Three days passed.
Three long, restless days in a house that no longer felt like home.
Annabelle tried to follow routines her body had forgotten — brushing her hair, folding clothes, sitting at the dining table with her parents even though they watched her with fragile, hopeful smiles, afraid she might vanish again.
Nights were worse.
The darkness felt too familiar.
Too much like the cavern.
Too much like being held.
By the third evening, she decided to stay downstairs, where light pooled warm and golden over the dining table. A pot of stew bubbled faintly on the stove, filling the air with the smell of thyme and last-minute normalcy.
Annabelle curled both hands around a cup of tea, letting the heat seep into her cold knuckles. Her fingers still hadn't warmed since the day she returned from the woods. Sometimes she wondered if they ever would.
Outside, a sudden gust of wind rattled the windows, making the lights flicker.
Annabelle froze.
The room felt heavier.
The kind of heavy that didn't come from weather.
Slowly, the closed curtains shifted — just slightly — as though someone brushed a hand against them while passing by. The fabric whispered against itself.
Her throat tightened.
"Not again," she whispered, her voice barely audible.
Her pulse climbed into her ears — loud, frantic — but she didn't move.
Then came the sound.
Tap.
Soft but unmistakable.
A knuckle gently striking glass.
Annabelle's fingers went numb around the cup.
Tap… tap…
A pause.
Then one more tap.
Her heart twisted painfully.
That rhythm.
That exact rhythm.
It was the same soft knock her sister used whenever she wanted to enter Annabelle's room as children — a pattern they made up on a rainy afternoon, promising no one else would understand it.
Tap… tap… pause… tap.
It felt like being pulled backward through time.
"Please," Annabelle whispered into the empty room, "don't do this to me."
But the knocking grew softer… more patient… almost pleading.
Drawn by a force deeper than fear, Annabelle rose. Each step toward the window felt like walking into a memory she wasn't ready to relive. Her breathing quickened — short, shaky pulls of air that fogged in her throat.
She reached the curtain.
Her hand hovered over the fabric.
Her fingers trembled — not from cold, but from the part of her heart that hoped… and feared hope.
Slowly…
Very slowly…
She pulled the curtain aside.
The window looked out onto the backyard where the treeline crouched like a sleeping beast. Shadows pooled under the branches. The wind murmured through the leaves, carrying an almost melodic hum.
But there was no figure.
No face.
No shape waiting in the dark.
Just the woods.
Watching.
Holding its breath.
Annabelle exhaled shakily—
Then she saw it.
A mark on the glass.
Thin, smeared, written in something dark — almost black — but with a faint reddish undertone that made her stomach twist.
Two words.
Not carved.
Not drawn.
But pressed, as though written by a fingertip from the outside.
I'm here.
Annabelle stumbled backward.
Her hip struck the table, making her tea spill onto the floor, but she didn't notice. She pressed a hand to her mouth as her eyes burned.
"No… no… you're supposed to be—"
Gone.
At peace.
Freed.
But the truth hit her like a blow.
She wasn't alone.
She had never been alone.
Something deep inside her chest stirred — not pain, not fear.
Connection.
Alive and undeniable.
The bond had changed the moment her sister stepped into the red path.
Now it pulsed inside her like a second heartbeat.
Not hers.
Not human.
The forest had not finished.
It had simply been waiting for her to notice.