Morning in the village came like a thin breath instead of sunlight.
Lucy woke to the sound of wind slipping through cracked windowpanes and the distant cry of birds she did not recognize. Their calls were long, hollow, like warnings stretched into music. For a moment she forgot where she was—then the weight of memory returned all at once. Omar's words. Volmer's name. The shadow that had followed them. The forest that seemed to think.
She sat up slowly, fingers still numb from a night of restless sleep. Or something like sleep. Dreams had chased her through the dark—white fur streaked with moonlight, a man's eyes turning red, a howl that spoke her name like a wound. She rubbed her face and looked across the small room.
Merlin was awake.
He stood by the window, jacket half-buttoned, hair still damp from washing in a basin that barely held enough water for a child's bath. The morning light cut through the dust and clung to him in slanted bands. He looked older when he was quiet. Sharper. As if the village air was carving shadows into him.
"You didn't sleep much," Lucy said.
He glanced back, eyes softening. "And you did?"
She shook her head. "I dreamed the forest was inside me."
Merlin gave a quiet, humorless smile. "Then you're already ahead of me. I only dreamed it was outside."
They shared a silence thin as glass. It did not break, but it bent.
"Let's go out," Merlin said at last. "If there's anything to learn here, it won't come knocking."
Lucy nodded. The walls of the small house—her father's old place, the villagers had said—felt too close this morning. Like they were listening.
The village wore daylight like an old coat—frayed, patched, but warm out of habit.
Shops with crooked doors opened slowly. Old men arranged blankets on chairs outside, selling herbs string-tied like prayers. A woman swept dust from her steps not because it bothered her, but because it had become part of her body to do so.
Lucy walked beside Merlin through narrow streets that smelled faintly of smoke and wet earth. She watched faces. Listened for names. Her father's. Volmer's. Any whisper that felt like it belonged to her.
But what she found were legends.
Over tea that tasted like bark and copper, a shopkeeper told them about a moon-born boy who howled his way into the world and vanished on his seventeenth night.
At a stall of amulets carved from bone, an old woman insisted a wolf saved her once, dragged her from a river by her hair and vanished before she could thank it.
Two boys argued near the well—one said the wolf walked like a man under the full moon; the other swore it became human only when it hid its eyes from the stars.
Merlin recorded everything in his head with a soldier's cold precision and a child's stubborn hope. He asked the same questions again and again, in different ways, different tones.
"When does it appear?"
"Where was it last seen?"
"Does it ever speak?"
Answers crossed each other, knotted and unraveled in the same breath. No map formed. No truth stood tall. Only smoke.
One detail, though, repeated in every telling:
Under the full moon—the werewolf was different.
It was said not to hunt. Not to flee. But to watch.
Merlin leaned against the wall of a tea house, eyes narrowing. "Every story breaks at the same place," he murmured. "As if someone keeps tearing the same page out of the book."
Lucy felt the same sense—a gap shaped like memory.
They walked on.
It was near the eastern gate of the village where Lucy heard the crying.
Not loud. Not desperate. Just… lonely. The sort of sound that slid beneath your skin before you noticed it.
She stopped.
Merlin took another step before realizing she wasn't beside him anymore. He turned. "Lucy?"
She followed the sound to the edge of an alley where the earth dipped into shade. A little girl sat there, knees to her chest, dress dark with dust and something like dried tears.
She looked up slowly when Lucy approached.
Her eyes were too calm for crying.
"Did you lose your mother?" Lucy asked gently.
The girl shook her head.
"Your father?"
This time, she nodded.
"He went into the forest," the child whispered. "He said he'd come back before the sun touched the hills. But the forest swallowed the sun first."
Lucy crouched in front of her. "What's your name?"
The girl hesitated. Her breath fogged the air though it wasn't cold. "I forgot."
Lucy's heart squeezed.
"Do you know where your father entered the forest?"
The child pointed not toward the main path, but deeper—toward a narrow trail choked with shadow and roots like sleeping snakes.
"Will you help me?" the girl asked.
Lucy's answer rose before thought. "Of course."
Merlin's voice cut in sharply. "Lucy!"
He reached her breathless. "What are you doing?"
"She lost her father," Lucy said, eyes never leaving the girl. "He went into the forest."
Merlin looked around the alley. "There's no one here but us."
Lucy blinked. "She's right here."
Merlin followed the line of her gaze.
There was nothing.
Lucy stood up so quickly she nearly fell. "She was just—she was sitting—"
The air was empty where the child had been.
Lucy felt cold pour into her like ink.
Merlin scanned the alley, then the street, then the gates. "Did you see anyone leave?"
"No." Lucy's voice trembled. "She didn't move. She just… disappeared."
Merlin reached for her arm. "Lucy. Listen to me. There's a chance—"
"I didn't imagine her," Lucy whispered.
Her heart hammered like something trying to escape.
Before Merlin could answer, a shout rose from a nearby stall.
"—three dead. All three. Fell right off the cliff."
Lucy turned.
A crowd had gathered at a small shop where newspapers—real paper, smudged and folded with hands that read the same horrors every day—were being slapped onto a wooden counter.
A man with ink-stained fingers held one up. "Car veered off the mountain road last night. No survivors."
Lucy's stomach twisted.
Merlin shouldered through the crowd, Lucy clinging to his sleeve without realizing she'd moved.
The newspaper lay open.
The headline was nothing she cared about.
It was the picture.
A small photo, grainy but clear enough.
Three figures. The car crushed like a metal insect beneath them.
And among the faces—
A little girl.
Same dark hair.
Same eyes.
Too calm.
Lucy's breath vanished.
The world tilted, silent and roaring at once.
"That's…" Her lips moved before her voice could. "That's her."
Merlin's eyes went hard. "Lucy—"
"That's her," she repeated, as if naming could undo death.
The shopkeeper's voice droned on about mountain roads and blind curves. Lucy heard none of it. She stared at the girl whose eyes had asked her for help and whose body had already found another ending.
Merlin pulled her away from the crowd before she could feel herself fall.
They stood beneath a faded cloth banner that read WELCOME in a language too old for welcoming.
Lucy gagged and leaned against the wall, shaking.
"She was dead," Lucy whispered. "She was already dead. She spoke to me."
Merlin swallowed. "Then something wore her face."
Lucy flinched.
"Or," Merlin said more gently, "something wanted your attention."
Lucy closed her eyes and saw the little girl again—not as she was, but as she would never be.
"Why me?" Lucy asked the air. "Why show me?"
Merlin rested his forehead against the wall. "Because the forest doesn't whisper into empty rooms. It calls the ones who can hear it."
Lucy thought of the way the child had said: the sun was swallowed first.
She thought of what Omar had said.
She thought of the moon.
Merlin straightened. "We're staying here tonight."
Lucy opened her eyes. "You said you wanted to go during the full moon."
"Yes." His voice lowered. "And now I know we should."
Lucy hesitated. "What if she was a warning?"
"Or a door," Merlin replied.
Lucy looked again at the newspaper, at the shape of a child caught between ink and dirt.
A cold understanding settled into her chest.
Some doors didn't creak when they opened.
Some smiles were traps.
And some voices were echoes of things still hunting.
She nodded.