It started with the rain and Verdamona wasn't home.
She wasn't with Lilith. She wasn't anywhere.
At first, they didn't panic. She was strong, after all, and fiercely independent. She took walks. She explored. She always came back. Always.
But the night passed. And she didn't come back.
By dawn, the village was already restless. Word spread like wind through leaves.
Felix stood on the porch, soaked to the bone, eyes scanning the path from the hills. He hadn't spoken in an hour. Bena stood behind him with a blanket over her shoulders, but the rain had long since made it useless. Her hands were clutching a half-unraveled yarn, one of Verdamona's, the same thread she'd spun just last week. Her fingers wouldn't stop shaking.
"Maybe she stayed over or—"
"She's not in the village," Bena cut in. Her voice cracked. "I checked. She left yesterday morning. Thea hasn't seen her since."
Leuven was already pacing by then. Boots muddied, hair slicked back from the storm, his jaw locked like he was holding back an entire sea of dread.
"If she went out… it had to be deep forest. She's been talking about finding silkworms."
Felix cursed under his breath and grabbed a lantern.
The first search began that morning.
They split into groups. The villagers—dozens of them—put aside their morning harvests, their weaving, their fishing, and joined in. Lilith stayed near Bena the whole time, clutching her hand like she was afraid she'd disappear too.
After all, it was her student.
By midday, they had combed the lower forests and riverbeds but found nothing. That night, no one in the village slept.
Felix returned with cuts on his arms from the brambles. Leuven didn't speak. Bena paced the house, eyes red, holding a scarf Verdamona had made when she was ten while practicing her weaving.
The next morning, they expanded the search. More villagers joined; elders with knowledge of old hunting paths, young runners who had grown up climbing the trees. The forest near Morowind Haven was a maze of trails and old animal tracks, but even the most experienced couldn't find her footprints.
Three days passed.
On the third, they found something. It wasn't her but a leopard three meters tall, massive and lifeless.
Its throat was crushed. Strings—Verdamona's Flux strings—were strewn nearby, tangled in the underbrush. There was no blood trail, just her knife, stuck in the dirt. It looked like a battleground. And she was missing.
Felix stood over the scene in silence. His hands were clenched so hard his knuckles turned white.
"Did she… did she fight it?" One of the fishermen asked.
"She wouldn't leave without her knife," Bena whispered.
"She wouldn't leave without telling us anything," Leuven said, eyes scanning the trees like they had swallowed her whole. "She's out there. She has to be."
But no matter how deep they searched, no matter how far the trail extended, her scent, her steps, her presence, it was gone. Vanished. As if the forest had claimed her and swallowed the proof.
A week passed. Then two.
Then a month.
No signs, no tracks, no voice calling out from the trees, not even a shimmer of string in the wind.
Bena barely slept. She stayed up spinning yarn night after night, making blankets and shirts she didn't need just to keep her hands busy. Every thread she touched, she begged to feel her daughter's presence in it. Every loop and weave was a silent prayer.
Felix grew quiet and angry in a way that made the house feel colder. He started walking the woods alone after sundown. Every night. Rain or not.
Leuven? He never stopped searching. The soles of his boots were worn thin. His eyes darkened with sleeplessness, and his fists were always trembling. He refused to stop. He couldn't.
And the village... the village mourned her like she was dead, but hoped like she was still breathing. They kept her space in the morning market. They told stories about her weaving and the baskets and nets that never frayed. They left meals at her favorite bench near their doors, just in case she came back. Just in case she needed food.
And all the while, that one stretch of forest, the place where the leopard died, remained untouched.
By the sixth week, the rain had become a curse.
It hadn't stopped since the day Verdamona vanished. Maybe a few hours of stillness here and there, but the skies always returned with their relentless sobbing, like the heavens themselves were grieving with the village.
Morowind Haven was soaked to its roots. Trees bowed under the weight of water. Rivers swelled, spilling over paths and turning them to muck. Moss crept up every stone wall, and the entire town smelled like earth and tears.
It was unnatural. No storm lasted this long. No sky cried this hard.
Felix had stopped talking altogether. Bena's hair had gone gray at the edges.
Leuven had stopped looking. Not because he gave up, but because something inside him had finally broken, caved in like a soaked cliffside. Every path had been walked, every tree touched, every possible sign studied. It was as if the world had taken her in and refused to give her back.
And then came the nightfall.
The town was settling in. Lanterns were being lit. The rain came down in waves, thick as blankets, making it hard to see more than a few meters ahead. Most people had retreated indoors. Some still sat by their windows, staring at the storm like it owed them something.
Then, someone gasped.
It came from one of the children near the eastern side of the village.
"Mama… look…"
More followed. Faces pressed against glass. Doors opened. People walked out into the downpour with wide eyes.
Out in the distance, where the trees met the hills, something glowed.
At first, it looked like fireflies, tiny lights in the dark. But these weren't fireflies. These were bigger. And they weren't just yellow. They shimmered in hues of sapphire blue, deep emerald, pale lavender, crimson red, warm gold, and soft white. They floated in a dance, swirling and moving as if guided by something.
They weren't drifting aimlessly. They were following something. Or... someone. Down the slope from the hilltop… a figure was walking slowly, barefoot and soaked in rain.
Hair clung to their shoulders. Their silhouette seemed blurred by the glow, as if the lights were deliberately masking them. But there was something about the way they walked.
Felix took a step forward, not daring to breathe. Bena dropped the yarn from her hands. Leuven stood from the bench near the well and stared, heart frozen mid-beat.
The glowing lights danced around her—yes, her—and shimmered down her arms, like the forest itself was clinging to her, refusing to let her walk without a celebration.
She was walking slowly, wrapped in a rough-spun cloak made of something foreign, silken but wild. Her face was pale and hollow, but her eyes…
Her eyes burned like the blue sky.
Verdamona was walking home.
And all of Morowind Haven stood frozen in the rain, not daring to move, not daring to speak, as their lost daughter returned from the dead.