A week passed.
The village had not returned to normal it had settled into something else. A quiet, thoughtful version of itself. The chapel was fuller during evenings, not always with prayer, but with silence. Reflection. A place where people could sit and simply exist without the fear that used to stalk the edges of the village.
Chizzy had not dreamt of the Hollow Man again.
But something else had entered her thoughts.
Each morning, she walked the woods alone, lantern extinguished now but still clipped to her belt like a promise. She would listen to the trees, the soil, to the breathing earth beneath her boots. The forest no longer felt threatening, but it didn't feel safe either. It felt watchful.
On the eighth day, she heard singing.
A child's voice. High, sweet, and wrong.
She froze.
The melody came from the edge of the Ashwell Creek, where the water had always run dark, where stones lined the river like crooked teeth. She crept closer, boots crunching frost, heart picking up speed.
There, by the water, stood a boy.
No older than ten. Pale skin. Bare feet. A gray tunic soaked at the hem. His hair was long and unkempt, and his back was turned to her.
"Hello?" she called, voice barely above a whisper.
The boy stopped singing.
He turned slowly.
Chizzy's breath caught in her throat.
His eyes were pitch black no whites, no color. Just void.
Not empty like the Hollow Man no. These eyes were aware. Ancient.
She stepped back instinctively.
"I'm not here to hurt you," she said carefully, though the words felt too small.
The boy tilted his head. "Then why do you carry the flame?" His voice was smooth. Too smooth. Not quite childlike.
Chizzy touched the lantern at her hip. "To keep things like you away, I suppose."
He smiled faintly. "I am not like him."
"You look cursed," she said.
"I'm not cursed," he replied, "I'm consequence."
The boy walked toward her, slowly, deliberately, barefoot on the frost, and yet the ground didn't react no prints, no breath. Not fully here.
"What do you want?" she asked.
He paused inches from her, small and still. "A choice is coming, Chizzy. A real one. Not between fear and fight. Not between flame and darkness. But between forgetting... and becoming."
Chizzy clenched her jaw. "I don't understand."
"You will," he said simply.
He reached out one pale hand, gently brushing his fingers against the lantern's handle. The flame flared briefly, then dimmed.
The boy smiled, eyes glinting with something like sorrow.
"When the roots start to bleed, come find me again."
And then he was gone.
No sound. No step. One blink and the space where he stood was empty.
Chizzy stood frozen, the words echoing in her mind. When the roots start to bleed.
What roots? What did he mean?
And how did he know her name?
She took one final glance at the river, then turned and walked briskly back toward the village, the lantern swaying at her side. The flame remained lit now, though she had not touched it.
That night, she sat by her window, pen in hand, journal open. She scribbled down everything she could remember the boy's words, his eyes, his presence.
A storm was stirring.
And she had no idea which side the wind would favor.