To whomever finds these pages,
Know that my name is Elara Ashcroft, daughter of Elias, granddaughter of the Hollow.
I write not to defend what was, but to remember what still is.
The world has changed since the fires.
Salem's fields are quiet now, the gallows gone to moss and root.
Yet when the wind turns east, it still carries her voice — soft as breath, fierce as truth.
They called her witch, but I call her ancestor.
They burned her name, but it lived on in the ashes —
and in me.
I have walked the hollow she once tended.
The trees still bow when spoken to kindly.
The stream hums with secrets if you listen long enough.
And in the soil where they scattered her curse, something grows that does not die with winter.
---
I was told once that power was a sin.
But I have learned it is only a mirror —
and what one sees there depends on what one brings to it.
The world will always fear what it cannot bind.
So I write these words for those who walk between shadow and light,
for those who feel the call of the wind but have been told to hush.
Do not hush.
For the fire that took her was not her ending.
It was her becoming.
And now, the hollow breathes once more.
Its roots remember every name spoken in love and defiance.
Mine among them.
(Signed, in looping script)
— Elara Ashcroft
Keeper of the Hollow, 1735