Serena Hollow's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The lantern led them to a lodge before the trail did. It rose from a split trunk, dark timber and mossy stone, chains hanging loose across its beams. Faded symbols marked the door. Silas stopped at the edge of the clearing and did not move. Serena watched his face change. He knew this place. "We rest here," he said. "You're too tired to walk the mist." Inside, dust covered a narrow table. Serena set the lantern down. Its pearl lit old markings scratched into the wall, the same symbol from her pendant, cut over and over. She turned to Silas. "You've been here." "I learned to read the mist here. Seven years. I was wrong more than right." He would say nothing else. He crossed his arms and looked at the wall. Serena had stopped trusting his silence. She stepped in front of him. "You knew my mother. You knew this lodge. You know what waits at the end of her trail, and you won't tell me." Her voice stayed level. "I'm following it blind because you won't speak." "Because knowing won't help you." "It might keep me alive." He met her eyes then. Something in him gave way. The owl settled on the table between them, quiet, watching. Silas pulled a chair back and sat. "Your mother came to me sixteen years ago," he said. "Carrying you. She found something in the deep woods. A thing the forest hides on purpose." He rubbed his jaw. "She wouldn't tell me what. She laid a trail to it. Marked plants. The symbol in your pendant. Then she left you at the edge of the woods and walked back in." "To reach it." "To lead it away." His voice went flat. "Whatever she found, she thought it would come for her line. For you. The trail runs both ways, Serena. Follow it in, and you don't just find her. You find what she was hiding from." Serena sat down slowly. The pearl's light held steady on the carved wall. "She didn't abandon me," she said. "No. She bought you sixteen years." He looked at the pendant at her throat. "I stayed quiet because I hoped you'd stop walking. You won't." "No." He nodded, as if he'd known. He reached into his satchel and set something on the table. A flower, silver-white petals edged in pale blue, a glow at its center like caught moonlight. "It grows only near the end of the trail. Your mother sent me back with one, to prove I'd been. If you find where it blooms, you're close." Serena touched a petal. It was cool and real. The trail no longer ended in fog. It ended in a place, guarded by the thing her mother had faced alone. She lifted the lantern. "Then we don't stop here," she said. Silas rose to follow.