The red-and-blue lights painted the house in colors that didn't belong to it.
Neighbors had gathered along the curb like ghosts in the mist, whispering behind their coats. Cobi sat on the front steps, a blanket draped over his shoulders. He didn't remember who put it there. Maybe one of the officers. Maybe no one at all.
"She was fine this morning."
"He's in shock—look at him."
"And the younger one? Missing?"
The words floated above him, distant, like radio static. He kept staring at his hands, still streaked with dirt from the forest. No matter how hard he rubbed them, the faint glow clung beneath his fingernails, shimmering faintly before fading again.
Inside, paramedics zipped a bag. The sound made his stomach twist. He looked away. The voice in his head was silent now, but the absence felt worse than its presence—it left him hollow, unfinished.
A gentle hand touched his shoulder. It was Officer Meeks, a heavyset man with soft eyes who had coached Cobi back in middle school.
"Son, we'll find your brother. We've got people out searching the woods now."
Cobi nodded, though the words barely landed.
"She… she looked peaceful," he whispered. "Like she was waiting for me."
Meeks frowned. "You said you were at the game all night, right? Anyone see you leave early?"
Cobi turned to him sharply. "I didn't leave early."
The look Meeks gave him said he didn't quite believe that.
The next morning, the house felt wrong without her voice humming in the kitchen. Every creak echoed too long. Every shadow seemed pointed. He tried to shower, tried to eat, but the silence pressed against his chest like a weight.
Then, the whisper returned.
"Not gone. Not yet."
He froze, soap sliding from his hand into the sink.
"Who's there?" he hissed.
"You touched the heart. Now the heart remembers you."
The mirror fogged over with steam, and behind that mist, for an instant, he thought he saw someone—his own face, but older, watching him with something like warning and sorrow.
He slammed the door shut and stumbled back, heart racing.
Was he losing it? Had grief finally cracked him open?
He grabbed his jacket and ran outside, needing air, distance, something. His feet carried him almost unconsciously toward the forest edge again. The sirens, the reporters, the neighbors—all of it blurred behind him until the trees swallowed him up once more.
In the daylight, the clearing looked different. No glow, no hum. Just dead leaves and silence. But the air still carried the faint smell of ozone and something sweet, like sap or honey.
He walked to where the plant had been, kneeling, touching the soil. It was warm. Too warm.
"Where's Jace?" he whispered. "If you're real, just—give him back. Take me, instead."
No answer came. Only the wind.
He pressed his palm to the earth anyway, forcing himself to feel something—anything—and this time, warmth became light. It crawled up his arm like molten veins, spilling into his chest, his heartbeat syncing to a pulse that wasn't his own. Visions struck—flashes of memory not his: a woman in white weeping beneath a dying tree; men in strange robes chanting in circles of fire; a boy named Cobi from another century smiling in sunlight before being dragged to his death.
He gasped and fell backward. The heat vanished. The forest went still.
The voice broke the silence once more.
"The world remembers, vessel. The past bleeds because you touched it."
Cobi stared at his hand trembling in disbelief.
"Why me?"
"Because you always were."
He stumbled back through the woods as distant thunder rolled across a cloudless sky. Somewhere deep inside that sound, he thought he heard another voice—a child's. Jace, calling his name.