The next morning, Lilith's mom returned to find her curled on the couch, dark circles under her eyes and the mirror in her room facedown.
"You didn't sleep?" her mom asked gently.
Lilith shook her head. "Nightmares. Loud ones."
Her mom didn't press. She never did when Lilith had that far-off look, the one she used to get after the camp incident — the summer that was always a blank in her memory, but a shadow in her heart.
After her mom left for work, Lilith went back upstairs, this time to the attic.
It smelled like mothballs and old wood, but she wasn't here for nostalgia. She was looking for a box. One she hadn't touched since she was twelve. Inside were old drawings, photos, letters—memories of a girl she used to be.
She found it in the far corner, under a stack of dusty blankets. The box had her name scribbled on it in childish handwriting. LILITH. PRIVATE. DO NOT OPEN.
She did.
The photos were the first to hit her. Summer camp. Kids in bright shirts and name tags. Tents in the background, the lake glimmering under the sun.
And there she was.
Lilith.
Standing beside a girl with sun-kissed cheeks and an impish smile.
Lena.
The breath caught in her throat. She traced Lena's face with her fingers, the image now matching the flashes in her dreams.
But then something in the photo made her freeze.
In the background, just beyond the trees, there was a figure. Blurry. Out of focus. All black.
It looked like it was watching them.
She flipped the photo over.
On the back, scrawled in the same handwriting that was in the notebook, were the words:
"The blackwood knows what you did."
Lilith dropped the photo like it burned her.
The Blackwood.
A place behind the camp. The woods they were told not to wander into.
She had been there.
With Lena.
That's where they disappeared.
She barely remembered getting dressed or grabbing her bag. Her feet moved on instinct. She took the first bus back toward the edge of town. The road to Blackwood had been fenced off for years overgrown and forgotten.
But not to her.
Her memories stirred like a beast waking up.
As she pushed past the rusted gate and deeper into the trees, something strange began to happen.
The forest was silent.
Not quiet , silent. No birds. No wind. Just a pressing, heavy stillness.
The air felt thick, like water. And then… she saw it.
A stone.
Tall. Weathered. Covered in moss.
An old boundary marker.
She remembered this. She and Lena had dared each other to step beyond it. Past the stone was where the trees bent lower. The sun didn't reach. The shadows lingered.
And somewhere in there was the clearing.
Where the dock had once stood.
She kept walking, heart hammering.
Until she found it.
The lake was smaller now. Stagnant. Black like ink. And there, rising just barely above the waterline, was the rotting frame of an old dock.
Lilith stepped forward.
Memories screamed at her to stop.
But she didn't.
She knelt at the edge, staring into the water.
Her reflection shimmered. Warped.
And then...
Another face rose beside hers.
Lena.
No longer smiling.
No longer human.
"You left me. You bargained for me."
Lilith staggered back.
"No. That's not true. I would never..."
"You gave me to the blackwood. And it gave you freedom. But nothing stays buried forever."
The water trembled. The trees creaked.
And behind her, something began to move.
Something big.
Something ancient.
Something angry.
Lilith ran.
Tripped over roots, stumbled through brush, scratched by thorns,but she didn't stop.
She didn't stop until she burst out of the woods, collapsed by the roadside, and gasped like the air was poison in her lungs.
And through it all, one sentence beat in her head like a war drum:
What did I do to her?