Chapter Two : Echoes Behind the Eyes
Lucien awoke before dawn, not from a nightmare, but from the absence of one.
For the first time in years, sleep had felt... silent. No dreams, no stirring, no fleeting shadows across his vision. He opened his eyes to the ceiling, stared at the wooden beams above, and felt an odd stillness within him—as though a part of him had chosen not to return from wherever it had gone.
The world outside his window was dim, caught in that in-between hour where nothing breathes too loudly. But something in the silence had changed. It no longer felt natural.
He stood, slowly. His body moved as if it knew what to do before he gave it orders. The warmth of sleep still clung to his skin, but his thoughts were cold and clear. He dressed without urgency, pulled on his worn boots, and stepped outside.
The village was quiet, too quiet.
Houses sat like husks of people who had long since stopped talking to one another. Chimneys no longer smoked. Even the stray dogs, who usually barked at ghosts only they could see, were nowhere in sight.
Lucien began walking. He didn't choose a direction. His feet followed a path that his mind hadn't drawn. As he moved, he noticed something subtle—every window he passed was shuttered, even though dawn was near.
Eyes.He could feel them.Not looking at him, but looking through him.
A familiar weight pressed against his chest. Not fear—he had traded that away. But something adjacent. Recognition, perhaps. An understanding that something was wrong, and he was now part of it.
The path led him toward the northern edge of the village, where the fog clung more tightly to the earth. Trees there grew taller, their branches like twisted fingers scratching at the sky. That was where he saw her.
A girl. No older than ten, standing perfectly still at the center of the path.
She wore a simple dress, colorless in the mist, and her hair fell straight down like a curtain, hiding half of her face. Her bare feet were muddy, but she didn't shiver or shift.
Lucien stopped a few steps away."Are you lost?"
She didn't answer.
"Do you need help?"
Still nothing.
Her head tilted slightly. Not curiously, not shyly. Mechanically. As if someone else had turned it for her.
Then she spoke, but her lips did not move.
"You can see them now."
Lucien blinked."See who?"
Her eyes lifted. Behind her, within the trees, shadows swayed without wind. Figures—tall, thin, wrong in the way a broken reflection is wrong—watched from the branches. They didn't approach. They only looked.
"They're not here for you," the girl said, or perhaps the voice merely came from her direction. "Not yet."
Lucien looked back toward the village. The path behind him was no longer there. Only fog.
"What is this?" he asked.
"A choice," she said. "And you've already made it."
The girl took a step back, fading into the mist. The shadows behind her shifted, retreating deeper into the woods.
Lucien remained still.Something inside him, something beyond instinct, told him this place was not made to be walked through. It was made to be endured.
A flicker of movement drew his gaze downward. On the ground where the girl had stood, there was now a symbol—drawn in ash and smeared in a spiral. He didn't recognize it, but it felt familiar in a way that made his skin crawl.
He stepped around it and kept moving forward.
Each step into the mist felt like a step into memory. Not his memories—older ones, buried in the bones of the world. Shapes moved at the edge of his vision. Whispers curled beneath his thoughts. But none of them felt intrusive. They felt... expected.
As if the silence had been waiting for him to join it.
As if he had always been meant to walk this path.