The woods were different now. Not just dangerous aware. They seemed to twist as I walked, rearranging paths and shadows, the trees whispering things I couldn’t understand but somehow felt. It wasn’t just fear guiding my steps anymore. It was purpose. Something inside me had hardened. And I knew where I was going.


Back to the place where it all began.


I moved in silence, the world around me muffled, as though the forest had covered its mouth to stifle a scream. Every step was soaked in memory Emily’s laughter echoing in hollow places, Elara’s final entries still etched in my chest.


The roots grew stranger the deeper I went exposed, writhing across the ground like veins. Then I saw it: the hollow. Not a building. Not even a clearing.


It was a wound in the earth.


A sunken ring of trees formed a natural amphitheater, overgrown and impossibly symmetrical. In the center stood a circle of stones, cracked and ancient. The air here felt heavier, as if pressing down from all sides. I had no doubt this was it.


The heart.


A figure waited at the edge of the stones.


Tall. Still. Wrapped in cloth that shifted like mist.


The Whispering Man.


His face was shadow, but his presence pushed into my thoughts with the softness of poison. I heard my name without hearing it. Felt memories unspooling in my head like ribbons Emily at the creek. My first day in this town. The scream I didn’t make when I first saw those red eyes.


He didn’t speak aloud. He showed things.


A vision unfolded between us: Emily, standing at the center of the ring. Pale. Silent. Her eyes open but distant, like she was underwater.


She’s safe here, his thought whispered. She’s still. Why tear her from peace?


I stepped forward.


“She’s not at peace,” I said aloud. “She’s caged.”


The earth trembled beneath my feet.


The trees around the hollow began to shift. Forms emerged not just creatures, but shapes from before. From Elara’s drawings. From the margins of the journal. Gaunt silhouettes with red eyes glowing like coals too long buried.


They circled slowly. The same as they had in the clearing.


The Whispering Man turned his gaze toward me.


You came all this way, he said without speaking, but do you even know what you’ll do when you reach her?


I did.


I pulled Elara’s journal from my bag. Its pages were soft with use, the ink stained by my fingerprints. I opened it to the final page the one with her last frantic sentence.


“They’re coming for me.”


“No,” I said. “They came for you. And they think they have us all.”


I dropped the journal into the fire ring.


I struck the match.


The flames caught instantly, flaring higher than they should have. The pages twisted, turning to light. The forest screamed loud, piercing, wrong. The creatures flinched.


And then Emily’s voice.


Soft. Behind me.


“…Sarah?”


I turned and there she was.


Blinking. Confused. Real.


For just a heartbeat, the forest faltered. The Whispering Man retreated, folding inward, undone not by flame but by memory restored.


I grabbed her hand, and we ran.