The old parchment scrapes dry against the wooden table, too loud in the hollow house.
A sudden gust shoves the front door open on its hinges. Cold mountain air rolls in, carrying the scent of wet earth and pine.
Henry and Leonard stamp inside, boots heavy with mud. Water drips from their cloaks onto the floorboards.
Henry wipes his face with the back of his hand, hair plastered flat against his skull. His shoulders sag as he shuts the door behind them. The latch clicks into place like a final breath.
"Nothing," Henry says. His voice falls flat in the silence, too loud. "We checked every house. Not one person. Not even a footprint that does not belong to us."
Leonard crosses to the hearth. He rubs his hands together, trying to work feeling back into his fingers, then notices the book in Grace's lap. "What is that?"
Grace keeps her palm flat on the cover. The leather feels stiff and cold. Dark stains spread across it like spilled ink left too long.
"Found it in the drawer. It is covered in old blood. I think… it belonged to a girl i only read the first page."
Leonard drags a three-legged stool closer and sits. The wood creaks under his weight.
He takes the diary from her. The spine cracks when he opens it, a sharp sound that makes everyone shift.
Elsbeth sits in the corner, knees drawn up beneath her coat. She has not spoken much since they left Aval.
Her fingers twist in the fabric, eyes fixed on the floor at first, then lifting toward the book. The princess looks smaller than usual, hollowed out by something deeper than the cold.
On the first page, someone has scratched four words in shaky charcoal:
Whatever you do. Never follow the voices.
The room goes still. Even the wind outside seems to pause against the shutters. Leonard turns the page slowly.
⟣ Day 1 ⟢
Today was kind of strange that's why I'm writing this in my diary. I played outside with my little brother near the town well until sunset.
On the way home he kept tugging my sleeve, saying someone was watching us from the treeline. I looked, but the woods were dark.
Nobody there. I told him it was just his imagination. Trees always look strange when the sun goes down.
Grace leans forward. "A child . Gods. How old do you think?"
"Hard to say," Leonard mutters. "Young enough to still believe his sister could fix everything."
Henry lowers himself onto the edge of a bench, elbows on his knees.
The raw scrapes on his knuckles from that goblin fight stand out pale against the dirt.
He stares at the diary like it might bite him.
"Keep reading Sir. We need to know what we are dealing with."
Leonard continues.
⟣ Day 3 ⟢
Old Lady Mira disappeared. She sold herbs and roots in the market square.
Neighbors found her house exactly as she left it—tea still on the table, cat curled on the chair.
Everyone says she ran off because of debts to the merchants. I don't believe it. She would never have left her cat.
Elsbeth's breath catches, soft enough that only Grace notices. The princess presses her lips together.
Her own thoughts drift far away—to Luan who's waiting for her, the one she cannot reach. She speaks quietly, almost to herself.
"She would not leave what she loved behind. No one would. Not willingly."
Grace reaches over and squeezes her shoulder once, brief and steady. Elsbeth does not pull away, but she does not lean in either.
She keeps watching Leonard's hands on the pages.
⟣ Day 10 ⟢
Food has started vanishing from cellars.
Whole sacks of grain one night, gone. Other times the food stays on the counter but something chews through it.
Big teeth. The leftovers always end up smeared with blood.
Old Man Ralph blames mountain badgers driven down by the rain. Badgers don't open locked doors.
Henry lets out a short, humorless breath. "That pouch. The bread. The blood was still wet when I opened it.
Leonard nods once, jaw tight. No one needs to say the obvious.
He turns the page.
⟣ Day 13 ⟢
More people are gone now. Whole families.
The elders thought bandits came down from the border, but there is never any sign of a fight.
No broken doors. No blood. No tracks. It is like they just opened their own doors and walked into the woods.
The chief tried to ride out this morning for help.
Three hours later he came back through the entrance. Face white as ash.
Said the paths bend—no matter which way you go, you always end up at the town arch again. Everyone is scared now. Nobody opens their shutters after dark.
The wind picks up outside, rattling a loose shutter. Rain starts again, soft at first, then steady against the roof.
Henry stands and paces to the window, peering through a crack. Nothing moves out there except the trees swaying like they are breathing.
"This matches what happened to us," he says. "The forest. The loop. We are not the first."
Grace crosses her arms against the chill that has nothing to do with the weather.
"Keep going. There has to be something we can use. A weakness. A pattern."
⟣ Day 17 ⟢
Mother disappeared last night... My brother and I searched the whole house. Front door swinging in the wind.
Her winter shoes still sitting by the entrance. She would not leave us. I know it.
Henry rubs the back of his neck. "Shoes still there. Food left to rot. Doors open. It is the same in every house. Like they just… stepped out for a moment and the world forgot them."
⟣ Day 30 ⟢
The town is coming apart. Neighbors watch each other through cracks in their doors, axes in their hands.
Cellars keep getting emptied.
People stopped leaving their homes, but every morning more chimneys sit cold. The disappearances have not slowed. They have gotten worse.
The oil lantern flickers. Grace stands and adds another small log to the hearth. Sparks climb briefly, then settle. The warmth does not reach the corners.
⟣ Day 35 ⟢
Only me and my brother left. We dragged a heavy pine board out to the smuggler's path and painted a warning: DO NOT ENTER.
The sign was gone by morning.
Travelers still come when the mountain storms hit. They get stuck. They never leave.
A damp hush fills the room. The rain drums harder now, finding its rhythm on the roof.
Wind hisses through a gap in the window pane, carrying the smell of wet pine and something older underneath like leaves left to rot for seasons.
Leonard turns the next page. The paper has gone stiff with dried blood, the edges brittle. The handwriting grows shakier, the letters crowded together as if written in a hurry.
⟣ Day 38 ⟢
My brother keeps hearing Mother. He says she is outside in the mud calling his name.
Sometimes he wakes up and says she is in the kitchen.
Sometimes he says she is right behind the house, tapping on the wall. He begs me to let him go to her.
I tied him to the bedposts with the old clothesline tonight. I am so scared.
Grace's jaw tightens. She glances toward the back bedroom where they slept the night before. "Voices. That is what it uses. It calls with the ones you miss most."
Elsbeth's eyes glisten for a moment. She blinks it away fast, but her hands tremble where they grip her coat. "If it called with Luan's voice… I do not know if I could stay inside... I miss him so much." The admission costs her. She looks down at the black book in her lap. "I hear him sometimes. In dreams. Telling me to hurry..."
Henry stops pacing. He crouches near Elsbeth, voice low. "We will not let it come to that, Your Highness. We stick together. No one goes out alone. No one listens."
She gives a small nod, but the haunted look does not leave her face.
Leonard presses on, voice steady like an anchor.
⟣ Day 39 ⟢
My brother screamed all night. Said Mother was calling through the floorboards. Said she was waiting in the rain with his coat. I stayed awake. I did not sleep. I swear I did not.
⟣ Day 40 ⟢
He is gone. I woke when sunlight hit the wall. The ropes were there. But the bed was empty.
No footprints. No broken window. Nothing. Just the ropes lying on the mattress.
Now I am all alone. My head hurts. If someone finds this diary… I am sorry. This is all I know. Don't listen to them. Don't follow the voices.
Please.
The final page shows nothing but a wide smear of dried blood stretching across the rough paper and stopping dead at the edge, as if the hand writing it had been dragged away mid-stroke. No farewell. No explanation. Just absence.
Leonard closes the book. The soft thud of leather on wood echoes once and dies. Rain fills the silence, steady and indifferent.
No one speaks for a long minute. Henry stares at the floorboards, jaw working like he wants to curse but cannot find the words.
Grace stands by the hearth, arms crossed, eyes distant as she turns the diary's warnings over in her mind.
Leonard sets the diary on the table. "We search again once the rain stops, but smarter. Bar the doors. Take watches.
And no one—no one—steps outside if they hear anything that sounds like family."
Grace nods. "I will take first watch. Henry, you rest. Elsbeth… stay close to the fire."
The princess gives another small nod. She pulls her coat tighter and stares into the flames. The girl's words still hang in the air like smoke—raw, unfinished, and far too familiar.
Outside, the rain keeps falling, and somewhere in the dark between the houses, the town waits.