As Hamnet’s fever worsened, the house grew colder, though the hearth fire burned bright. Agnes felt it first — that strange tightening in the air, the invisible pressure that always came before a vision. Shadows folded in the corners. The walls whispered like restless parchment.

Shakespeare avoided her eyes.

He sat by Hamnet’s bedside, stroking the boy’s hair with a trembling hand. The great playwright, the man whose words commanded kings on stages across England, suddenly looked very small. Very fragile.

That alone terrified Agnes more than the sickness.

She sensed the truth circling him like a hungry ghost.

At dawn, when Hamnet finally slept, she approached her husband.

“You brought this upon us,” she said softly.

Shakespeare’s face crumpled. “You don’t understand.”

“No,” Agnes replied, “you do not understand what I see.”

She laid the sealed parchment between them. The name scratched out. The wax broken. The words inside—

She had read them, though she wished she never had.

They spoke of a woman in London.

A woman who knew things she shouldn’t.

A woman who claimed to have dreams of a silver-mouthed playwright whose future was soaked in both triumph and blood.

A woman whose visions mirrored Agnes’s own.

But the final lines were worst of all.

He is bound to you.

And through you, his fate will be decided.

The boy will pay the price if he strays again.

Agnes had seen visions all her life — storms before they formed, deaths before the bells rang, betrayals before the whispers spread.

But she had never seen this.

“What did you promise her?” Agnes asked.

Shakespeare covered his face with both hands. “I didn’t promise her anything. She came to me after a performance at The Curtain. She spoke in riddles. She knew things — about my plays, about you, about our son. I thought she was mad.”

Agnes felt the air twist.

Mad or not, her warnings had come true.

“Then why did you write to her?” she demanded.

Silence.

Heavy.

Suffocating.

Shakespeare exhaled slowly, as if confessing to a judge.

“She said she saw a shadow following me. A price for my words. A debt for my success. I wrote asking how to stop it… how to protect you. Protect Hamnet. I scratched her name out because I didn’t want you to know I believed her.”

Agnes stepped back, the floorboards creaking under her weight.

A shadow.

A debt.

A price.

Her visions flashed before her eyes — storms of ink, masks of tragedy, a looming figure standing behind Shakespeare as he wrote by candlelight, as if guiding his quill with a skeletal hand.

She had always feared the cost of prophecy.

Now she feared the cost of genius.

That night, as Hamnet’s breath grew shallow, Agnes knelt beside him, placing her palms above his forehead. The air crackled. The room shimmered. She whispered a chant older than the village itself — something her mother once taught her and told her never to use.

Shakespeare watched from the doorway, trembling.

“What are you doing?”

“Saving him,” Agnes answered, her voice echoing with something not entirely human.

A cold wind whipped through the chamber, extinguishing the candles. Darkness swallowed everything except the faint glow around Agnes’s hands.

Hamnet stirred — once, twice — then coughed violently, his fever breaking like a tide collapsing upon itself. His breathing steadied. His body went still, no longer burning.

Agnes collapsed backward, gasping for air.

Shakespeare rushed to her side.

“Agnes—what did you see?”

She raised her trembling hand and pointed toward the corner of the room.

Shakespeare turned.

There, barely visible in the darkness, stood a figure — tall, faceless, watching them with a stillness that did not belong to the living.

Shakespeare stumbled back. “Dear God…”

Agnes whispered:

“It has followed you from London. From the stage. From your words.”

The figure didn’t move.

It didn’t need to.

Its presence was a promise.

“You asked her how to stop it,” Agnes said, voice shaking. “But you never asked what price would be demanded.”

Shakespeare clutched Agnes’s hand. “Tell me what to do.”

Her eyes filled with tears she rarely allowed herself.

“This is no longer about your plays,” she murmured. “Or your muse. Or your ambition.”

Her gaze drifted to Hamnet.

“It wants something else entirely.”

The shadow shifted.

A cold realization crawled up Shakespeare’s spine.

“Me?” he whispered.

Agnes shook her head slowly.

“No. Not you.”

She looked at their son.

“It wants him.”