The vision hits like a breaking mirror.
Not a gentle slip. Not a daydream. A fracture—clean and total.
One blink and I am no longer inside my body.
Stone beneath my knees. Ice-cold, soaking through the tatters of a white gown that clings to my skin like penance. Rain falls in silver sheets. My hair hangs heavy and tangled, plastered to my back. My palms are scraped raw.
I am shaking all over, but it isn't from the cold.
It's defeat.
It has weight—like chains on my lungs.
And then he's there.
Him.
He drops to his knees in front of me. Not proud. Not invincible.
Wrecked.
Blood streaks his temple. His hands are cut and trembling as he claws at the shackles around my wrists. The metal screams—and then snaps—and the only sound left is his breathing.
Shattered. Desperate. Mine.
He cups my face in both hands, holding me like I'm holy even in ruin.
And then—he kisses me.
Not with hunger. Not with urgency.
With grief.
Grief shaped like devotion. Grief shaped like home.
It tastes like smoke and rain and endings. Like goodbye.
Lightning splits the sky. Somewhere distant, a war is raging—roaring, endless—but here in his arms everything is unbearably still.
I open my eyes and for a heartbeat I see him—
Will, exactly as he is now and somehow not.
Younger. Wilder. Wearing a black crown like he was born in war.
We are not in a tree. We are not teenagers.
We are something that was—dying in the rain.
I reach for him—and reality rips.
I slam back into my body so fast my bones feel like glass.
For half a second, there is no balance—only impact without direction. The world lurches, tilting hard to the left, my stomach dropping as if I've already fallen. Bark scrapes my palms. I clutch at it on instinct, fingers biting into rough grooves before my mind remembers what they're for.
There's a lag before the pain arrives. A hollow space where sensation exists without ownership. The tree around me feels unreal—too solid, too sharp—while my limbs feel borrowed, delayed. I know I'm being held upright, knees wedged against another person, but the knowledge floats somewhere above me, disconnected from fear.
Sound comes next.
Wind hissing through leaves. The distant creak of branches shifting outside the hollow. My breath stutters loud in my ears, uneven and panicked like it belongs to someone else. When I try to steady it, nothing listens.
My vision fractures. The ground yawns below in flashes that make my pulse spike, then vanish again. Every blink resets the distance—too far, too close—like my eyes can't agree on where I am.
My hands tingle, half-numb, half-burning. I test my grip and nearly lose it, fingers slipping before locking down harder than necessary. My nails bite back. Digging into my palm.
Pain finally punches through—sharp and grounding—and my body jerks closer to the trunk as if it knows how close I am to disappearing.
I'm inside the hollow tree.
Back in the dark.
Back in my own shaking skin.
My heart hammers against my ribs like it's trying to escape. I don't know if I just remembered a life—or stole a memory that was never mine.
Will is staring at me like he lived the same moment.
Like he felt every second.
I can't look away.
I can't breathe.
Panic tears through me, sharp and feral—and then it has nowhere left to go. My breath stutters, heat flooding my limbs, the need to do something clawing its way up my spine.
Before I can stop myself, I punch him in the stomach.
Will doubles over with a strangled groan, one hand braced on his knee.
"Oh my god." I clap a hand over my mouth. "I didn't mean to hit you that hard—I swear."
His head lifts, and there it is—
That wicked grin.
He was faking it.
The glare I give him could peel bark off the tree. "I could have killed you."
"You think a girl in fuzzy socks and an oversized hoodie could kill me?" he rasps, laughter rough in his throat. "Besides—you're the one who snuck out to meet a strange man in the woods. Textbook horror-movie beginning."
The worst part is that he smells good—winter and bonfire and something that makes my pulse misbehave.
"You're lucky I didn't bring my bat," I mutter. "I almost did."
"You own a bat."
"The bat. Pink grip. Aluminum." I jab a finger into his chest. "Do not underestimate a girl with trauma and hand-eye coordination."
He steps closer.
I step back—not because I want to, but because my body remembers that closeness too well.
My shoulders hit the curve of the tree. He follows like gravity has picked a side.
"How did you even know about this tree?" My voice rises. "Were you following me? And how did you get my number—"
He cuts me off with a soft sound that isn't quite a laugh.
"Aetheria," he murmurs, and my stomach drops at the way he says it—like the name has lived in his mouth for centuries.
Will's gaze flickers, just once—away, then back—as if he's checked the edge of something and found it too close. His jaw tightens. I feel the words gathering in him before he speaks them, the way tension gathers before a storm that never breaks.
He opens his mouth anyway.
Nothing comes out.
A breath stutters, shallow and sharp, and his throat works as he swallows it down. Whatever he meant to say doesn't vanish—it lodges there, heavy, unfinished. His hand flexes at his side, fingers curling like he's holding onto something he's already losing.
"I—"
The sound barely forms. He stops himself.
When he looks at me again, the truth is still there—but locked behind his teeth, deliberate and cruel in its restraint.
"We met tonight," I snap. "That's it. None of this—"
He plants his hands on the bark on either side of my head. Not touching me. Not trapping me.
But the space tightens anyway.
His mouth brushes the shell of my ear.
"When you lie to other people," he whispers, "I understand. I can even try to respect it."
A ragged inhale.
"But when you lie to me—" His voice fractures. "—it feels like you're tearing the world apart with your bare hands."
Every cell in my body screams run, but something deeper—older—keeps me rooted.
He leans closer.
Not touching. Not yet.
But the air thickens, compressing around us like the forest itself is listening.
My pulse spikes. Fear flashes through me—sharp and unguarded—before I can bury it.
He sees it.
The shift in him is immediate and brutal. His shoulders lock. The words die before they're born. Whatever he was about to give me fractures under the weight of my expression, and the cost of stopping shows in the way his throat works, raw and painful.
He pulls back an inch.
Just enough.
The silence that follows isn't gentle. It's restrained damage—truth held so tightly it hurts the one holding it.
"I don't remember you," I whisper.
He stares into my eyes like it physically hurts to stay here.
Then he rests his forehead against mine like he needs the contact to survive it.
"Then I'll remind you," he says.
He closes his eyes.
Not in prayer. Not in pain.
Like someone stepping back from the edge of something irreversible.
The silence stretches—one breath too long—and I understand, suddenly, that the truth isn't missing.
It's being spared.
I forget how to breathe.
"Are you on drugs?" I manage weakly. "Because this is sounding very—"
He pulls back just enough to really look at me.
There is nothing theatrical left. No smirk. No swagger.
Everything stripped.
"Look at me," he whispers, terrified of what I'll see if I don't.
"This isn't our first meeting," he says. "Not by centuries."
I blink. Once. Twice.
"Will, we met—"
"A century I searched," he says, the words scraping out of him like they're cutting on the way. "You were always there—somewhere. But buried so deep I couldn't reach you."
His gaze dips, like he can't bear my eyes while he says it.
"Do you know what that does to a soul?"
I can't speak.
"I missed you with every part of me," he whispers.
His breath hitches.
"And you look at me like I don't exist."
Something inside me cracks—quiet, ugly, real. I stay still anyway.
"We made a vow," he says. "One no god could sever. That we would find each other. No matter the world. No matter the war."
He looks at me like I'm the only thing he's ever loved—and the thing that's killing him.
I blankly stare at him like a deer in headlights.
"Oh gods," he breathes. "You truly don't remember."
He reaches for me slowly—like I'm something he lost once and barely survived.
His hands cup my face—reverent, terrified. His thumbs trace my cheeks like they've done it a thousand times.
"My love," he chokes out. "What did they do to you?"
The air changes.
Not wind.
Pressure.
A dense, muffling stillness, like the forest has swallowed sound on purpose.
Leaves whip once, then freeze mid-tremble. The hollow tightens, bark groaning softly as if the tree itself is bracing.
I become aware of the woods—not as background, but as witness.
Will's head snaps up.
He goes utterly still.
Listening to something I can't hear.
Whatever he catches drains the warmth from his face.
"Will?" I whisper. "What's happening?"
"They felt it," he says, voice turning to ash. "The bond. It woke. They'll know where you are now."
"Who?" My voice shakes. "Who are we talking about?"
"Those who tore us apart the first time."
Fury flickers hot beneath the fear.
"Those who swore we would never find each other again."
Something shifts deeper in the woods.
Not footsteps.
A displacement.
The air presses harder, thick enough that swallowing feels wrong.
"Will," I breathe, "we need to leave."
He doesn't move.
"Too late."
The forest goes silent.
No insects. No leaves. No distant road-noise.
The kind of silence that presses against your ears until you're aware of your own pulse.
Then something answers.
Not human.
Not animal.
A sound shaped like hunger and memory and patience.
The hollow trembles.
My throat goes dry. "It's coming for you."
Will's eyes meet mine—grief and fury burning together.
"No," he breathes.
"It's coming for you."
Between the trunks, absence moves.
Not shadow—wrongness. A distortion where light should be, sliding without steps, bending the space around it. Branches hesitate instead of breaking. Leaves refuse to fall.
The forest doesn't fight it.
It recognizes it.
Will yanks me behind him, body rigid, every muscle coiled like he's facing something he hoped he'd never see again.
The scream claws up my throat but lodges there.
I know, with sudden horrifying certainty, that whatever this is—
It knows my name.
Then it's gone.
Like it was never there at all.
The silence rushes back too fast. My hands won't stop shaking.
Will crouches in front of me, breath ragged, eyes wild.
"This shouldn't be happening," he whispers—not to me, but to himself.
I've never heard him sound afraid until now.
And in the hollowed quiet, I feel it for the first time—
Not the tree watching.
Not the woods.
Something else.
Something farther.
Something awake.
Something looking for me.
And this time, it knows exactly where I am.