Her voice trembled as she finally spoke. “Sweetheart, what are you doing?”

The boy looked up slowly, eyes heavy with worry. “I have to protect him, Mom,” he whispered. “They told me he might be taken away.”

A chill washed over her. “Who told you that?” she asked, her words barely audible.

The child hesitated, glancing back at his baby brother. “I heard them in my dreams,” he said softly. “Every night they come — dark shapes. They say the baby isn’t safe. They tell me if I don’t stay with him, he’ll disappear.”

The mother’s pulse quickened. At first, she wanted to dismiss it as a nightmare — just the wild imagination of a child learning to make sense of the world. But something in his