Fred and Clara sat at the edge of the forgotten well long after the stranger had disappeared.
The village stirred slowly to life around them—an old man sweeping dust from a crooked doorstep, a cart creaking by laden with spoiled vegetables—yet here, at the heart of the square, time seemed frozen.
Clara broke the silence first, her voice trembling but firm.
"Who was he?"
Fred shook his head, unable to find the right words.
How could he explain the sense of familiarity, of dread?
The way the man's voice had felt like knives wrapped in velvet?
Clara knelt by the well, peering into the darkness as if searching for answers that wouldn't come.
"Why did he have your mother's locket?" she whispered.
Fred's fists clenched at his sides.
The past he thought he had buried had clawed its way back into the present, refusing to let go.
---
They walked away from the well eventually, the village's crooked streets winding around them like a maze.
Fred barely registered the path.
His mind was adrift, lost in half-remembered images:
His mother's soft humming as she braided his hair.
The way she would clutch the locket when she thought no one was watching.
The night of the fire... the screams... the thick black smoke swallowing everything.
Fred stopped suddenly.
The memory sharpened, cutting through the haze:
The night of the fire... he had seen someone.
A figure standing in the flames, untouched, watching the house burn.
Silver eyes.
The same silver eyes he had seen this morning.
Fred staggered back, bile rising in his throat.
Clara caught his arm, steadying him.
"Fred, what is it?" she asked, voice urgent.
He looked at her, pale and shaking.
"He was there," Fred rasped.
"That night. He was there when everything burned."
---
The realization left Fred hollow and raw.
What did it mean?
Had the stranger caused the fire?
Or had he merely watched?
And why return now, years later, to taunt him with a relic of what he had lost?
Clara gripped his hand tighter.
"We can't stay here," she said, glancing nervously around the sleepy village.
"If he's still watching us..."
Fred nodded, throat too tight to speak.
They needed answers.
They needed to move.
But as they turned to leave, a flicker of movement caught Fred's eye—a shadow slipping between buildings, gone in a blink.
Watching.
Waiting.
The stranger wasn't finished with them yet.
---
That night, they packed what little they had and left the village behind, slipping into the dark forests under a new moon.
Each step forward felt heavier, laden with the weight of unseen eyes and half-buried secrets.
Fred kept the broken compass around his neck, the only thing left from his old life—until now.
Now there was something more.
A memory rekindled.
A locket lost again.
And a face he would never forget.
Fred swore silently to himself as they vanished into the woods:
He would find the stranger.
He would uncover the truth.
No matter what it cost.
---