CHAPTER 33: THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT
We gathered at the old oak trailhead at dawn, the journal’s faint clue still ringing clear in our heads: The key is buried where the road begins. The tree stood thick and gnarled at the edge of the clearing, its lowest branches twisted like knotted fingers, the faint scar of Elias’s first carving still visible high on its weathered trunk. Kael marked off a careful ten‑foot circle around its sprawling roots, and we began to dig slow and deliberate, moving soil by hand so we wouldn’t scratch or break anything buried there. The air smelled of turned earth and damp pine, and the only sounds were our breathing and the soft scrape of trowels against loam.
Three feet down, Jax’s tool clinked sharp against something hard and hollow. We brushed the dirt a
