Elena Vale threw out the last box today, and only then did she understand what she had done. Six years ago her mother walked into Blackwood Forest and never came back. Elena was too angry to grieve, so she gave away everything: the coats, the letters, the photographs. Now she stood in her empty apartment, wanting to trace her mother's last steps, and she had nothing left to hold. No note. No map. No clue to where the woman had gone or why. Elena drove to the one place that might still keep something. The old cabin near the treeline had belonged to her mother's oldest friend. Elena had not spoken to her in years. Raven Cross opened the door before Elena knocked. She was tall, nearly six feet, in a short black dress and worn boots. She leaned against the frame like she owned the whole forest behind her. "Well," Raven said, smiling slow. "You have her eyes. You always did." Elena kept her voice flat. "I threw out all her things. Everything. I have nothing to follow her with." Raven's smile faded. For a moment she looked older, tired. "You came to the right place, then." She led Elena inside. A battered hiking pack sat in the corner, straps frayed, canvas patched in mismatched colors. Dried mud still clung to the boots strapped beneath it. "That was hers," Raven said. "She left it here the night before she went in. Said she'd come back for it." Raven touched the pack, then pulled her hand away. "I never opened it. Couldn't." Elena knelt and unbuckled the flap. Inside she found a coiled rope, a dented canteen, a folded blanket. Then her fingers hit paper. She drew out a small notebook, its pages swollen from damp. She opened it. Her mother's handwriting filled every line, cramped and urgent. Dates. Sketches of the trees. The same phrase written again and again, harder each time, until the pen tore the page. "It watches," Elena read aloud. "It waits. It wears our faces." Her hands went cold. This was not the diary of a woman who wandered off and got lost. This was fear, page after page. Raven had gone still. Her fingers closed around a small silver locket at her throat. "She never told me what she saw out there," Raven whispered. "She just stopped sleeping." Elena stood. She had wanted her mother's belongings, and now she held them. But the notebook did not answer the question. It made a worse one. "She was afraid of something in the forest," Elena said. "Something real." Raven met her eyes. "Then don't go in there alone. And don't go without talking to Miriam Finch first. She knows things about that night the police buried." Elena zipped the pack shut and slung it over her shoulder. The straps settled like they had waited for her. She was going into Blackwood now. She just needed to find out what her mother had run from.

Elena drove back to the cabin the next morning. Miriam Finch could wait. Raven had touched that locket when the notebook shook her. Raven knew more than she said. Elena meant to leave with the truth this time. Raven opened the door in a short dress and bare feet. She smiled slow, leaned on the frame. "Twice in two days. People will talk." "You went pale when I read that notebook," Elena said. "You knew what she saw. Tell me." Raven stepped close. Her eyes moved over Elena's face. "You really do have her eyes. She used to look at me exactly like that when she wanted something." "Don't." Elena held her ground. "Every time I ask, you flirt. You steer me off. My mother is gone, and you're playing." Raven's smile stayed, but it thinned. "Maybe I like having you in my doorway." Elena reached out and lifted the locket from Raven's chest. Raven's hand shot up to stop her, then froze. Elena opened the clasp. Inside sat a small photo of her mother, young, laughing. The game left Raven's face. She sat down hard on the step. "I loved her," Raven said. "Years. She never knew, or pretended not to. I kept this after she vanished." She closed her hand over the locket. "That's why I couldn't open her pack. That's why I flirt with you. It's easier than saying that out loud." Elena knelt in front of her. "Then tell me the rest. What did she see?" Raven looked toward the treeline. "The week before she went in, she came here shaking. She said she saw a man at the edge of the trees. Too tall. Gray skin, like old stone. Long arms, fingers like hooks. No face she could name." Elena went still. "A man." "She said it stood and watched the cabin for an hour. It never moved." Raven's voice dropped. "The next day she saw it again. But this time it had a face. Her own face. It smiled at her like a mirror." Cold spread through Elena's chest. The notebook words. It wears our faces. "She started sleeping out here, on my floor," Raven said. "She was terrified it would come inside. Then one morning she took the pack and walked into Blackwood anyway. To face it, she said. She never came back." Elena stood slowly. She finally had it. Not a lost hiker. Something waiting in those trees had marked her mother, worn her mother's face, drawn her in. "Why didn't you tell the police?" Elena asked. "I did." Raven met her eyes. "They wrote nothing down. Ask Miriam Finch why." Elena looked at the dark line of trees. Her mother had walked in to meet the thing that copied her. Now Elena knew its shape. And she knew where the buried truth was hidden next.

Elena drove straight from the cabin to town. Miriam Finch had buried Raven's report. Elena wanted the case file, and she wanted to watch Finch's face when she asked for it. She found the office above a shuttered bookshop, the door unlocked. Miriam Finch sat at a desk stacked with color-coded notebooks. She looked up through oversized glasses, pen still moving. A tall woman, sharp-featured, too composed for someone caught. "You're her daughter," she said. "The eyes. Sit down. I've been expecting you for six years." Elena stayed standing. "Raven filed a report about a creature. You made it disappear. I want to know why." Miriam capped her pen. She pulled a locked drawer open with a small key. Inside sat a thin folder and a pressed flower, pale petals flattened between wax paper. "They ordered me to bury it," she said. "A gray man, hook fingers, wearing a woman's face. It reads like madness on paper. My captain said file it as a wandering hiker. I did. Then I kept my own copy." Elena took the folder. Photos of the treeline. Witness pages in Raven's shaking hand. Everything the police had erased. "Why keep the flower?" Elena asked. "Your mother left it in her pack." Miriam touched the wax paper. "It only grows deep in Blackwood, past where trails end. She'd been going in far before she vanished. Farther than a scared woman should." Elena's throat tightened. "So she wasn't just running from the thing. She was hunting it." Miriam nodded once. "That's what I could never prove. And someone didn't want me to." She glanced at the window. "I've had visitors. A car parked outside three nights this week. Your questions woke something. The people who buried this are still here." Glass shattered downstairs. Elena spun. Boots on the stairs, fast, two sets. Miriam moved. She swept the folder and flower into a battered hiking pack under her desk, frayed straps, patched and scuffed. She shoved it into Elena's hands. "Take this. Go out the back. They want it gone, not read." "Come with me," Elena said. "I'll slow them." Miriam pushed her toward the rear door. "I've hidden longer than you've been asking. Run." Elena ran. She hit the alley, pack against her chest, and didn't look back. A hand caught her sleeve. She wrenched free, hearing cloth tear. She reached her car, threw the pack across the seat, and drove. Miles out, she stopped and opened it. The file was there. The flower was there. A phone buzzed in the side pocket, not hers. A text glowed on the screen from an unknown number. We know you have it. The forest already knows your face. Elena set the phone down. She had the truth now, printed and photographed. But someone had marked her the way they'd once marked her mother. And they knew exactly where she was going.