The storm had passed, but Ravenwood still trembled.
At the local diner on Main Street, the townsfolk gathered for their usual morning coffee. But instead of the weather or local politics, every conversation circled back to the same subject.
The new girl.
"I saw her with my own eyes," muttered Mrs. Cranley, the school janitor's wife. She leaned across the counter, voice low but urgent. "Silver eyes, like mirrors. She didn't flinch when the lights went out. Not a shiver, not a gasp."
The sheriff stirred his coffee, his lined face grim. "Storm like that, girl wandering in the rain alone? Strange enough. But that business with the cafeteria windows…" He shook his head. "We don't need trouble in this town. Not again."
The word again hung heavy in the air.
From the far booth, Old Man Harren lifted his cloudy eyes from his newspaper. "You all talk as if you've forgotten," he rasped. "The signs are the same. Just like twenty years ago."
The diner fell silent.
No one liked to speak of the Ravenwood Incident—the fire, the disappearances, the whispers of something unnatural that had swept the town. Most of the younger crowd thought it was only folklore. But the elders knew better.
"Don't say it," the sheriff warned.
But Harren did. He leaned forward, his voice a grave whisper.
"She's back."
---
Meanwhile, at Ravenwood High, Ethan sat in history class, but his mind was far from the teacher's droning lecture. Elara's words looped in his head like a curse.
She has returned.
What did she mean? Who was "she"? And why had Elara said it with such certainty, as if she had been waiting for that moment?
Ethan's pen dug into his notebook, leaving dark, angry scratches. He didn't realize until later that his hand had written the same phrase again and again across the margins:
She has returned
Elara sat alone beneath the old oak tree behind the school. The wind tugged at her dark hair, but she remained motionless, hands folded neatly in her lap.
The voices of the students echoed faintly across the field—laughter, gossip, suspicion. She could hear them all. Not just their words, but the weight beneath them. Fear had a sound, and it thrummed through the air like a low, constant hum.
She closed her eyes.
For a moment, the world peeled away. The present dissolved, replaced by fragments—flashes of smoke, fire, screams swallowed by the night. The same town, the same earth, but years ago. Her breath caught. She had been here before.
The oak tree had been smaller then, its branches thinner. But she remembered standing beneath it, the same cold wind at her back, the same accusing stares boring into her from every direction.
They burned me once, she thought. They thought it would be enough.
Her silver eyes snapped open. The hum of fear was stronger now, thick and alive. They felt it too, even if they did not understand. Ravenwood was remembering.
A faint smile touched her lips.
It had begun.
---
Back inside, Ethan pushed through the crowded hallway. He couldn't shake the image of Elara vanishing from the cafeteria, her words echoing in his skull.
"She has returned."
Who was "she"? Why did it sound less like a warning and more like a prophecy?
He stopped at the library doors. If there were answers, they'd be buried in the old records—the dusty archives no one touched anymore. His father, the mayor, never spoke of the town's past. But Ethan had grown up on whispers, half-stories told by the fearful.
And now he would find the truth.
Even if it meant learning why the strange girl had come to Ravenwood.