Spring came slowly to Hollowbrook.
It didn't arrive with fanfare or sudden warmth—it crept in through cracks in the ice, through green shoots pushing up from stubborn soil, through the way birds returned before anyone noticed they'd been gone.
Eli sat on the fire escape behind the hardware store, sketchpad balanced on his knees.
He wasn't drawing today.
Just watching.
Listening.
He still didn't understand everything that had happened. But he understood enough to know that silence hadn't taken Mira from him.
It had given her back.
In pieces.
In memories.
In drawings she left behind and in the quiet spaces where he could still feel her presence like a heartbeat just beneath the surface of sound.
Luka joined him a few minutes later, headphones around his neck but not over his ears.
He sat beside Eli without speaking.
They stayed like that for a while—shoulder to shoulder, silent together.
Then Luka said, "I think it's really over."
Eli didn't look at him. "You mean the Hollow Season?"
Luka nodded. "No more disappearances. No more echoes walking the streets. Even the air feels different."
Eli exhaled slowly. "Maybe the town finally remembered what it needed to."
Luka glanced at him. "Do you think she's still there?"
Eli was quiet for a long time.
Then he said, "I don't think she ever left."
That afternoon, they walked to the edge of the forest.
Not all the way in.
Just far enough to see the birch tree.
The door was gone.
Not vanished.
Not destroyed.
Just… resting .
Like something that had fulfilled its purpose.
Luka reached into his jacket and pulled out a small notebook.
Inside were musical notes scribbled in the margins—fragments of songs only he could hear.
He flipped to a blank page.
And began writing.
Not music.
Not exactly.
More like a language built from rhythm and memory.
A song for the lost.
A song for the remembered.
A song for her.
Back at school, Miss Dara's Memory Archive was growing.
Students brought in stories their parents never told.
Old photographs found tucked away in drawers.
Letters written but never sent.
One girl drew spirals in the margins of every page, unaware of why they felt important.
Another boy wrote down a lullaby he swore his grandmother used to sing—but he'd never met her.
The past was speaking again.
Quietly.
Carefully.
But it was speaking.
That night, Eli dreamed of Mira.
She stood at the edge of the forest, sketchpad in hand, smiling like she always had.
He tried to speak, but no words came.
So instead, he signed:
I miss you.
She tilted her head.
Then pointed to his chest.
Signed back:
I'm still here.
Then she turned and walked into the trees.
Vanishing with the wind.
When Eli woke, the window was open.
A breeze stirred the curtains.
And on his desk, beside the sketchpad she had left behind—
Was a new drawing.
Just one line.
A spiral.
Drawn in soft charcoal.
Still smudged.
Still warm.
Still hers.