The forest did not chase her—it carried her. Each root that should have tripped her bent away, each branch that should have cut her face swung aside. Adrielle clutched the coin until its heat burned into her palm, until her fingers trembled not from fear but from holding too tightly. Behind her, Alex’s voice and the clamor of the Keepers rang like echoes inside a bell that would not stop shaking.
The oak loomed at her back like a guardian. She felt it even as she ran—the pulse of something older than the curse itself, something that had been waiting. The hollow in its trunk yawned like an unlit doorway, and in the haze of dawn she swore she saw it ripple, not wood at all but a veil.
Her breath came ragged. She pressed the coin against her chest and whispered the name it carried. Alex. It steadied her pulse. It steadied the hollow too, the ripples smoothing into something clearer, like the surface of water when a stone sinks deep.
The forest hushed.
“Do not fear,” a voice murmured, not from the trees but from within her own mind. Not Maren’s, not Alex’s, but something woven from both memory and song. “The hollow keeps what the world forgets.”
Her knees gave out, and she collapsed against the roots. The coin hummed, spilling silver veins of light into the bark. For a heartbeat she saw visions: Alex kneeling in a temple of shattered glass, Maren standing before an altar with chains on her wrists, herself as a child, barefoot and laughing under a crescent moon.
The hollow was not just a tree. It was a ledger. Every vow, every broken promise, every punishment carved into its rings.
She touched the glowing lines and asked, barely able to breathe: “How do I break it?”
The forest shivered. The answer came in fragments—like shards of glass that cut even as they revealed: Love does not break the curse. Memory does. To unmake what was bound, you must remember beyond yourself.
Her stomach twisted. Beyond herself—beyond Alex, beyond Maren. To remember what the stars had hidden. To remember the first vow that toppled the altar.
A crash of steel split the dawn. She turned and saw Alex through the haze—blood at his brow, the silver of his eyes burning brighter than the coin she clutched. He was still standing, but the line of Keepers pressed closer, their chants rising into something that gnawed at the marrow of the earth.
And then—Maren. She stood at the edge of the clearing, her hood fallen back, her scar catching the first true light of morning. Her eyes found Adrielle, and for a fleeting moment they held no enmity, only a question.
Do you remember me? Do you remember us?
Adrielle staggered to her feet, the coin blazing in her hand. Her voice cracked, but the words rose anyway:
“I remember.”
The hollow trembled as if the forest itself had been waiting for that confession. Roots split, the bark peeled open, and within the veil Adrielle glimpsed a night sky that was not theirs—older, rawer, filled with stars that no human tongue had named.
The curse pulsed against her chest like a living thing, pulling tighter, demanding silence. But she would not let it. She stepped into the ring of light, Alex’s eyes locking with hers.
“I remember,” she said again, louder, as the Keepers froze. “I remember the vow that broke the sky. I remember the altar. I remember love before it was forbidden.”
The forest roared.
And the hollow opened.
