The wind through the remaining leaves sounded like a thousand whispered secrets, but none of them belonged to Derek. He wandered the edge of the old logging road, boots sinking into leaf rot and moss, his body unremarkable and unchanging. Years might have passed. Or perhaps only days. It barely made a difference anymore.
Time slid from him as easily as people’s eyes did, turning at the last second, never quite registering his outline. The ache of hunger, the twinge of fatigue—those belonged to other men. He felt only a hollow calm, cool and dry at the center, as if all emotion had been burned out long ago.
A town appeared through the trees, its clapboard houses faded to the color of dead birch. Derek stood at the crest of a hill, watching the motion of people—children running after a loose dog, a woman sweeping her porch, a couple arguing just loudly enough to be heard by the neighbors. No one looked up at him. No one ever did.
He walked through the town. The bakery’s bell jangled as the door opened for a man behind him, but not for Derek. The smell of fresh bread was sharp enough to make him pause, but memory, not need, drove the pause; the taste of butter, the warmth of a crowded morning, the possibility that someone would smile and ask if he wanted coffee. But the girl behind the counter looked through him, her eyes focusing on the customer behind him. Derek moved on.
A church bell rang the hour. Derek drifted past the little green, feeling the haphazard collision of memory and isolation. He passed a playground: the swing chains rattled, empty, a reminder that time moved for others. He reached the edge of town and kept walking, every motion unremarkable, every step erased by wind and time.
That night, he lay in the woods again. The sky above was sharp with stars. He watched for shooting ones, but if one crossed the sky, he never saw it. The forest was not silent—the hidden things still lived—but none of them would ever brush against him, not even by mistake.
But this night was different. As he lay back, the ground beneath him trembled, faint and persistent. For the first time in countless seasons, Derek smelled something strange in the air: not woodsmoke, not rain or the loam of fallen leaves, but something old. Wet. Stone and water and something sourer, metallic. The scent of the well, memory insisted. Or perhaps it was more than memory.
He sat up, heart beating faster—a reflex, pointless, yet undeniable. The earth shuddered again. Somewhere deep below, the well stirred. And for the first time since his wish, he felt a presence—a brush of awareness, cold and searching.
Ronoben.
The whisper came from nowhere and everywhere at once. He tried to ignore it, but his body went rigid, listening. The spirit’s voice was so faint he could almost believe it was just the wind. But he knew better.
"You played a clever game."
Derek closed his eyes. For so long, he had not heard another voice—not truly. Relief and dread tangled in his chest. He waited, but the well-spirit said nothing more. The silence thickened around him, heavy, waiting. Something had changed in the dark—a disturbance of rules, an invitation or a challenge.
He rose and walked, compelled by something deeper than habit. The ground heaved again, and this time, the whisper in his mind sharpened.
"Come back."
At the edge of the woods, near where the well had been, the earth caved with a grinding crack. Stones tumbled aside. A chasm yawned, wider with each trembling heartbeat. Derek stood at the brink, staring into its darkness. The scent of the well rose around him like a fog. Far below, something old and angry shifted restlessly—hungry for what it could not have, reaching for what had escaped it.
The ground at Derek’s feet crumbled, one stone rolling into the darkness. He took a step back, breath tight, pulse roaring in his ears.
The chasm grew.
He could run. He could try to speak. Or he could leap.