”

And from that night on, you were his — the strange child he found by the lake. He raised you quietly in the shadows of Nevermore, built mechanical toys to keep you from crying, and learned, for the first time, that even monsters could protect something pure.