Nova met Mia behind the library, her heart still pounding from the night before. The fog had lifted, but the feeling that something was following her hadn't.
Mia glanced over her shoulder and handed Nova a worn notebook. "You need to see this."
They sat beneath the gnarled elm tree, flipping through its pages. Inside were names—Liam's, Ava's, even one that had been missing for over twenty years.
"They were all part of it," Mia whispered. "There's something... binding them."
Nova frowned. "Binding them how?"
Mia didn't answer. Instead, she flipped to the back where a sketched diagram glared in black ink: six points in a circle, each labeled with symbols Nova had begun to recognize—spirals, eyes, jagged lines.
"It's a pattern," Mia said. "And it's happening again."
Nova felt cold. "You think I'm part of this?"
Mia looked at her, solemn. "You already are."
That night, Nova stood alone in the clearing. She walked slowly to the tree with the spiral mark. Beneath it, the earth was soft — freshly disturbed.
She knelt down, brushed away the dirt, and found something cold and metallic: a pendant, shaped like a crescent moon with the same symbol etched in its center.
Suddenly, the wind howled, and the clearing darkened as if the trees themselves had leaned in to listen.
Nova clutched the pendant. A low whisper curled around her like mist.
"They're watching."