Chapter 3: The Girl in the Shadow
Suddenly, Elias was standing in a sun-drenched park from 1994. He saw his younger self playing with a ball. Nearby, his sister, Maya, was chasing a blue butterfly toward a massive, gnarled oak tree. But as she reached the tree, the shadow it cast didn't match the branches.
The shadow was a doorway.
A tall, faceless figure reached out from the darkness of the trunk and took Maya's hand. Elias tried to scream, to run, but he was a ghost in his own memory. He watched as the shadow swallowed his sister whole, leaving behind nothing but a small, silver gear on the grass.