Noa stood in the hallway of her house, frozen.
She'd been brushing her teeth just moments before. Now the lights were off, and the mirror was fogged over—not with steam, but with something colder, older. Her breath curled in front of her face.
Then, from behind the mirror, a voice whispered her name.
"Noa…"
She staggered back. The mirror remained blank, except for the vague imprint of a handprint pressing against the glass from the inside.
She didn't sleep that night.
The next morning, Celeste arrived at the girls' usual meet-up spot—an overgrown courtyard behind the town's defunct theater. She hadn't told the others yet, but for two nights in a row, she had seen the same girl in her mirror.
A girl her age. Pale. Dark hair parted down the middle. Eyes that didn't blink.
Last night, the girl had mouthed words to her.
"Break the oath."
Now Celeste couldn't stop shaking.
"I don't think this is just about a curse," she said as the others arrived. "Something knows us. Watches us."
Mavis dropped onto the edge of the fountain. "I touched the stone again. My hands blistered." She held them out. Angry red marks curved across her palms like scorched vines.
"Why would it only burn you?" Astra asked, eyes wide.
"I don't know. But I dreamed of the woods again. The tree. I think I saw Elowen… or something pretending to be her."
Noa looked down at her boots. The ground felt… wrong beneath them. The longer she stayed in Thornwick, the more her body felt like a stranger.
That afternoon, Astra locked herself in her room and painted.
She didn't remember starting, but now her hands were smeared in gray and blue and black. On the canvas: a towering tree, roots knotted in shadow, leaking blackness into the surrounding forest.
In the sky above it, a red moon. And beneath the tree—a gaping void, crawling with fog.
"I've never seen this place," she murmured. "But I know it."
Meanwhile, Riven scoured the internet for town archives, digging past broken links and blank pages. She found a microfiche scan of a town newsletter from 1971.
It described strange animal disappearances. Dead trees. "Unusual fog cover reported near Ashwood Grove."
And beneath that:
"Local teacher reports five girls missing after school picnic. Last seen near the old tree line."
She printed the page and stared at it until the ink blurred in her vision.
That night, Noa was alone again. She reached for the black stone, now wrapped tightly in cloth and hidden in a box under her bed.
Even covered, it pulsed.
She closed her eyes, and a voice—feminine, low, echoing from the base of her skull—breathed:
"They broke the oath. You must remember."
She opened her eyes to find the box open. The cloth unwrapped. And the stone… gleaming.
Outside the window, in the thick fog that blanketed the yard, something moved.
It had no face. No real shape.
Just height.
And eyes that reflected the streetlamp glow like slick stones in a river.
It didn't come closer.
It didn't have to.