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But I don’t turn around.
I step forward.
The first tree rises like a beast on broken limbs, bark etched in curling, jagged runes that hum just beneath the surface. It isn’t magic—it’s memory. This place is remembering something. Someone.
Me.
I don’t speak. Can’t. Not with Orin and Lucien close enough to be ripped apart by a single word from my mouth. Branwen would hear it, feel it, use it. Twist it into something I can’t undo.
So I keep my lips pressed shut and raise my hand instead.
The tree leans.
Subtle. A shift of the trunk, a ripple through the branches. Like it’s watching me. Like it’s waiting. My fingers hover just inches from the surface, the air between us thick with static and something older. Wilder. Something that recognizes what I am becoming even if I don’t yet.
The moment before contact stretches impossibly long. The others stop speaking. The only sound is the wind dragging its claws through the dead leaves, and the pulsing whisper that isn’t a voice at all—but I feel it in my bones.
You are not hers.
The words are ancient. Carved not into language but existence. And they don’t feel like a warning.
They feel like a choice.
Behind me, someone shifts. Footsteps crunch. Riven’s breath cuts through the quiet. “Luna.”
His voice is sharp. Not a plea. Not a command. But something tighter.
I don’t pull back.
Because for the first time, I don’t feel the Hollow pushing me away.
I feel it pulling me in.
And maybe that’s the point.
Maybe Branwen built this world to trap them—but I was never meant to follow her rules.
But I think…it’s more than that.
The thought uncoils in my skull, slow and suffocating, curling beneath every half-formed instinct I’ve been trying to ignore. If what I’ve learned about the Sin Binders is true—if we all come from the same ancient, blood-soaked line—then Branwen isn’t the anomaly. I’m not either.
We’re echoes.
Split from the same lineage, splintered across generations. And this place—this warped, haunted skeleton of Daemon—it doesn’t feel like it belongs to her.
It feels like it remembersme.
Not just my footsteps. Not just my voice. My blood.
The runes carved into the bark shimmer faintly beneath my palm now. Not with power. With recognition. Like this thing—this monstrous, living relic—was carved to obey one voice, and that voice isn't Branwen’s. Maybe never was.
What if the Hollow isn’t just reacting to Sin? What if it’s responding to theBinder? And what if it can’t tell the difference between us anymore because the difference doesn’t matter?
Branwen didn’t steal this place.
She inherited it.
Same as me.