It was nearly midnight when they reached the edge of the woods, where the earth sloped into the sunken grove the villagers called the Willow Pit. Fog settled low like an animal curled on its side, thick and unmoving. Leyra held her lantern out ahead, the flame dimmed by the mist.
They passed the rusted shrine marker—two knotted branches nailed into a spiral. Beyond it, the trees thickened. Nerin moved like someone retracing a dream he hadn't meant to remember.
"It's not natural," Leyra murmured. "This fog—it doesn't move like fog."
"It isn't," Nerin replied. "It's anchored. We're walking through a memory tether. The same kind I found in the weaver's barn."
Leyra gave him a sidelong glance. "You say that like it's normal."
"It was. A long time ago. Tethers were how they remembered their dead. Impressions sealed into place. But this one's too strong."
He stopped.
Up ahead, beneath the largest willow, the earth had collapsed inward into a circular sinkhole. The roots spiraled down like veins in an old man's hand, and at the center: a mound of wet earth, faintly glowing with a greenish hue.
"That wasn't there before," Leyra said.
"No. Someone's been here."
Nerin crouched at the edge of the pit, letting the lantern's light fall over the mound. The glow wasn't luminescence—it was reflection. Bits of bone, mirror shards, and glass had been arranged inside the soil. Deliberate. Symmetrical.
And wedged among the roots, tied in place with threads of hair and black ribbon, was another mask.
But this one wasn't like the others.
It had eyes.
Orbs of pale glass sat in the sockets, opaque and bulging. They looked almost... swollen.
Leyra stepped back.
Nerin didn't.
"Wait," he said, and reached into his satchel, pulling out the etched copy of the thread-map. He turned it over to the blank side and drew a mark: the exact layout of the mound, the orientation of the roots, and the pattern of objects.
It matched.
One of the last symbols.
"It's a memory trap," he said. "Someone's using these locations to extract impressions from the land. Essence—bound to old grief, old death."
He stood slowly. "They're preparing something. Feeding it."
Leyra's voice dropped. "Feeding what?"
A soft crunch behind them.
They spun.
Nothing.
Just the fog.
And then—shuffling.
Not footsteps. Not quite.
A dragging.
Leyra gripped Nerin's arm tightly.
From the far edge of the pit, a figure emerged from the mist.
Not Myla.
Not anyone they recognized.
The shape was wrong—lanky, but hunched, wrapped in patchwork robes. A hood draped low, and underneath it: a face completely covered in broken pieces of mirror, affixed like scales. Each shard reflected something different. Some showed stars. Others showed blood.
Nerin stepped forward, voice steady. "What are you?"
The figure lifted its head slightly. One mirror near the jaw caught the lantern light, flaring white.
"I am regret," it said, voice like wind sliding through broken reeds. "You brought the memory. I came for the silence."
Leyra reached for the knife at her belt. "Back away, Nerin."
But he didn't. He held up the paper again, showing the diagram.
"This pattern—you've been leaving it. Why?"
The figure moved closer. The mirrors didn't rattle. They clung to the face as if fused.
"You call it pattern. I call it debt. This land remembers what you've forgotten. You scraped over the rot. I only bloom what's buried."
Suddenly, the mask in the pit snapped, cracking down the middle as if reacting to the voice.
The ground beneath them shuddered.
Then came the sound—high and ringing, not from the air but from inside their heads. A keening.
Nerin staggered, clutching his temple. Leyra dropped to one knee, screaming. The mirror-man raised both hands—
And then a blade flashed through the fog.
Steel met glass with a crack.
The figure staggered back, one hand sliced at the wrist. Shards clattered to the ground like silver teeth.
Standing behind him, breath steaming, axe still raised—
Dorrin.
"I told you fools not to come out here alone," he snapped.
Leyra groaned. "You followed us?"
"Watched the path. Saw the fog change."
The mirror-man snarled. But the sound was wrong—guttural, echoing. He took a step back, then vanished into the mist without so much as a footprint left behind.
Nerin stood slowly, his heartbeat ragged.
He looked down at the pit.
The mask had disintegrated.
But the glow beneath the earth pulsed once more—then dimmed.
---
Back in the village, the tavern had shuttered early.
Inside, Nerin sat alone at the back table while Leyra nursed a shallow cut on her palm. Dorrin spoke quietly with Old Halwyn, who had finally begun sharing stories of the previous time something like this happened—thirty years ago, during the drowned spring.
But Nerin wasn't listening to them anymore.
His eyes were locked on the page before him.
He'd redrawn the spiral.
Only this time, he added the words beneath it:
Morrowlight = Debt + Reflection + Grief (Active)
Then, quietly, he turned to a fresh page and began to write—not a note, not a report.
A theory.
---
Essence Behavior: Anomalous Patterns in Folk-Bound Terrains
Author: Nerin (Uncertified)
1. Memory traps are no longer passive.
2. Mirror-masks act as conductors—possibly vessels for tethered spirits or fractured personalities.
3. The entity referred to as "Regret" speaks in recursive truths—possibly a byproduct of tether-echo.
4. The energy signature correlates with pre-Blinthra phase language.
5. The land isn't cursed. It's harvesting.
---
He put down his pen.
Outside, thunder rumbled.
Something told him this wasn't about Edenrock anymore.
It was about what Edenrock had buried.
And what was trying to crawl out of it.