The dreams came first.
They began the night Elara returned—flickering like candlelight behind her eyelids. No clear images, just fragments. A girl running through trees under blood-colored skies. A door carved into a hillside, sealed with vines. A voice, too low to understand but too loud to ignore, whispering just behind her ear.
She awoke gasping, the sheets tangled around her legs, her breath fogging the window beside her bed. Outside, the mist had not lifted. It clung to the streets like a warning.
Downstairs, the innkeeper's wife was sweeping ash from the hearth when Elara appeared at the bottom of the stairs, barefoot, silent.
The woman froze.
"I left clothes on the chair by your bed," she said, eyes fixed to the floor. "They were my daughter's. She's... grown now."
Elara said nothing. The silence stretched too long, brittle and strange. She finally nodded, but her eyes drifted toward the window again.
"Do you remember anything?" the woman asked, more gently this time. "Where you've been?"
Elara turned. Her eyes were a stormy grey, unreadable. "Only the trees. And… watchers."
The woman swallowed hard. "Watchers?"
Elara gave a slow nod. "They don't like the sun. They live in the cracks between dreams. And they follow me when I sleep."
The broom dropped to the floor.
---
Later that day, the mayor summoned a meeting in the village square. Word of Elara's return had spread beyond Eldwyn, drawing curious travelers and traders from the nearby hamlets. But none dared approach her, and none stayed long. The mist unnerved them. The forest loomed too close.
"She is not natural," said Barthel, the butcher, his thick arms crossed. "It's been fifteen years. She should be a woman."
"She's cursed," spat Widow Thorne, who had lost her son to the woods five winters ago. "Or worse—she brought something back with her."
Mara stood near the front, fists clenched. "She's a child. A lost one. Don't you dare forget what we owe her family."
"She isn't *just* a child," said the mayor. "You've all seen it. Her return has brought the mist back. The forest is… shifting."
And it was true.
In the days since Elara's reappearance, strange things had begun to happen.
A farmer's entire flock had gone missing overnight, leaving behind only hoofprints—twisted and wrong. The village's water had turned bitter for two days, before clearing up without explanation. And the oldest of the town's hounds, blind for years, now howled at shadows no one could see.
But strangest of all: the Bell Tree had bloomed again.
It stood at the edge of the woods, a gnarled relic that hadn't flowered since Elara vanished. Its pale silver blossoms were said to be sacred, a remnant of the old magic that once ran through Eldwyn like a river.
Now it bloomed in full, the wind stirring its petals like a whispering breath.
---
That night, Elara sat beneath the tree, knees tucked to her chest, listening. The locket at her neck pulsed with a warmth that shouldn't have been possible.
She opened it.
Inside was a tiny drawing—childlike and faded, of a man and woman holding her hand. Her parents. Her real ones. But their faces felt distant, like echoes she couldn't quite catch. Had they been kind? Had they looked for her?
A breeze passed through the branches, and with it came the sound.
A soft voice. Not quite male. Not quite female. Not in her ears, but inside her head.
**You were not meant to leave.**
Elara froze.
She looked up. The woods were dark, the mist curling between roots like fingers.
**You are the tether. The door. The girl who vanished. The one who opened the way.**
She stood, heart pounding, the wind now cold as breath on her neck. A shape moved between the trees—tall, too thin, eyes like hollow lanterns.
But when she blinked, it was gone.
---
In the morning, frost clung to the grass like lace. Elara returned to the inn in silence, dirt on her feet, the scent of the forest in her hair.
And far in the woods, unseen by all but crows, the watchers circled the Bell Tree…
Waiting.