The second my feet hit the ground outside my window, something in the air changes.
Not sound. Not movement. More like the temperature of the world slides half a degree in the wrong direction.
It's not lightning, or thunder rolling my name across the sky. It's subtler—the kind of shift that makes animals freeze before humans notice.
A question moving through the dark.
A presence doing that slow, patient thing predators do—deciding if you're worth the effort.
My hands are still gripping the lattice when I realize climbing down was the easy part. Facing whatever waits in the woods—that's where the bad decisions begin.
The part where you stop being a girl sneaking out and start being a girl volunteering.
The porch light glows behind me, spilling a warm rectangle over the grass. It looks like safety. Like somewhere a sane person would walk toward.
I turn away from it.
Cross the yard. Open the gate. Step into the woods.
The moment the trees swallow me, the world narrows. Branches knit overhead, trapping the dark like a canopy. Leaves shift under my shoes with a papery whisper. Raw earth and pine needles coat the air—familiar scents, comforting once, until tonight.
Tonight they smell different—sharper, like the woods are awake enough to taste me back.
I used to feel invincible out here.
Now I feel hunted.
Not chased. Not yet. Just…catalogued.
My phone remains heavy in my pocket, the three messages burning against my thigh:
We need to talk. Please don't ignore this. Meet me at the hollow tree behind your house. 11:15 p.m.
You have forty-five minutes, the last one had said—like a countdown, like a command.
Which means whoever sent it wasn't guessing. They knew exactly when I'd read it. They knew I'd come.
There's no signature. No name that confirms or denies what I'm already afraid to think.
I shove the thought down. Too fast. Too obvious. Too much.
Tonight isn't about wanting someone.
It's about answers.
A branch snaps—not from behind me, but ahead, somewhere deep in the trees. My entire body flinches before I force myself forward. Logic argues that forests make noise.
My nervous system doesn't care. It's already decided: something heard you thinking.
I move faster, brushing branches aside, whispering curses when thorns snag my sweater. The cold intensifies the deeper I go, but there's no breeze. The wind is gone. The night is holding itself still.
The silence isn't empty. It's restrained—like sound is waiting for permission.
By the time the clearing comes into view, my pulse is a war drum.
Each beat feels like it's broadcasting my location.
I step through the sliver between the birches, and there it is—the hollow oak.
It looks exactly as it did the night I first found it—ancient, vast, rooted like it grew from bone instead of earth. Bark twisted in dark spirals. Moss draped like a widow's veil. The great split across its torso wide enough for a human to step inside.
Wide enough for a secret to hide. Wide enough for a mistake to swallow you.
I found this tree the night I ran from someone who meant me harm.
I am not running.
I came here on purpose.
That should make me feel brave. It doesn't. It makes me feel selected.
I approach the oak slowly. The forest seems to lean with me, branches creaking without sound, clouds shrouding the moon in slow rotation.
Like the sky is trying not to witness.
I reach out and touch the bark.
It's colder than the air. Colder than stone.
Cold enough to feel intentional.
And the memories hit—not gently, not politely. Like the tree is exhaling what it's stored.
Like it's feeding it back into me on purpose, to soften me up, to remind me how I break.
My bare feet slamming across the forest floor at thirteen. Tears sticking to my face. The bruise on my throat from his grip. Shoving myself into the hollow and praying to disappear.
These woods, this tree remembers my fear.
So why did the text send me here?
My pulse stutters. Not just from fear—from the possibility buried under it.
What if it was Will? What if he knows about this place? What if he knows me?
I hate that I want it to be him.
But I also hate that I'm afraid it is.
Because wanting him is dangerous, but not wanting him might be worse.
Because if it isn't him—if it's someone else using my life like a chessboard—then I'm already losing.
This doesn't feel like him. Will's presence presses close–heavy, magnetic, emotional. This feels colder. Organized. Like something that doesn't care if I like it–only that I comply.
The wind stalls again.
Crickets go dead silent.
Something has changed.
I step back from the tree. Every muscle in my body is screaming to move, but my feet won't obey. It's not paralysis—it's awe. A readiness that doesn't belong to me.
Like some part of me is standing at attention, waiting for orders it recognizes.
No shadows move. No figure steps out. No voice calls my name.
And yet—
I am absolutely not alone.
It's like someone threw a net of attention over me—tight, unavoidable, threading into my nerves. The world bends around it.
Like the clearing has become a stage and I'm standing in the exact center of the spotlight.
My pendant warms—a slow build of heat against my sternum, like a hand on the inside of my bones. Not warning. Recognition. Like something star-hot under my ribs is turning its head toward whoever's looking back.
Like my body is saying: Oh. You.
The oak itself reacts.
A strip of moss hanging from the lowest branch lifts—straight up.
Not swaying. Not drifting. Lifting—like gravity took a break.
Like something invisible pinched the air and raised it, testing if the world still obeys.
For three seconds—maybe four—everything waits.
Then the moss lowers itself back to the branch.
And in that tiny motion, something ancient inside me clenches.
That wasn't wind. That wasn't a coincidence. That was attention.
I swallow so hard the sound seems to echo. My voice cracks out of me before I can second-guess it.
My body turns before my courage does. One step back. Then I stop.
"Who are you?"
My words feel small in the clearing, like I tossed a pebble into a lake that doesn't have a bottom.
Silence.
The pressure deepens—not closer, not farther—just heavier, as though whatever is watching me is deciding something. Weighing me. Measuring how much of me is still asleep.
Deciding if the part of me that remembers is awake enough to be useful.
My chest tightens. My lungs flutter. I force myself to stand my ground.
"I'm not afraid of you," I say.
It's a lie. But it's also a line in the sand.
And the forest reacts—not loudly, not dramatically—but meaningfully.
A leaf loosens from a branch and drifts down… too slow. Too deliberate. Hanging in the air like the world forgot how falling works.
Then it drops.
The pressure breaks with it—like a thousand invisible threads releasing their hold on my ribcage.
Sound rushes back into the clearing.
Crickets scream. Wind shakes the branches. The world exhales.
I do not.
I hold my breath like if I let it out, whatever was watching will remember to come closer.
My phone buzzes in my pocket—the sudden vibration stabbing through my nerves. I flinch, then snatch it out.
Unknown: You came.
Another message follows instantly, before I can breathe.
Unknown: Others are moving.
A third.
Unknown: You still have time to turn back.
My stomach flips. Not from the words—from the truth behind them.
Someone is protecting me.
Or someone is warning me away from something they want for themselves.
Either way, they're close enough to see me standing here shaking.
The fourth message hits hardest.
Unknown: After tonight, that mercy ends.
My hands start to shake.
The woods fall quiet again.
Or hidden.
Or decided to wait.
Like the forest itself just took a step back and said: Fine. We'll let you run first.
A sound finally comes—not from the clearing, but from deep in the trees—a distant wet thud, like something heavy landing on the forest floor. Not footsteps. Not a person. Something that shouldn't be here.
Too blunt. Too wrong. Like meat hit dirt.
My nerves explode.
I spin toward the sound, heart punching the back of my throat. The darkness between the trunks looks thicker now, layered—like if I stare long enough, it'll peel open and show me what's underneath.
Nothing moves.
"Will?" I try, hating the way his name trembles in my mouth.
Hating more that the clearing doesn't reject it.
No answer.
The pendant at my throat pulses hot-cold-hot, like it's arguing with itself. The hairs on my arms rise. For a second, the world… slips.
The trees smear, their outlines going soft at the edges. The hollow oak stretches taller, its split widening like a mouth. For one impossible heartbeat, I swear I see stars where the rot should be—pinpricks of light swirling deep inside its trunk like someone hid a sky in there and forgot to close it.
A sky that notices me back.
A whisper scrapes across my mind.
Not a voice. Not words.
An impression: Come back. Not yet.
Not never. Not leave. Just—not yet.
My knees threaten to buckle. I grab the bark to steady myself—and feel something carved there. Shallow grooves under my fingers, worn smooth with time.
I lean closer, squinting in the dark.
Lines. Curves. A half-faded sigil. Not academy work. Older. The shape tugs at something under my breastbone, the same way the Ascension scroll did. The same way the golden thread did when it glinted around my wrist.
Keeper, something in me thinks. Star. Seed. Door.
All the wrong words, none of them mine, crowding in my skull.
Like someone stuffed my head with a vocabulary list and expects me to pass a test I never agreed to take.
My phone buzzes again, dragging me back.
Unknown: They've already marked you. The Masquerade will finish it.
Heat lances through my wrist. Sharp. Sudden. Real.
I gasp, clutching my arm as pain blooms under my skin—then vanishes.
When I look down, the flesh is unbroken.
But something beneath it is not.
Like the pain left an imprint deeper than skin—deeper than proof.
My breath stops.
The invitation in my bag flashes through my mind—black cardstock, silver ink, the sigil embossed into the flap. The way it hummed against my skin like recognition.
Marked.
Like a piece on a board. Like a door tagged to be opened.
Another text.
Unknown: You remember less than you should. That's not an accident.
My hand tightens around the phone until my knuckles ache.
"Then tell me," I whisper to the clearing. "Tell me who you are. Tell me what I am."
Tell me what I'm supposed to do before you all decide for me.
Wind rushes through the branches all at once, thrashing leaves above me. Dirt stings my eyes. For a heartbeat, I think the tree will answer—that the crack in its trunk will open fully and some star-bright, bone-deep truth will walk out.
But the wind dies as quickly as it came.
The oak stands silent.
My screen stays blank.
The typing bubble never appears.
Whoever this is doesn't want a conversation. They want compliance.
Far off—closer this time—comes another sound, like something heavy being dragged where nothing should drag.
My body makes the decision my brain is too stunned to articulate.
Run.
Something else stirs under the fear. Not the watcher. Not the woods. A pull–sharp and familiar–like someone just felt me across a line and turned toward it.
I stumble backward first, unwilling to turn my back on the hollow. Once I hit the tree line, I spin and bolt—branches slapping my cheeks, roots grabbing at my ankles. Every breath slices cold through my chest. The woods feel different now, angles wrong, paths shorter, like the forest is folding itself around me.
Like it's helping something else get closer.
Something crashes somewhere to my left. Too heavy for a deer. Too deliberate for wind.
I don't look.
The golden thread from earlier tingles under my skin again, like a fuse burning just under the surface. My pendant burns hot enough to hurt.
"Not now," I gasp at it. "Later. Please."
The backyard fence looms up ahead, darker against the dark. I squeeze through the gap I've used since I was ten, scraping my jacket on a stray nail, and burst into the yard like I'm surfacing from water.
The house looks exactly the same.
Porch light humming. Curtains drawn. World intact.
No monsters on the lawn. No gods on the roof. No blue-eyed cousin leaning against a tree.
My legs don't believe it. They keep shaking.
I slam the gate, sprint across the grass, and scale the lattice with the kind of speed that would absolutely get me into Mercy's athletics program if it were ever seen by a recruiter.
I haul myself through the window, drag it shut, and lock it.
My hands tremble uncontrollably—not with fear, but with the barely contained hum of something waking too fast inside me.
Only when I'm back on my bedroom floor, back against the wall, lungs burning, do I look at my phone again.
No new messages.
But the ones from earlier—they're gone.
Not deleted. Not archived. Wiped–like the conversation never existed on my phone at all.
The thread from Unknown is empty. Just my single, lonely Who is this? hanging at the top of a blank screen.
Like I texted the dark and it decided not to answer.
Like it reached into my phone and erased the evidence with the ease of someone wiping fingerprints off glass.
Like it wanted me to doubt myself tomorrow.
I stare until my eyes sting.
Slowly, like it's been waiting for its turn, another notification slides down.
Cassie: why does it feel like someone just knocked on the wrong door in your woods
A laugh punches out of me, too close to a sob.
Me: define "wrong"
The reply is instant.
Cassie: the kind that doesn't knock again. the kind that waits.
I look at the window.
The yard.
The strip of trees beyond the fence.
I can't see anything from here.
Cassie: Everything is shifting around you. Not danger. Not yet. But the thread snapped.
Me: What thread?
Cassie: Yours.
Cassie: and whatever brushed it? it didn't leave. it just…moved its chair closer.
I sit there for a long time, phone heavy in my hand, the house breathing around me like it always has.
Safe.
Too safe.
The words after tonight, that mercy ends won't let go of my ribs. They sit there, knocking.
If something is coming for me, I don't want to meet it asleep.
I don't want to meet it unaware. And I don't want to meet it alone.
I check the time.
11:02 p.m.
Thirteen minutes.
Thirteen minutes until 11:15—until the time they chose, not me.
Thirteen minutes until the woods decide whether I'm prey or player.