The forest was quiet.
Elian stood beneath the stitched sky, the bone-white trees casting shadows that moved without wind. The pendant around his neck pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat buried beneath the soil.
Lira sat cross-legged in the center of the clearing, blindfolded, her hands resting on the earth. She didn't speak. She didn't move.
Then — she inhaled sharply.
And the Echo spoke through her.
Not in words, but in voices. Hundreds. Children. Mothers. Elders. All layered, all pleading, all remembering.
> "We were forgotten."
> "We were traded."
> "We were buried."
Elian stepped forward, trembling. "What are you?"
Lira's head tilted, her voice now a chorus. "We are the cost. The silence. The pact. We are what Verdant Hollow gave away."
The trees pulsed.
The soil beneath Elian's feet shifted, revealing fragments — toys, teeth, scraps of cloth. He knelt and touched one: a ribbon, faded and frayed. A name was stitched into it.
Maren.
He remembered her — vaguely. A girl who vanished when he was five. No one spoke of her. No one mourned.
The Echo whispered: "She was the first."
Lira's body trembled.
Elian knelt beside her. "Why did the village do this?"
The Echo answered: "Because forgetting is easier than grief. Because silence is safer than truth."
The forest darkened.
Elian saw visions — the first Pact, made beneath the Harvest Moon. A child offered. A village spared. Then another. And another. Each ten years, a child vanished. Each time, the Echo grew stronger.
He saw his mother, younger, desperate, bargaining.
> "Take my memories. Take my joy. Just leave him."
The Echo had accepted.
But it had never stopped watching.
Lira gasped, her blindfold damp with tears. "It's showing me everything. The graves. The names. The trades."
Elian held her hand. "Can we stop it?"
She shook her head. "It doesn't want to stop. It wants to be remembered."
The forest shifted again.
Now they stood in the village square — but it was empty. The houses were hollow. The stage was broken. The effigy was gone.
Only the soil remained.
And it was breathing.
The Echo spoke once more, through Lira's trembling lips:
> "You are the last. The final trade. The memory that must be kept."
Elian stepped back. "I won't let you take me."
The Echo pulsed.
> "Then give us something else."
Lira collapsed.
Elian caught her, heart racing.
The pendant burned against his chest.
The journal appeared in his hands, pages blank — then filled with a single line:
> "To end the Pact, one must remember everything."
He looked around — at the stitched sky, the bone trees, the breathing soil.
And he understood.
The Echo didn't want flesh.
It wanted truth.
It wanted the village to remember what it had buried.
And Elian would have to dig it up.
---
Elian stood in the center of the clearing, Lira unconscious in his arms, the forest pulsing around them like a living lung. The Echo had spoken — not in riddles, but in grief. It didn't want to destroy the village.
It wanted to be acknowledged.
He carried Lira back through the bone-white trees, the stitched sky unraveling above them. Threads of memory drifted down like ash — fragments of lullabies, names whispered in the dark, the sound of a child's last breath.
As he stepped beyond the forest's edge, the village reappeared — but it was flickering.
One moment, it was whole: lanterns swaying, villagers preparing the final rites. The next, it was empty, overgrown, abandoned for decades. Then it was burning. Then it was buried beneath snow.
Time was breaking.
The Echo was no longer content to haunt the past.
It was bleeding into the now.
Elian laid Lira gently on the steps of the manor. Her blindfold had fallen away. Her eyes were open — and glowing faintly with silver light.
"I saw them," she whispered. "All of them. Every child. Every trade. Every silence."
He knelt beside her. "Can we stop it?"
She looked at him — truly looked, for the first time.
"No," she said. "But we can choose what comes after."
The journal appeared beside them, pages fluttering in a wind that didn't exist. A new line had written itself:
> "The final night is not for forgetting. It is for remembering aloud."
Elian stood.
The Harvest Moon was rising.
And the village was gathering.
---