Elara’s POV
I barely remembered the walk home.
My sneakers carried me across the familiar dirt road, my body moving on autopilot, but my mind was still in the forest.
That man.
Those eyes.
That voice.
“The one thing you should fear the most.”
The words wouldn’t leave me alone, circling in my head like a song I hated but couldn’t stop humming.
And then there was the way the path had opened, as if the forest had let me go the moment he vanished.
It wasn’t normal. None of it was normal.
I should’ve been terrified, I told myself. And I was. My hands still shook, my pulse hadn’t calmed, and every rustle of leaves made me flinch. But fear wasn’t all I felt.
No. Beneath the panic, something else burned.
Recognition.
That was the part I couldn’t explain. How could you recognize someon
