Blogtober 2025, Day 28: Explore

 

Lucy's Path: Chapter Twenty-eight


The Lady’s touch never landed. A sudden wind ripped through the clearing, scattering leaves like shrapnel. The vines recoiled, and the shape before Sarah blurred—then steadied into something smaller, familiar.

Emily.

She stood barefoot among the briars, eyes glassy but human for the first time in days. The amulet glimmered at her throat, its surface cracked, light pulsing inside like a heartbeat trying to escape.

Sarah hesitated. “Emily? Can you hear me?”

Emily nodded weakly. “She showed me things,” she whispered. “Our family—the Hargroves, the Prices. We weren’t victims. We were caretakers. Every generation promised something to keep her sleeping.” She shuddered. “But Eleanor broke the pact when she tried to explore what the Lady really was.”

Mark’s voice rasped, rough and broken from silence. “So this… all of it… was inherited?”

Emily turned toward him, tears streaking through the dirt on her face. “We were supposed to guard her, not wake her.”

The forest stirred, whispering through every branch. “Guard,” it echoed, “or serve.”

The amulet’s glow brightened, and for a moment, Emily looked utterly herself—afraid, furious, alive. “She’s hungry again,” she said, gripping Sarah’s arm. “And she doesn’t want another offering.”

Sarah swallowed hard. “Then what does she want?”

Emily’s gaze flicked toward the oak’s hollow, where something inside began to move.

“She wants to come out.”


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