Follow.
“Calder?” Daddy called from somewhere behind me. “You see somethin’, son?”
I didn’t answer.
If I spoke, I might break whatever fragile thread this was. And if I looked away, I knew she’d vanish and take the truth with her.
The silhouette shifted, turnin’ toward the deeper woods.
Doubt slammed in hard.
This can’t be real. You’re exhausted. You’re reachin’ for hope ’cause you don’t know what else to grab.
But another part of me rose just as fast. The part that grew up seein’ things that couldn’t be explained. The part that chased whispers through in the dark. The part that always knew the world was wider and stranger than people liked to admit.
I’d hunted ghosts my whole damn life. I knew the difference between imagination and invitation.
“She’s showin’ me,” I murmured. “It’s no accident.”
The silhouette paused, like she heard me.
Then she moved again, glidin’ deeper between the trees. Slow enough to follow. Never rushin’. Never lookin’ back, like she already knew I’d come.
And I did.
Branches snagged my cut. Thorns raked my arms. I didn’t feel a damn thing. My focus stayed locked on that pale shape slippin’ through the woods just ahead of me. Every time she drifted too far, panic spiked hot. Every time she paused long enough for me to catch up, relief crashed through me so hard my knees threatened to buckle.
This wasn’t a chase.
It was guidance.
The air shifted as we moved. Grew heavier. Warmer. The trees thinned where they shouldn’t have, givin’ way to scorched earth and stone. Then the smell hit.
Smoke. Ash. Burned oil. And somethin’ older underneath it, soaked so deep into the ground it couldn’t be scrubbed away.
The silhouette stopped near a rocky outcrop half swallowed by brush. She turned to face me. There were no features I could make out. No eyes. No mouth. Just her shape, soft and still, like she was made of memory instead of flesh.
She nodded once.
Slow. Certain.
Then she was gone.
Not faded.
Gone.
Doubt crashed back in as I staggered forward, chest heavin’, flashlight shakin’ in my grip. What the hell did you just follow? Then I heard it. A man’s voice. Just enough sound to turn my blood to ice.
It came from below.
“I found somethin’. Get to me. Now,” I whispered into my comm.
I dropped to my knees, rippin’ brush aside until I saw it. A narrow openin’ in the rock, near invisible unless you were right on top of it. Fresh scuff marks scored the stone. Blood smeared along the edge, dark and tacky.
Rage detonated in my chest.
I didn’t wait.
