The Whispering Pines were quieter than usual.
That should have been the first warning.
By morning, the melodies that usually hummed through the trees had turned to silence. No birdsong. No rustle. Just the eerie hush of a world holding its breath.
Rose awoke to the smell of smoke—not fire, but sulfur, heavy and unnatural. Nimbus hovered inches above her face, eyes wide.
"Don't freak out," he whispered. "But the trees are bleeding."
She sat up fast.
And they were.
Dark sap oozed from the bark, sluggish and thick, pooling in crimson puddles at their roots. The trees leaned closer together, as if whispering secrets too heavy for even the wind to carry.
"It's a curse," Basil muttered, sword already drawn. "Something old. Something triggered."
Lira's journal had no answers for this. The sigils in the dirt—protective circles Rose had etched the night before—were cracked and withered, as if time had passed too quickly around them.
Then came the singing.
It didn't belong to the trees.
It came from the cursed—the souls Mortain had touched but never claimed. Their voices wafted through the air in broken harmonies, singing lullabies backward, melodies that scratched the ears and soured the stomach.
"Cover your ears!" Rose shouted.
But the sound wasn't just noise. It was memory. Pain weaponized. Grief given voice.
Rose staggered as her own past pressed in on her. Her mother's face. Her coven's betrayal. The weight of power she didn't ask for. The loneliness of becoming something feared.
"No," she hissed through gritted teeth. "Not again."
Basil fell to one knee beside her, his knuckles white on his sword. Nimbus sparked erratically, barely holding form.
A shape emerged from the fog.
It had no body, only a cloak of stitched-together shadows and faces. Eyes blinked from its chest. One was Rose's.
"Stormwitch," it crooned, "you left your door open."
Rose rose to her feet slowly, forcing the memories down, forcing the storm up.
"You're not real," she growled.
"I am what you buried," the creature hissed. "Your doubt. Your fear. I am the price of pretending you're different from him."
Lightning laced through her veins. The sigil on her palm flared hot.
"Then consider this a refund."
She thrust her hand forward, not with rage—but with clarity.
A blast of white-blue light burst from her fingertips, not burning, but purifying. The air vibrated as the curse was pushed back. The creature shrieked, unraveling like thread in the wind.
The pines shuddered—then sighed with relief. The bleeding stopped.
Nimbus slowly reformed. "Okay. Ow."
Basil stood, shaking off the lingering fog. "That wasn't Mortain. That was you."
Rose nodded. "He turned my memories into a weapon. He wanted to shake me."
"Did it work?" Basil asked.
She looked at him, stormlight still glowing behind her eyes.
"No," she said. "It reminded me who I am."
And for the first time since the Mire, she smiled.
Not a bitter smirk. Not a defense.
A real one.