The sky turned copper by the time Lilith got home.
She didn't tell her mom where she'd been just muttered something about walking too far, getting lost in thought. Her mom gave her a look, worried but silent, like she knew pushing would make it worse.
Lilith went straight to her room, peeled off her muddy clothes, and stood under the shower until the hot water turned cold. Still, she couldn't stop shaking.
Because the truth wasn't just hiding in the woods.
It was crawling up from inside her.
That night, she didn't sleep.
Instead, she sat on her bed with the old photo in one hand and the broken piece of mirror in the other. The photo of her and Lena felt like a ghost. A lie wrapped in sunlight. She couldn't stop looking at their eyes the innocence, the joy, the trust.
But all she could hear was Lena's voice from the lake.
"You bargained for me."
It didn't make sense.
What could she have possibly traded?
And then she remembered something her mom once told her, on a night when Lilith had woken screaming as a kid.
"When you came home from camp, you weren't the same. You stopped drawing. You didn't talk. It was like someone else came back wearing your skin."
She hadn't believed her at the time.
Now?
She wasn't so sure.
The next day, she skipped school. Took the bus to the library.
She needed records. Articles. Anything from that summer.
She searched the archives, flipping through microfilm and old newspapers with trembling fingers.
And then she found it.
"CAMP BLACKWOOD MYSTERY: GIRL STILL MISSING"
July 26, 2017
Lena's face stared back at her from the faded page. And below that, a line that made Lilith's stomach drop:
"According to counselors, Lena had gone swimming with her close friend Lilith A...." last name redacted "...who claimed to have no memory of the event."
"Authorities suspended the search after seven days. Body never recovered."
She read it again.
And again.
The counselor's quote at the bottom stuck with her like glass in her throat.
"Some say the woods took her. That those trees have rules. And when you break them, someone has to pay."
Lilith slammed the book closed.
She had gone swimming with Lena.
She had come back.
Lena hadn't.
And now Lena or something wearing her face was back.
Back home, Lilith dug out the old notebook again. Her hands moved fast, scribbling words she didn't understand. Phrases she couldn't remember ever learning.
But they flowed out of her like ink from a broken pen:
"She is not dead, only forgotten."
"A promise was made beneath the moon."
"The woods remember the debt."
Then a knock hit her window.
She jumped.
Her heart nearly exploded.
She inched closer, every instinct screaming no and drew back the curtain.
Nobody was there.
Only fog on the glass.
But as it cleared, five letters slowly appeared like breath writing a message from the other side:
HELLO
Her scream got caught in her throat.
Because beneath the word, written so faintly she almost missed it, was another sentence so soft it looked like it had been written by a trembling hand.
"You still wear her face."
The past wasn't chasing her.
It was living inside her.
And it was getting harder to tell who she really was.