A year had passed, yet the forest still seemed to breathe her name. Eoghan walked among the villagers, carrying hope heavier than any blade, unaware that the world he knew had already begun to change.
The trees whispered with the weight of unseen things, their branches scratching at the sky like brittle fingers. Even the wind moved differently now, slower, carrying a chill that tasted of memory and fear. Shadows clung to the corners of his vision, as if the forest itself remembered her disappearance, and had not forgiven the world for letting her go.
Villagers moved around him with cautious eyes, speaking in low murmurs. Their glances brushed past him, wary and sharp, but Eoghan did not notice. He was too busy listening to the silence where her laughter used to be, too busy tracing the empty spaces where her presence had once made the world whole.
He reached the edge of the forest and paused. The air smelled of damp earth and distant storms, of things that had been buried and forgotten. His fingers brushed the hilt of his dagger, not in readiness for battle, but as a tether to a past that refused to leave him.
And though no one could see it, the forest shivered with anticipation. Something was stirring beyond the trees, unseen, patient, and old. The world was waiting, and Eoghan did not yet know that nothing would ever be the same again.