Next morning arrived in pieces: thin, trembling pieces that didn't quite align.
Aron woke on the couch, though he didn't remember lying down. His throat felt scraped raw, his eyelids heavy as though something had been pressing them shut during sleep. It was quiet in the apartment. Too quiet. City noise usually seeped upward: passing cars, distant construction, conversations in the street below. Today, there was nothing.
As if the world were holding its breath.
Aron sat up slowly. His head pulsed with a dull ache, which seemed to emanate not from within his skull but deeper, as if something was expanding inside him, testing the limits of the bone.
The photograph of Kael Valém was still lying on the coffee table, where Raine had left it. Aron stared into the face of the man in the picture, the feeling of wrongness growing the longer he looked, not just the resemblance, not just the identical birthmark, but something else, something in the expression.
They were calm.
Not peaceful, not kind.
Accepting.
As if Kael had already made peace with something that Aron could not yet see.
Aron abruptly stood up, unable to look anymore. He splashed his face in the bathroom sink, avoiding the mirror on instinct.
Something pulled him back. A pressure, a whisper in the mind.
Look.
His gaze lifted.
The condensation had returned overnight.
More visible this time.
Clearer.
Not random streaks.
Not shapes.
Not roots.
Symbols.
Witchcraft sigils he had seen only once before—drawn in charcoal on the archival folder Raine had been examining.
Aron's breath died in his throat.
He wiped his palm on the mirror.
The symbols did not smear.
They were on the other side of the glass.
Slowly, the surface clouded again, as if something stood behind him and breathed.
His heart ricocheted off his ribs.
He didn't look over his shoulder.
He exited the bathroom and did not close the door.
None of it mattered.
The apartment grew smaller with each passing hour. The walls listened. The air watched. The floor waited.
His phone buzzed at 11:46 AM.
"Be outside in five minutes."
—Raine
Aron stared at the message. He should ignore it. He should stay here. He should call someone—police, campus security, anyone—
He was already putting on his shoes.
His body moved with a quiet certainty, as though the decision had been made before he woke.
When he went outside, Raine was waiting beside a dark sedan. He did not ask how Aron was. He did not ask whether Aron had slept. He did not speak at all, just opened the passenger door.
Aron got in.
The car pulled away.
They drove for nearly an hour. The city fell away behind them, replaced by sprawling fields the color of dead grass and long stretches of highway where no other vehicles passed. Aron stared out the window, watching the world grow emptier.
Raine finally spoke.
"You're still hearing it."
Aron didn't ask how he knew.
"Yes."
"And when I'm awake."
Raine nodded once. "That's expected.
Aron turned to him, voice rough. "Am I—losing my mind?"
Raine didn't waste time.
"No. You are remembering.
Aron's pulse stuttered. "Remembering what?"
Raine looked at him, and in that instant, Aron realized something important:
Raine was not cold.
He was patient.
"There are memories carried in blood," Raine said. "Not stories told or learned. Imprinted. Preserved. Passed. You are remembering a life that did not end when the body it belonged to did."
Aron looked back out the window.
Long, vein-like streaks of clouds moved across the sky.
"And Kael?" Aron asked quietly. "Who was he?"
Raine let out one slow, measured exhalation. "He was the last chosen vessel of the Redwood Hollow coven. He was meant to complete the Rite of Red Earth. To become the host of something ancient."
Aron's stomach twisted.
"The Mother of Red Earth," he said, not meaning to.
Raine's hands tightened on the wheel.
"Yes."
The word hung in the car like a weight.
Aron rubbed his palms against his jeans, grounding himself in the friction. "And he didn't… complete the ritual?"
"No," Raine said. "It was interrupted. The coven was massacred. The tether with the Mother wasn't severed—just severed from the body Kael occupied at the time. His identity didn't die. It only waited for the next suitable vessel to grow."
Aron's nails dug into his palms.
"And that vessel is me."
Raine didn't take her eyes off the road.
"It always has been."
They turned off the highway onto a narrow road choked by forest on either side. The trees here were wrong—taller and thinner than any tree should be, their bark a faded gray, like old bones. The branches overhead tangled together, blocking out the sun.
The world dimmed.
Aron's breath shortened.
Raine parked by a rusty metal gate with vines tangled over it.
A sign, half-rotted and cracked, hung from one post:
REDWOOD HOLLOW — EST. 1837
The bottom half had been burned away.
Aron stared at the gate.
His heart was pounding so hard, he felt it in his teeth.
"We're not going in," he said.
Raine opened his door. "We have to."
Aron did not move.
Raine leaned down, meeting his eyes through the open doorway.
"You already dream of this place," Raine said. "If you do not face it, waking, your mind will remain trapped there, sleeping."
His legs had no energy, as if they were made of stone.
The forest waited.
They walked the overgrown path leading beyond the gate. No animals moved. No insects chirped. The silence was so complete it felt like a substance, thick, clinging to skin.
The trees grew stranger the deeper they went. The roots twisted above the ground, curling like fingers. Aron had to watch where he stepped to avoid tripping.
Raine walked calmly, as though he'd done this many times. Maybe he had.
Foundations rubbed down to blackened brick. Roofs caved in or gone. Stone chimneys standing like so many grave markers. The air still reeked of old ash, though the fire had happened more than a century ago.
Aron's chest tightened.
He had seen this place.
Not in pictures.
Not in dreams.
From inside another body.
He stumbled. The ground tilted. His hand shot out to steady himself against a tree.
The bark was warm.
Warm, like breath.
Raine watched him carefully, not intervening, only observing.
Aron's voice came out hoarse. "I don't want to remember this."
Aron turned on him, his anger flaring for the first time. "You keep saying I have no choice. That this was always going to happen. Why me? Why him? Why this bloodline?"
Raine's expression did not change.
"Because the Mother does not choose," he said.
She waits.
Aron felt that.
Deep.
Familiar.
As though he had heard it before in a voice not his own.
He walked forward, being pulled towards the center of the ruined village.
The air grew thicker.
The earth beneath his feet no longer was dry.
The color of his dreams.
Red like memory.
He came into a circular clearing. In the center of the circle was a stone altar, cracked down the middle. Black scorch marks stained the stone. Something had burned here. Something had bled here.
Aron's breath hitched.
Kael.
He froze.
Raine did not budge.
The whisper came again.
But this time —
It came from inside his own voice.
Come home.
Aron's vision blurred—red smearing into darker red.
The forest breathed in.
And everything went quiet.
Silence in the clearing
was not without content.
It was full.
Full the way a held breath is full. Full the way the air becomes before a storm breaks. Aron felt it crowding the space behind his ribs, pressing outward, making room for something that was not him.
He did not move.
The whisper pulsed through his skull, felt rather than heard, like memory spoken from underwater.
Come home.
His heart hammered a stuttering rhythm, too fast, too uneven. The world around him sharpened—not through clarity, but through contrast. The darkened timber frames of ruined homes looked darker, the soot stains on the broken stone more like charred handprints. The earth beneath his feet deepened in color, as though something beneath the surface was soaking upward.
He had brought Aron here to remember.
Aron's breath fogged in the air.
It wasn't cold.
He breathed again.
Another fog.
Finally, Raine spoke, his voice low. "Do not step onto the altar."
Aron didn't answer. His body remained frozen, but his mind moved-whirling, opening, sinking.
He could see Kael.
Not as a photograph.
But in motion.
Bare feet, stained hands, candlelight dancing across skin, a room bathed in red, a circle on the earth, voices chanting in a tongue that no earthly throat had ever known.
A ritual.
A promise.
A bond.
A sacrifice.
Kael had stood where Aron now stood.
He had felt what Aron felt now.
The call to return.
Aron forced air into his chest, grounding himself.
"I need to know," he said, his voice barely recognizable to himself. "I need to know what happened here."
Raine nodded once, as if he had expected that response.
He walked forward and stood beside Aron, both of them facing the cracked altar.
Aron swallowed. "Fire. Screaming. Something—being woken."
Raine's jaw tightened. "More specifically?"
Aron closed his eyes.
The memory was not one that needed to be searched for.
It was there.
Waiting.
He stood inside Kael's memory.
The coven surrounding him was of twelve, their robes the color of wet earth. Their hands were inked with sigils—lines and circles, teeth-shaped patterns. A smell of burning sage and crushed roots, the earth underfoot damp and warm, as if it had been doused with blood.
Kael stood in the center, chest bare, arms outstretched, the same birthmark on his chest dark and pulsing like a heart beneath skin.
A voice like shifting dirt spoke—
The Mother rises from inheritance. Blood remembers blood. Earth remembers the first wound.
It circled him, chanting.
The Mother of Red Earth was not a goddess.
She was not a being one prayed to.
A tether formed.
The ritual was nearing its completion when the village gates suddenly burst open.
Torches. Axes. Men screaming with holy symbols around their necks.
A massacre. The coven cut down, one by one. The ritual was interrupted but not reversed.
But in a rage.
He was unafraid of death.
The memory snapped away.
Aron's eyes opened.
His heartbeat was a drum inside his skull.
Aron felt sick. Not from the memory itself, but from how familiar it had felt.
"How many times has this occurred?" he asked.
Raine didn't hesitate with her answer. "Five. You are the sixth vessel.
Aron stared at him. "And all of them—were me?"
"No. All of them were him. Kael's identity doesn't reincarnate. It persists. Seeking form. Seeking completion."
Aron's throat closed.
The whisper returned, curling warm and wrong across the back of his skull.
Not Kael.
Aron's breath caught.
The whisper spoke again.
You cannot name what has no mouth.
His vision sharpened to painful clarity.
The trees were no longer still.
Their branches were leaning closer.
Raine's body tensed; he felt it, too.
The clearing was no longer dormant anymore.
Something beneath the earth had woken.
"Aron." Raine's voice was steady, but not calm. "We are leaving."
Aron didn't budge.
His body was rooted.
Anchored.
The ground beneath his feet was alive-humid, slow, pulsating in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Come home, the whisper urged.
Come home to the soil that bore you. Come home to the mouth beneath the root. Come home to the red earth that remembers you.
Aron forced his voice out through his teeth. "Get me out of here."
Raine grabbed his arm and pulled.
The forest resisted.
The ground resisted.
Every step away from the altar felt like tearing roots from flesh.
Aron's vision flickered—
Kael's hands bound
A blade pressed to his throat
The Mother whispering beneath the soil
His knees buckled.
Raine hauled him upright without pause.
"Don't look at the altar," Raine said sharply.
Aron didn't.
But he felt it.
Something rose from the cracked stone.
Not physically.
Not visibly.
But in presence.
An intelligence older than bone. Older than death. And familiar in the way hunger is familiar.
The whisper came one last time—
Not yet.
Aron stumbled forward—out of the clearing—into the trees.
The whisper ceased the moment the village disappeared from view.
Sound returned.
Birds.
Wind.
The world started again.
Aron fell to his knees, gasping, his fingers clawing into the dirt as if to get away from something inside of himself.
Raine stood beside him, not touching him now, only watching—giving Aron the space to break without interference.
Aron's voice was raw when it finally returned.
"I don't want this."
Raine didn't respond straight away.
When he did, his tone held something human for the first time.
"Want has nothing to do with inheritance."
Aron looked up at him, his eyes burning.
"What am I supposed to do?
Grief chiseled an expression into Raine's face.
"Survive long enough to choose whether to complete the ritual—or end the bloodline."
The air went still.
End the bloodline.
There was only one way to do that.
Aron understood.
He felt the meaning settle into his bones like weight.
Raine offered his hand.
Not a gesture of comfort. A gesture of war. Aron didn't take it. But he stood. The path back to the car was waiting. The whisper did not return. But the memory did. Kael's voice-not from a dream. Not imagined. His own voice beneath his own voice. The Mother waits beneath all things.