Chapter 23: The Stranger's Letter
Kael stared at the letter in his hands. The fire had gone out completely, but he could still make out the red ink, smeared as if written with blood and a shaking hand.
You were there, Kael. Ask her about the well.
He didn't move. Didn't speak.
Across the room, Lyra still lay motionless, her face turned away, unaware. Or pretending to be.
He read it again.
Then folded the paper in half and tucked it into his sleeve.
By morning, the fog was thicker than ever. It hung low, choking the streets in a cold, wet blanket. The kind of fog that muffled footsteps and swallowed sound.
They walked side by side again but something had shifted. The rhythm between them was fractured. Kael didn't reach for her like he used to. Lyra didn't explain where they were going.
She led them down a street neither had taken before. It was narrower than the others, lined with houses that leaned inward like they were eavesdropping. Black ivy crawled up the windows. Doors hung open with no one inside.
"I thought we needed to check the archives again," Kael finally said.
"We do," Lyra replied. "But we need someone first."
"Who?"
She didn't answer.
---
They reached a small greenhouse on the edge of the woods. The glass was cracked, the plants inside long dead. Vines covered the roof like veins, pulsing slightly with the morning wind.
"She lives here?" Kael asked.
"She stays here," Lyra corrected. "She's not from here. But she knows things."
Kael opened his mouth to speak when the door opened on its own.
And someone stepped out.
A woman.
She was barefoot, her long black skirt dragging in the wet soil. Her face was painted with ash, and small dried flowers were braided into her silver-streaked hair. Her eyes one green, one clouded studied them like she already knew who they were.
"You're late," she said, in a voice that sounded like wind through leaves. "It's already begun."
Kael blinked. "What has?"
She turned to him. "The unwinding."
Her name was Ysra.
She called herself a Memory Witch but said the town had no use for witches anymore. Not since the Hollow Saint took dominion.
They sat around a cracked table while she boiled something sharp-smelling in a rusted kettle.
"The well," Kael said, breaking the silence.
Ysra looked up.
"I dreamed of it," he said. "A woman standing by it. Her face was gone, but she had Lyra's voice."
Lyra flinched.
Kael saw it.
So did Ysra.
"You were there once," Ysra said to Kael. "Long ago. Before you were hollowed. Before your name was burned away."
Kael leaned forward. "Tell me."
Ysra shook her head. "It must come from her."
Kael turned to Lyra. "So tell me."
Lyra didn't meet his eyes. "It's not what you think."
"Then what is it?" he snapped. "Because I'm done walking blind while everyone in this damn town remembers more about me than I do."
Silence.
Then Lyra whispered, "The well is where you died."
Kael blinked. "What?"
"You fell in. Years ago. Before the town twisted. Before the Saint woke. You weren't supposed to survive but something pulled you out. And when you woke… you didn't remember who you were."
He felt dizzy. "You knew this?"
"I thought it was a dream. A fragment. Or a lie Whisperwood planted in me."
Kael stood. "And you didn't tell me?"
"I was trying to protect you."
"That's what you always say."
Kael stormed to the door, heart hammering.
Ysra spoke without looking up. "The letter wasn't from the town."
Kael stopped. "Then who?"
Ysra turned her clouded eye to him. "Someone outside. Someone who remembers what the town wants to erase."
Kael felt the letter in his sleeve again. The words burned into his skin.
You were there, Kael. Ask her about the well.
They left Ysra's home in silence again.
But the walk back was different.
Kael walked ahead now. Lyra trailed behind.
Every step felt like another memory uncoiling inside him just out of reach.
He turned down a familiar alley and stopped.
A mural was painted on the wall. Faded, cracked with time.
But it showed two children standing beside a well.
One with dark hair. The other…
With Lyra's eyes
Kael reaches up and brushes dirt off the mural. A name is scrawled beneath the girl.
Not "Lyra."
"Liora."
He turns to her, voice cold. "Liora. Is that what you were before you started lying to me?"