The Oracle That Waited Too Long

The forgotten shrine appeared like a wound in the cliff face—stone split and bleeding darkness. Aria felt it before she saw it, a pull in her bones that had nothing to do with the child stirring within. This was older hunger, the kind that fed on endings.

"We should go around." Dorian's voice carried the careful tension of prey sensing predator. "Places like this... they're abandoned for reasons."

But Aria couldn't look away. The shrine's entrance gaped like a mouth frozen mid-scream, surrounded by statues of oracles whose faces had been worn smooth by time or terror. Their hands still reached skyward, fingers clawed in supplication or warning.

Then she heard it—a lullaby sung backwards, each note inverting comfort into dread. The melody she'd hummed to the child in dreams now crawled out of the darkness, wrong and wanting.

Inside her, the child curled tight, a knot of fear against her spine.

"It knows us," Aria whispered. Her skin prickled, silver glyphs blooming along her arms like infected memories. "Something in there knows—"

"Then we leave." Dorian stepped between her and the shrine, amber eyes hard. "Now."

But her feet were already moving, drawn by threads older than choice. The glyphs on her skin pulsed in rhythm with the backwards song, and she knew with dreamlike certainty that this was not chance. This was appointment.

"I have to," she breathed, catching his hand as she passed. "But stay close. Please."

He followed, because he always did. Because love was sometimes just another word for walking into darkness together.

The shrine's interior defied geography. Too vast for the cliff that contained it, too small for the echoes that shouldn't exist. Candles burned with flames that cast no light, their smoke forming shapes that might have been words in languages meant to be forgotten.

And there, in the center of impossibility, sat the oracle.

Neither man nor woman, old nor young. Skin like parchment etched with runes that moved when watched sideways. Eyes sewn shut with silver thread, mouth sealed with gold. It sat cross-legged on stone worn smooth by centuries of waiting, hands folded in a mudra of patience or madness.

The backwards lullaby stopped.

In the silence, Aria heard her own heartbeat. The child's. And something else—a third rhythm that belonged to neither.

You come seeking names.

The voice didn't speak. It remembered itself into their minds, each word a shard of echo wrapped in dust. The oracle's sealed mouth didn't move, but golden threads trembled.

The child who burns between worlds. Who carries tomorrow's teeth in today's womb. Yes. I know its true name. The one erased from every tongue to keep the world from weeping.

"Tell me," Aria stepped forward, fighting the urge to flee. "What do I call my child?"

Names are not given. They are traded.

The runes on its skin brightened, casting shadows that fell upward. The oracle's head tilted, a gesture somehow both blind and all-seeing.

I require a memory. One never spoken. Not to lovers or confessors or the dark. A moment that carved you hollow and left the shape of shame.

Dorian's hand found her shoulder. "Aria, no. You don't owe this thing—"

"I owe my child a chance." She didn't look back at him. Couldn't. "A name that doesn't come from fear."

Inside her, the child began to whisper. Not words but attempts—names pulled from the space between language and longing. Some sounded like lullabies. Others scraped like claws on stone. With each attempt, Aria felt its form shift, becoming what it named itself.

She had to choose now, before it chose wrong.

"The memory you want," her voice cracked. "You already know which one."

Speak it. Let it birth itself from silence.

Aria closed her eyes. Behind her lids, she was fifteen again. Not yet blessed, not yet cursed. Just a girl who'd promised to meet someone by the river. Someone who'd trusted her despite everything.

"Her name was Mira." The words tasted like old blood. "My first friend. The only one who didn't care that I was packless. She was human—worked at the bakery in town. She... she knew about us. About wolves. Her grandmother had been saved by one, long ago."

The oracle waited. The shrine breathed around them.

"She asked me to meet her at moonrise. Said she had something important to tell me. Said she was scared." Aria's hands fisted at her sides. "I knew her father had been drinking more. Knew the bruises weren't from falling. But I was young and stupid and had just presented as omega, and I thought... I thought I couldn't protect anyone. Not even myself."

Tears tracked hot down her cheeks, but she didn't wipe them away.

"I didn't go. I hid in my room and told myself she'd be fine. That someone else would help. Someone stronger. Someone who mattered." Her voice broke entirely. "They found her body in the river three days later. She'd tried to run. Alone. Because I was too much of a coward to show up."

The confession hung in the air like a physical thing. Dorian's hand tightened on her shoulder, but he said nothing. What was there to say to ghosts that lived in the marrow?

The oracle's golden threads began to glow. One by one, they snapped—not violently, but with the gentleness of surrender. Its mouth opened for the first time in centuries, revealing teeth like broken moonlight.

"You ask for names," it spoke with a voice of dust and sorrow. "But names are doors. Choose wrong, and you will open the world's last wound."

It leaned forward, blind eyes somehow finding hers.

"Three names wait for your child. Three paths. Three becomings."

The air shimmered, and Aria saw them—not with eyes but with the part of her that had learned to walk in dreams.

"First: Asha." The name tasted like morning bread and small hands in gardens. "It means hope in the old tongue. A human name for a human life. Soft. Mortal. Brief as dawn but warm as hearth-fire."

The child inside her fluttered, reaching toward the gentleness.

"Second: Stellarix." This name rang like struck crystal, beautiful and sharp. "Born of stars and story. A name for the bridge between worlds. Neither mortal nor divine, but walking always in twilight. Lonely. Powerful. Forever watching both shores but belonging to neither."

The child shivered, form shifting between flesh and light.

"Third." The oracle's voice dropped to whisper. "Morghast."

The name hit like physical force. Aria tasted iron and endings, felt the weight of mountains dying. Inside her, the child went utterly still.

"The name that was erased. The name of the first ending and the last beginning. To speak it fully would crack the moon's eye. To claim it..." The oracle smiled, terrible and sad. "To claim it would be to choose the prophecy over the person. To birth not a child but a conclusion."

Silence stretched taut as sinew. Aria felt each name pulling at the life inside her, shaping it, calling it toward different dooms. Her hand pressed against her belly, feeling the impossible warmth there.

"What if I wait?" she whispered. "What if I let the child choose?"

The oracle's smile widened, showing too many teeth. "Then you are wiser than all who came before. But know this—unnamed things grow wild. Unnamed things grow hungry. The space between names is where monsters learn their shape."

It began to fade, form crumbling like ancient paper.

"Wait!" Aria reached out. "Which would you choose?"

The oracle laughed—a sound like civilizations falling. "I chose knowledge over kindness. Look how long I've waited in the dark." Its blind eyes found hers one last time. "Choose love, little mother. Even if it damns you. Especially then."

It dissolved into dust that spiraled upward, defying gravity. The shrine began to groan, stones grinding against stone. Dorian grabbed her arm.

"Run."

They fled as the forgotten place remembered how to die. Behind them, stone screamed and shadows ate themselves. They burst into daylight as the cliff face sealed, leaving no trace of the wound that had waited there.

Aria fell to her knees in the grass, gasping. Inside her, the child stirred—formless, nameless, but hers.

She pressed both hands to her belly and whispered fierce and low: "I'll wait until you choose. But know this—I will love you, no matter which name you take. Soft or sharp or terrible. You are mine."

A flutter of response. Not words but emotion—relief so profound it might have been prayer.

Dorian knelt beside her, gathering her close. "We'll figure this out. Together."

She nodded, leaning into his warmth. But her eyes stayed on the sealed cliff, on the space where prophecy had died waiting.

And in the distance, something howled in joy or grief—a sound so vast it might have been the sky remembering its first birth.

Or its last.