The room froze.
Sasha's chest rose and fell sharply, her eyes still locked on the phone on the floor. The jar throbbed again,this time with a faint hum, almost like a breath.
"Pick it up," Naya whispered. "Play it again."
Sasha hesitated, then crouched, lifting the phone with trembling fingers. She replayed the voice note. Static. Then the voice,her voice, warped, echoing as if spoken through water:
"…Naima… she remembers…"
Sienna stepped closer. "That's you, Sasha. But that isn't your voice now. It's... older."
Alani knelt by the jar. "Naima... it sounds ancient. Like a name from the old coast stories,women who knew the stars, the sea, the spirits."
Sasha sat down slowly. "I've never heard that name before. At least… I don't *think* I have."
The pendant she now wore around her neck warmed suddenly against her skin.
And in the mirror across the room, for a split second, *Alani wasn't alone*.
Her reflection was still,but behind her stood five figures, veiled in black, hands marked with glowing red sigils.
That night, Sasha dreamed again.
This time, she was barefoot in a courtyard lined with stone pillars. A woman with her face ,but older, harder,stood in ceremonial robes, holding a bowl of blood.
Around her, the four others chanted her name.
"Naima. Naima. Naima."
The woman raised her head and looked *directly at her*.
"Don't forget what he did to us."
Sasha screamed herself awake—only to find her pendant glowing, and the jar… hovering two inches above the ground
The jar pulsed again, syncing in eerie harmony with the warm flickers coursing through the pendant around Alani's neck. But the strange thing was,she hadn't been wearing it.
Not until now.
Moments before, it had been sitting quietly on the table, near Naya's notes and Tasha's scribbled symbols. But just as Sasha bent to replay the voice note again, it *slid* the surface,graceful and swift,and flung itself onto her chest.
It didn't hang from her neck like a normal chain. It latched, crawling up like smoke, the silver turning dark and ancient. It clenched shut behind her neck like it had chosen her.
"Did you see that?" Naya gasped.
Sasha staggered back, clawing at the clasp. "It—It did it on its own."
Sienna stepped forward but stopped short. "Don't touch it. It's synced with the jar… like they're… one."
The room was quiet except for the faint heartbeat-like rhythm echoing from both pendant and jar.
That night, Sasha's dreams turned from whispers to visions.
She walked in a dim hallway lined with mirrors. Each reflected a different life—hers, but not hers. A cloaked woman bathed in moonlight. A screaming child with a sigil burning on her back. A man holding her face, whispering her name—*Naima*. And always, always, fire at the end.
She woke up gasping, the pendant hot against her skin.
Meanwhile, in the quiet town where Tasha lived, her mirror lit up again.
She wasn't scared anymore. She had learned to speak to the reflection. It never showed her its face, but it always listened.
"You came again," she said softly.
The reflection shimmered.
"This time… tell me what the consequences are," she pushed.
But the voice was calm, cryptic. "You have already chosen. The price is set. But not all will pay it equally."
"What do you mean?"
The reflection faded without answering. And Tasha knew—something irreversible was already in motion.
Back at Naya's, Alani and Naya scrolled through the many files Tasha had sent from her earlier recordings. With the help of sound mapping apps and some old books they'd borrowed from the town archive, they tried connecting the symbols appearing around Tasha's home with the sigils found at the chapel.
"I think they're coordinates," Alani muttered. "Or a pattern. Look—see this shape? Looks like a burial circle."
Naya nodded, "More like a seal. Something meant to be kept shut."
At the corner, the jar sat unnervingly still—as if listening.
Sienna, worried but unsure how to explain things to the others, secretly called her cousin Zalika—a quiet but deeply spiritual woman who once claimed she could hear ancestral voices in dreams.
"I need help," Sienna whispered over the phone. "But I can't explain everything yet."
Zalika paused, then asked one question: "Is blood involved?"
Sienna didn't answer.
Zalika said only, "Bring me something that carries the curse. I'll know what to do."
Elsewhere, Kian and Sasha met at the edge of the forest, under the aim of searching for the name Naima through an old scholar Kian knew.
But when Sasha stepped out of the car and he saw the pendant around her neck, something in him shifted.
"You, when did you start wearing that?" he murmured.
"I didn't. It chose me."
His hand rose to touch it, but she stopped him.
Instead, their hands brushed. And in that moment, all the tension, the confusion, the weeks of denial snapped into one stolen kiss. One that lingered too long. One that made them forget why they had met.
Back at Naya's house, Liona stood outside in the rain, watching the lights go out.
She had waited until the girls were gone.
She slipped in through the back, quiet, deliberate. Her eyes scanned the room. The jar sat in the same spot as always. As if waiting for her.
She lifted it,and for a second, it resisted.
Then it gave in.
And Liona disappeared into the night with it.
That night, far across town, Lex stirred in his sleep.
Outside his house, the jar appeared—suddenly and soundlessly.
He rose from bed, walked outside barefoot, and stood in front of it.
Without surprise, without fear.
He whispered an incantation.
The jar trembled… then stilled.
And in that moment, a glowing sigil seared itself onto his forearm,red and pulsing.
In another part of town, Kian clutched his shoulder as something burned beneath his skin.
Adrian, asleep on his couch, jolted upright as pain spread across his ribs, his shirt damp with sweat.
Elsewhere, in a country neither near nor far, a stranger looked into a mirror as her back burned—revealing the same sigil, only mirrored, like a curse and its counter.
And in Sasha's room, the pendant around her neck blinked once. Then again.
The rhythm was changing.
The blood was remembering.