We didn't speak.
Not at first.
We all just stared at the flames as the words burned above them:
> ROUND FOUR – WHO IS THE MOUTH?
ONLY ONE CAN SPEAK FOR HER.
CHOOSE, OR SHE WILL.
The fire cracked once—loud and sudden, like a scream caught in its throat.
Jules backed up against the wall.
> "No. No. I'm not doing this."
> "I'm not being part of this anymore."
But we were already part of it.
We were the center of it.
We always had been.
---
The spiral in my palm had started to change.
I'd been hiding it—telling myself it was a burn, a trick of light.
But now?
The skin at the center of my palm was splitting.
Not bleeding.
Just parting—like bark opening to reveal a soft white center.
And from that opening, the spiral carved into the wood was beginning to imprint itself into me.
Like it was being written back.
---
Harper knelt beside me.
She didn't flinch.
Didn't gasp.
She just nodded, slowly.
> "It's you," she said.
> "She's choosing you."
---
> "No," I said, trying to close my fist.
> "I didn't volunteer."
> "You don't have to," Harper replied.
"She only picks the one who saw her and survived."
---
Zane started pacing.
> "What the hell does that even mean?"
> "You think some tree-witch is running this like a reality show?"
> "What happens if Ava refuses?"
Tyrell finally spoke, voice hoarse.
> "Then we all pay."
> "That's how this always works."
---
> "We didn't stop Riley."
> "We didn't listen."
> "Now we either obey… or feed her."
---
Lena stood.
Blood was dripping from her fingertips now.
The spiral had reached her wrist.
The veins near it were turning black.
Like roots growing inward.
---
> "She doesn't want me," Lena said.
> "She only left me alive so I'd see."
> "So I'd remember that I left him there."
> "And you—" she turned to me—
"You're the one who can talk to her now."
> "So do it."
> "Say something."
---
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
Then—
A sound.
Not a voice.
A note.
Low. Hollow. Vibrating through my chest like the strike of a drum in the bones.
---
Zane's camera turned on without anyone touching it.
The screen flickered.
Showed the room.
Showed us.
But we weren't moving.
We were frozen.
Except me.
In the footage—I stood in the center of the room, spiral blooming across my entire arm like a brand.
And I was speaking.
But not in English.
Not even a language I knew.
The words came in circles.
Repetitions. Reversals. Echoes.
> "Ash from the mouth
Blood from the bark
Name from the roots
Truth in the dark…"
---
> "What the hell is that?" Jules whispered.
The voice on the camera screen was mine, but not mine.
It was deeper. Empty.
Like something inside me was hollowing itself out to make room.
And then the voice said:
> "I am her mouth."
---
The flames in the fireplace roared higher.
The spiral in my palm pulsed.
And I collapsed.
---
I was back in the Hollow.
I knew it instantly—not by the trees, but by the silence.
The kind of silence that feels too clean—like everything alive is holding its breath.
And then I saw her again.
The girl beneath the tree.
Not Elarah.
Not just her.
But what she had become.
She stood taller now.
No longer hunched.
Her mouth was still stitched shut, but her eyes were open.
Wider.
Hungrier.
Inside them were names.
Thousands.
Names of girls and boys and voices swallowed and forgotten.
And in her hand—she held a second spiral.
One made of bone and ash and something that pulsed like a dying heartbeat.
She placed it into my chest.
Not through skin.
Through memory.
---
I woke gasping.
The fire was out.
Everyone was circled around me.
Zane held his camera, pointing it down.
Harper was holding a bundle of twine soaked in herbs, waving it in slow circles.
> "You were gone," she said softly.
> "For over an hour."
> "But your eyes were… moving. Like they were watching something."
---
> "What did you see?"
I opened my hand.
The spiral was gone from my palm.
But it had bloomed across my forearm now.
And inside my chest, I could feel something beating that wasn't mine.
---
> "She gave me her story," I said.
> "And she gave me her voice."
> "But it's not for me."
> "It's for one of you."
Everyone went still.
Even Zane stopped filming.
---
> "One of you has to walk back into the Hollow," I said.
"Alone. Before midnight."
> "Or the tree finishes what it started."
> "And this time… it won't just take Riley."