For two days, the forest was silent.
Too silent.
Every creak of the cabin’s wooden frame, every gust of wind through the trees, every scrape of branches against the glass felt like Daniel’s breath on the back of my neck.
But he didn’t come.
Not in the night, not at dawn, not with fists or fire. Just absence. And that absence ate at us worse than his presence ever did.
Adrian and I patched the broken window with plywood, swept the glass into a pile, and buried it under the soil behind the cabin. But we couldn’t bury the truth: Daniel was still out there.
He had left us with his laughter. He had left us with his vow.
“You’ll regret this.”
Those words repeated in my head like a curse.
By the third day, Adrian couldn’t take it anymore.
“I’m going after him,” he said, pacing the livin
