The message from Annabelle glowed on my phone screen like a warning carved in fire:
Turn the car around. Before it remembers you too.
For one long heartbeat, fear rooted me to the seat.
The logical thing—the sane, survival-instinct thing—would've been to throw the car into reverse and get out of there before the forest decided to swallow me whole.
But logic meant nothing now.
Not after ten years of silence.
Ten years of grief.
Ten years of nightmares and questions and guilt that clung to my ribs.
I whispered into the stillness:
"I'm not leaving without you."
The screen dimmed.
And then—
without a single warning or battery icon—
it went black.
Dead.
The figure in the wedding veil didn't move. Didn't turn. Didn't breathe.
Just waited.
So I opened the car door.
The cold hit instantly—sharp, unnatural, almost predatory. A cold that felt aware of me.
Leaves rustled, though the air was perfectly still.
Each step I took toward the tree line made the world feel thinner, like reality was stretching too far and starting to fray at the edges.
The shadows between the trunks were too thick.
Too intentional.
As if they weren't hiding something—
they were the something.
The figure finally shifted, tilting its head toward me in a slow, unnatural angle. The veil hid the face, but I felt those eyes—familiar, aching—cut right through me.
"Annabelle?" My voice cracked.
Silence.
I stepped forward.
Then another step.
And another.
Until—
I crossed the threshold of the woods.
Everything changed instantly.
The car vanished behind me, erased as if it had never existed.
The sky snapped to pitch-black, swallowing the moon whole.
The trees tightened around me, forming a narrow, deliberate path.
A path that felt… prepared.
My every instinct screamed to turn back.
But my feet kept moving, drawn forward as the whispering began.
Soft at first.
Layered.
Broken.
A chant formed from a hundred unseen mouths.
Not human words—
something older.
As I walked deeper, shapes flickered at the edges of my vision. Tall, impossibly thin figures moving between the trees with smooth, silent steps.
Always watching.
Never approaching.
My pulse hammered painfully in my throat.
The whispering grew louder, weaving itself into meaning:
"…debt…"
"…promise…"
"…the blood remembers…"
My legs trembled.
The veil figure stopped abruptly.
We stood at a clearing.
My breath caught in my chest.
It was the same clearing from our childhood.
The same perfect circle of dead earth.
The same ancient stone well—only now the vines around it glowed faintly, pulsing like veins carrying something alive beneath the surface.
The figure turned to face me fully.
My fingers trembled as I reached up and lifted the veil.
And there she was.
Annabelle.
Alive.
But wrong.
Her skin was pale as moonlight.
Her eyes were bottomless—dark, endless, like staring into the well itself.
Fear. Regret. Something ancient.
All of it lived in her gaze.
When she spoke, her voice wasn't just hers—it carried echoes, layers, a second voice whispering beneath her own.
"You shouldn't have come."
"Why?" I choked out. "What happened to you? What's in the well? What's doing this?"
Her eyes flicked toward the stone structure.
The vines tightened around it like they were aware they were being discussed.
She shook her head once, slow, deliberate.
"It already knows you're here."
I stepped closer, voice breaking.
"Annabelle, we're leaving. Together."
Her lips pressed into a trembling line—not fear.
Pity.
Pure, devastating pity.
"No. You don't understand."
A low rumble vibrated beneath the ground, deep and ancient—like something massive was waking far beneath the soil.
Annabelle's voice sharpened with urgency.
She grabbed my arm, her grip ice cold.
"This isn't about me anymore."
Then she leaned in, her eyes wide, terrified, and whispered:
"It wants you."
The earth beneath my feet cracked open.
Splitting.
Hissing.
Breathing.
And all around us—
The forest exhaled.