Chapter Text
The rain was soft but steady, tapping against the windows of Daze’s small village library. It smelled like old paper, sea salt, and faint mildew—comforting, in a weird way. Mara flipped another page with a wet thumb, eyes skimming too fast to really absorb anything.
"You're not actually reading," Jace said from across the table, chin resting on his hand. His book was open to Legends of the Old Woods, but it looked barely touched.
"I’m looking," Mara muttered. "There has to be something in here. Something real about her."
Tali stood by the dusty folklore shelf, fingers running along faded spines. "What if she’s just... a story?" she asked quietly.
Mara looked up, fire in her eyes. "She’s not. My cousin saw her last winter. Said she was standing by the edge of the trees, watching. Then poof—gone."
Jace sighed. "That same cousin also thinks goats are government spies."
Tali pulled down a cracked leather-bound journal. No title. Just a pressed flower stuck inside the front cover—some kind of white blossom, now browned with age.
"Hey," she said. "This isn’t in the catalog."
Mara was already moving. "What’s in it?"
Tali opened the first page. A child’s scrawl, barely legible:
She sings when no one listens. She sings to the trees. She sings to the dead.
They looked at each other.
"Okay," Jace muttered. "That’s not creepy at all."