The wind changed.
It was subtle at first—barely more than a breath shifting through the canopy—but they all felt it. Chase, pausing mid-step as his foot hovered above the threshold of the grove. Lucas, clutching his ribs beneath a rusted streetlamp no longer powered by anything of this world. And Charlotte, standing knee-deep in river water, her reflection no longer matching her face.
Something was coming back.
Or worse—something was already here.
Chase dropped to one knee, breath catching in his throat. The trees around the grove were no longer still; they listened. The ring of stones he'd half-forgotten now pulsed like a heartbeat, and beneath the soil, something stirred—not alive, but not quite dead either.
He whispered a name he didn't remember learning. A name that cracked like glass in his mouth.
"Casper…"
