Vivian Montrale

A Story Gone Wrong

Chapter One: How it all changed.

My name is Vivian Montrale, and I am from Long Beach, California. I grew up in the Red-Neck part of town and was accustomed to the country life. That was until my 7th birthday.

The day began as all others did. I awoke from my slumber in a cold sweat, having not slept great for another night. I went to the bathroom and took a quick shower to help get rid of the off-putting feeling that I was being watched.

That feeling wasn’t new. I’d been having it as far back as I could remember—maybe longer than I could even understand what it meant. I didn’t need monsters under my bed. I lived with mine. And he slept in the room down the hall, where the door was always cracked open just enough for me to hear his breath if I held mine.

The hot water sputtered out fast. It always did. We weren't poor, Mama said—we were just "toughing it out." But tough didn’t explain the bruises on her neck or the way her hands trembled when she poured his coffee.

I dried off and got dressed fast—faded jeans with holes in the knees, and that same old hoodie that smelled faintly of gasoline and firewood. The sleeves were too long, but I liked it that way. I liked to hide my hands. No one ever noticed what they couldn’t see.

When I tiptoed down the hallway, I avoided the third floorboard near Daddy’s door. That one creaked loud enough to wake a ghost.

The kitchen was silent. No cartoons on the TV. No radio. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of that ugly brown clock Mama bought at a garage sale.

She was at the stove, staring into a pan she wasn't stirring. Her shoulders hunched like she was trying to disappear into herself.

“Morning,” I mumbled.

She jumped. Her eyes darted to mine—bloodshot, hollow.

“Jesus, Vivi,” she snapped, voice too sharp. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, well… don’t.”

She turned back to the pan and resumed her slow stirring, like it mattered. Like anything mattered.

I sat down at the table, picking at a dry piece of toast someone left out overnight. Daddy wasn’t home—thank God—but his absence never brought peace, only a heavier kind of silence. Like we were both holding our breath, waiting for the sound of his truck pulling up in the driveway.

I glanced at the fridge. April 22nd. There was a heart drawn around the date in red crayon. My handwriting. I put it there weeks ago. Just in case.

Just in case she remembered.

But she didn’t.

“You going to school today?” she asked, still not looking at me.

I shook my head. “It’s Saturday.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Right.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and stared at the toast. “It’s my birthday,” I said, barely above a whisper.

She froze.

Then she exhaled through her nose and muttered, “Well. Happy birthday.”

Nothing else.

No hug. No smile. No card. Just that—like a stranger in a grocery store noticing the date on your license.

I didn’t cry. I hadn’t in a long time.

Instead, I pushed away from the table and walked out the front door, the screen slamming behind me. Outside, the air was dry and still. The kind of still that presses against your chest and makes you feel like the world’s holding its breath.

And that’s when I saw her.

A girl, standing at the end of the dirt road. Pale. Barefoot. Hair long and black like ink spilled down her back. Her dress was white, or maybe it had been. Now it was stained and torn, like she’d walked through miles of something terrible to get here.

She didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just stood there. Watching me.

I froze on the porch, heart thudding in my chest. I wanted to call out, but my throat wouldn’t work. She looked about my age—but there was something wrong with her eyes. Not sad. Not scared. Just… hollow.

Like mine.

Then, without a word, she turned and walked straight into the orange grove behind Old Man Delacroix’s land. The one Mama told me never to go near. The one Daddy used to take me to when he was drunk and “feeling nice.”

I should’ve stayed put. Should’ve locked the door, gone back inside, and let the day disappear like all the others.

But something deep in me moved—like a compass pulled toward a storm.

And so, on the day I turned seven, I followed a ghost girl in a torn dress into a place I swore I’d never go again.

The orange grove was different than I remembered. The trees leaned in closer, their branches twisting like hands reaching for something they could never grasp. The air was thick, wet like a held breath. And the further I walked, the quieter the world got.

Until I couldn’t hear the birds anymore.

Until even my own footsteps sounded like whispers.

I lost sight of the girl, but I kept going. Something told me she was still there. Leading me. Waiting.

And that’s when I saw it—hanging from one of the branches, just above my head.

A red ribbon.

My red ribbon.

The one Daddy tore out of my hair two years ago and threw into the grove when I wouldn’t stop crying.

I hadn’t seen it since.

And now it was here.

Waiting for me.

Chapter Two: The Grove.

The ribbon fluttered gently, caught on a gnarled branch like it had grown there. Faded red silk, frayed at the ends, still stained with something I didn’t want to name. My breath hitched in my throat.

I reached up with shaking fingers.

The moment my hand closed around the ribbon, a whisper brushed past my ear.

“Vivian.”

I spun around.

Nothing.

Just trees. Bent, skeletal things with their bark peeling like sunburned skin. The grove stretched out around me in every direction—twisting, endless. I couldn’t even see the road anymore. I hadn’t gone far, but it was gone, like the grove had swallowed it.

Like it had swallowed me.

My feet moved on their own, deeper and deeper between the rows of orange trees. The fruit hung heavy above my head, too orange, too ripe. Some had split open, their insides black with rot. Flies buzzed lazily, thick in the air, sticking to my skin and hair.

And then I saw her again.

The girl in the white dress.

Standing in a clearing, her back to me.

Her hair shifted slightly in the breeze, and this time I could hear her humming—a broken little tune, like a music box left out in the rain.

I stepped forward, the ribbon still clenched in my fist. “Hey,” I said, voice hoarse. “Who are you?”

She stopped humming.

Slowly, she turned.

Her face was like mine.

Not exactly—but close enough to freeze the blood in my veins. Her eyes were too wide, too dark. Her mouth hung open just a little, like she’d forgotten how to breathe. But the resemblance—there was no denying it. She looked like me if I’d been left in the woods for too long. If something had hollowed me out and stitched me back together wrong.

“I remember you,” she whispered.

My heart dropped. “What?”

“You came here before,” she said, stepping closer. “When you were five. He brought you.”

I stumbled back. “No—no, I never—”

But I had.

I didn’t want to remember, but the moment she said it, I could feel it crawling back up through my bones. The rough bark against my back. The taste of dirt in my mouth. The way the sky blinked out above the trees as I cried into my sleeves.

I had been here before.

And I wasn’t alone.

“I tried to stop him,” the girl said. Her voice was calm. Too calm. “But I wasn’t strong enough.”

“What are you?” I whispered.

She didn’t answer.

She only reached out and pressed something cold and metal into my hand. I looked down.

A locket.

Old, tarnished. It popped open with a soft snap.

Inside was a photo.

Me.

And her.

Side by side.

Wearing matching ribbons.

And behind us—towering, smiling—was my father.

I dropped the locket like it had burned me.

“That’s not real,” I choked. “That’s not—”

“He made us forget,” she said. “All of us. You were the first to escape. But the rest of us stayed.”

“Us?”

She turned her head slightly—and from the shadows of the grove, other children stepped forward.

Boys. Girls. Some no older than me, some older. All of them pale, bruised, silent.

All of them wearing something red.

A tie. A hairband. A shoe.

They didn’t speak. Just stared. Waiting.

“What do you want from me?” I cried.

“You have to remember,” the girl said. “You have to make them remember.”

Suddenly, I was surrounded.

Hands reached out—not to hurt, but to hold. To steady.

And then I felt it.

The grove changed.

The air snapped cold, the trees trembled. And the ground beneath my feet pulsed like a heartbeat.

Something was waking up.

Something deep in the earth that had been fed by secrets and silence and pain.

“You’re not like the others,” she said. “You survived.”

And in that moment, I knew.

This place had taken many children. Swallowed them whole. But I had gotten out once. I had something the others didn’t—

A voice.

A memory.

A choice.

I looked down at the red ribbon in my hand. My hands weren’t shaking anymore.

When I looked up, the grove was still. Silent.

The children were gone.

Except for her.

She smiled for the first time, and I saw something there that shook me harder than anything else had.

Peace.

“You’ll come back,” she said.

And just like that, the grove let me go.

I woke up on my front porch, curled into a ball. The sky was darker now—afternoon slipping into evening. The wind had picked up, and somewhere in the distance, I could hear Mama yelling.

But I didn’t move.

Not right away.

In my hand, the ribbon was still there.

And so was the locket.

Chapter Three: The One Who Remembers

I didn’t speak for the rest of that day.

Mama said something when she saw me on the porch—something sharp, probably about tracking mud or sitting out in the cold. But her words barely reached me. My mind was still somewhere between the trees. Somewhere between that locket in my pocket and the whisper of children who had never left.

That night, I slept with the ribbon curled in my hand like a lifeline. When I closed my eyes, I saw her again—the girl with my face, humming her sad, broken tune in the middle of the grove. I saw the others too, their red-stained clothes flickering in the dark like dying embers. And I heard their voices—

"We were here. We are still here."

When I woke up, the whisper was still in my ears.

And I remembered.

Not everything. Not yet.

But enough.

Enough to know that the stories adults tell themselves—the ones about kids running away, or accidents, or “she was just troubled”—weren’t true.

Something was wrong with this town.

Something buried. Something alive.

And I was the only one who could dig it up.

It started with the newspaper clippings.

I stole them from Mama’s drawer one afternoon while she was passed out on the couch, a half-empty bottle of whiskey tipped against her thigh. Her snores were jagged, wet with tears she’d never admit she cried. I’d seen her hide these articles before—back when Daddy first started disappearing at night for hours without reason.

They were all about kids. Missing ones.

Some were found, some weren’t.

All of them lived within ten miles of the grove.

One girl—Annalise Wren, age nine—was last seen walking home from church. Her shoe was found at the edge of the orange grove.

A boy—Carter Dean—disappeared during a birthday party at his aunt’s. They found his balloon caught in a tree.

I knew their names now. I had seen them. They had looked at me with hollow eyes and open mouths and begged me not to forget.

The more I read, the more the sickness inside me grew. Like black oil in my stomach.

And at the center of it all was one name that kept showing up in the margins.

Frank Montrale.

My father.

Witness. Landowner. Neighbor.

Never suspect.

Never accused.

But always there.

He came home two nights later.

His boots were caked in mud and something darker. His breath stank of bourbon and blood. I froze when I heard the door creak open and his voice call out: “Vivian?”

Mama stirred, but didn’t rise. She never did anymore.

I sat at the kitchen table, staring at the locket laid out in front of me like evidence in a courtroom.

“You shouldn’t be up,” he said. “Go to bed.”

I didn’t move.

He stepped closer, slower now. “I said—”

“I remember,” I said softly.

That stopped him.

“Remember what?”

“The grove,” I said, lifting my eyes to meet his. “The ribbon. The other kids. What you did to them.”

For a second, the mask slipped.

His eyes flashed—not confusion. Not fear.

Rage.

The kind that had teeth.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, girl,” he growled. “You better shut that mouth before you—”

I stood up.

And I smiled.

Because for once, I wasn’t afraid of him.

“You buried them,” I whispered. “But they’re still there. And they’re waiting for you.”

His hand twitched at his side. The belt was always his first weapon.

But this time, I ran before he could reach me.

Not away.

Back.

The grove felt different at night.

Colder. Hungrier.

But I didn’t stop. I followed the path I’d taken before, deeper than before, until I reached the clearing. The air shimmered around it, thick and wet and alive.

She was waiting there—my mirror girl. The not-me.

“They won’t let him leave,” she said.

“I don’t want them to,” I answered.

Behind me, I heard his voice in the distance—shouting my name, crashing through branches like an animal.

I turned to her. “How do I stop him?”

“You already have.”

And then the ground split open.

Roots exploded from the earth, twisting like snakes, wrapping around trunks and stones. And then I saw them.

The children.

One by one, they stepped from the trees, skin pale, hands bloodied, eyes glowing with the light of rage and truth. They circled the grove in silence as my father stumbled into the clearing.

“What the—” he breathed, turning in a slow circle.

“Daddy,” I said, and his eyes locked on me. “This is where it ends.”

The trees bent low.

The wind screamed.

And the children lunged.

I never told anyone what happened that night.

They found the body days later, or what was left of it. Torn apart by “wild animals,” the papers said. Mama cried harder than I’d ever seen her cry—sobs that shook the windows. But I knew it wasn’t grief. It was release.

The grove never looked the same again.

Sometimes, when I walk by, I swear I still hear humming.

Sometimes, I answer back.

Because I remember now.

And I won’t forget.

Not again.

Chapter Four: Six Years Later

I turned thirteen with a cigarette between my fingers and blood under my fingernails.

Not my blood—some guy at school tried to grab my ass in the hallway. He learned real quick that Vivian Montrale doesn’t scare easy.

But the truth is, I still do.

Not of him.

Not of anyone breathing.

Just the things that whisper my name when the sun sets low behind the orange trees. Just the memories I’ve tried to drown in whiskey stolen from Mama’s kitchen cabinet, or the screaming that still comes out of me in the dead of night, when I dream of ribbons and graves.

I hadn’t stepped foot near the grove in six years.

Not since I watched it eat my father alive.

People say he ran off. The official story is “missing.” No one looked too hard. He was never loved, never wanted, and this town doesn’t waste prayers on men like Frank Montrale.

But I know where he is.

Beneath roots and rot and wrath.

And I know he’s not alone.

It started again two days after my seventeenth birthday.

A note, tucked into my locker at school. Sloppy handwriting, jagged like it had been carved into the page:

"The grove is waking. You’re not finished, Vivian."

I laughed at first. Thought it was some loser playing ghost games. But then I found the dead bird in my backpack. And the locket I buried with my childhood things suddenly reappeared on my nightstand.

I knew then.

Something had changed.

The grove wasn’t calling me back.

It was warning me.

I returned to it one night in late October.

The sky was black as oil, and the air buzzed with a sick heat. I pushed through the brush, following the same twisted path that had once led me into a nightmare—and straight into something worse.

The clearing had grown.

The trees leaned in like they knew me, branches curled into claws, bark split open with symbols I didn’t understand.

And waiting in the center—

Her.

The girl who looked like me.

Except now she didn’t.

Her dress was gone, replaced by skin like cracked porcelain. Her eyes were deeper, hollowed out by time or grief or something more ancient.

“You waited too long,” she said.

I stepped forward, heart pounding. “What’s happening?”

“You were supposed to keep it sealed,” she whispered. “But someone’s been feeding it.”

I swallowed. “Feeding what?”

She didn’t answer.

The ground beneath my feet rippled, soft and wet like the belly of a beast. And then I saw them—

Children.

Not ghosts this time.

Living ones.

Eyes blank. Hands trembling. Led through the grove in the dead of night by familiar faces—teachers, pastors, neighbors.

People we trusted.

People they trusted.

“They’re bringing new ones,” she said. “Just like before. Just like you.”

I wanted to scream.

Instead, I whispered, “Why?”

Her gaze cut through me. “Because power never dies—it just rots. And some people worship the rot.”

The grove is a mouth.

And for generations, this town has fed it.

Children go in. Power comes out. The price of prosperity, buried beneath orange trees and Sunday church smiles.

And now that I’ve remembered, now that I’ve come back—

They’re coming for me, too.

Because I know.

And the only way to stop it...

...is to burn it all to the ground.

Chapter Five: The Boy in the Shadows

The crow was nailed to my locker with a rusted roofing spike.

Its wings were stretched open like some kind of warning, feathers torn, head twisted backwards. There was no blood, just dried rot and something worse—symbols burned into its skin. Symbols I recognized.

The same ones that had started appearing in the grove the night I came back.

No one saw who did it. No one asked. By the time the principal walked by, the janitor had already thrown it in a trash bag like it was just roadkill and not a goddamn omen.

I stood there for a long time, just staring at the rust-colored smear it left behind.

That’s when he showed up.

Leaning against the wall like he’d been there the whole time, arms crossed, black hoodie half-covering his face.

“First time it leaves you something?” he asked.

I turned, eyes narrow. “Excuse me?”

He didn’t smile. Just nodded toward the stain. “The grove. It marks you. If it leaves something behind, it’s because it wants you to come back.”

My fists clenched. “Who the hell are you?”

He pushed off the wall and stepped forward, close enough for me to see the scar behind his ear—thin, white, like something had burrowed in once and never fully let go.

“Mason Ward,” he said. “I know what happened to you. I’ve seen it too.”

I didn’t talk to him for three days.

Not because I didn’t believe him. But because I did.

And that scared the hell out of me.

I watched him from a distance. He didn’t hang out with anyone. Didn’t talk much. Always carried this beaten-up black notebook with him. People called him a freak, a goth, a devil-worshipper. Same shit they used to say about me when I stopped speaking for six months after my seventh birthday.

But there was something else about him. Something familiar.

Like maybe he didn’t just believe the grove was alive.

Maybe it lived in him, too.

He cornered me outside the gym after school on Friday. I was lighting a cigarette behind the dumpsters when I heard his voice again—low and steady.

“They’re doing it again.”

I didn’t even look at him. “Doing what?”

“Feeding it.”

He stepped closer, and for the first time, I saw the fear in his eyes. Real fear. Not the kind that comes from bullies or beatdowns, but the kind that lives in your bones.

“They’ve been taking kids,” he said. “Younger ones. Ones no one notices. Foster kids. Runners. They're feeding the grove again—like they did before.”

My stomach turned.

“They're going to try and open it fully this time. Not just for protection. For control.”

I took a long drag of the cigarette. “And what do you want from me?”

“You survived it once,” he said. “You’re the only one who’s ever come back.”

I exhaled, slow.

“I’m not the girl I used to be.”

“Good,” Mason said, eyes sharp. “Because they’re not the people they used to be either.”

Chapter Six: Beneath the Roots

The grove didn’t look like it used to.

It was bigger now—wilder. Like it had been growing beneath the surface this whole time and was finally starting to show its teeth. Trees bent in directions that defied nature. Roots curled like fingers out of the dirt. And that smell—wet rot, citrus, and something else I couldn’t name—stung the inside of my throat.

We didn’t talk much as we walked. Mason led, flashlight in one hand, notebook in the other. I followed, hand in my jacket pocket, fingers wrapped around the cold metal of the locket I swore I’d buried years ago.

“You said they’re trying to control it,” I finally said. “What does that mean?”

He stopped at the edge of the old clearing—the place where my childhood ended.

“Power like this isn’t meant to be chained,” he said. “It’s older than this town. Older than the people who first brought it here.”

“Brought it?”

He nodded. “My grandfather said it was called from somewhere else. Planted in the dirt like a seed. It grew into something sacred. Something protective. But they poisoned it.”

I stepped past him into the clearing.

I could feel it immediately. The humming beneath my skin. The way the air tasted like metal and memory.

“I think it’s trying to speak to me,” I whispered.

“It already is,” he said. “It always has been.”

He opened the notebook, flipping to a page covered in charcoal sketches—symbols, trees, and in the middle, a girl with wild eyes and her mouth sewn shut.

“She was the first,” Mason said, voice soft. “The grove’s chosen. They called her a prophet. Said she could hear what it wanted. But they didn’t like what she was saying. So they silenced her.”

He looked up at me.

“She looked just like you.”

The ground shifted beneath us.

A low rumble—like the grove was clearing its throat.

I dropped to my knees instinctively, hand pressing to the dirt, heart hammering in my ears.

And then the voices came.

Dozens. Hundreds. All overlapping. Children. Women. Men. Screaming, whispering, crying, pleading.

I could barely breathe. My head spun. I tried to push them out, but they weren’t trying to hurt me.

They were trying to warn me.

“Mason,” I gasped. “It’s not just waking up.”

He knelt beside me, his hand on mine.

“What is it?”

“It’s remembering.”

And in that moment, I saw—

Flashes of fire. Ritual circles. Men in masks holding knives over a child.

I saw my father. I saw Pastor Elias. I saw mothers offering their own sons, weeping behind cold smiles.

And then—

I saw me.

Older. Stronger. Standing in the center of the grove as its trees bowed toward me like I was queen or executioner.

“I don’t want this,” I whispered.

Mason looked at me.

“But maybe it needs you,” he said.

Chapter Seven: The Grove’s Offer

The ground was alive beneath me, pulsing like a heartbeat, and the world above had started to fade into something hazy—like I was looking through a window clouded by rain. The voices kept spinning around me, a mix of cries and chants and whispers in languages I couldn't understand. But I felt them in my chest, felt them in my bones.

Mason had his hand on mine, but I could barely hear his voice over the hum of the grove. He was saying something—something important—but it felt distant, like it was coming through thick glass.

“Vivian… You’re still with me?”

I shook my head, trying to clear the fog in my mind. My eyes darted to him. His face was pale, the lines of fear etched deep around his eyes.

“Mason… something’s wrong. It’s all wrong. I don’t think I can stop it.”

The trees seemed to sway in response, their branches creaking and groaning like they were stretching to hear me. And then… something—someone—spoke, not in words, but in a feeling. It wasn’t just in my head; it was all around me, wrapping around my body, suffocating me.

“You are mine.”

I gasped and jerked back, pulling my hand from Mason’s. The voices stopped.

The grove felt quiet then—too quiet.

I looked around, but nothing had changed. The trees were still bent and twisting, their gnarled trunks reaching toward me like hungry hands.

And then, out of the shadows, she appeared.

The girl. The one I’d seen in Mason’s notebook—the one who had been the first. She was real now, standing in front of me, but she wasn’t human. Not anymore. Her skin was pale, cracked like porcelain, her eyes black as pits with no depth. Her lips moved, but the words she spoke were more like a command than a request.

“You belong here. You always have. The power is yours to claim.”

The world around me shifted. My heartbeat skipped. For a moment, I could feel it—the power beneath the earth, the magic that had been feeding the town for generations. It wasn’t evil. It was… ancient. Primitive. But alive in a way I couldn’t understand.

“Become my queen,” the girl whispered, her voice reverberating through my mind. “Lead them. End this. I will make you stronger than they ever could. All you have to do is stay.”

My heart pounded. It was like the trees themselves were urging me forward, wrapping around me in warmth, drawing me closer to the center of the grove.

But I didn’t want it. I didn’t want any of it.

I felt Mason’s hand on my shoulder, firm, grounding.

“Vivian,” he said quietly. “Don’t listen to it. Don’t listen to her. You’re not one of them. You’re not like them.”

I looked at him, eyes wide, heart racing. His face was full of fear, but there was something else there—something that spoke louder than the words he was saying.

It was hope.

“I can’t do this alone,” I whispered, my voice shaking. “Mason, I don’t know who I am anymore. The grove—it’s inside me. I can feel it. I don’t know if I can fight it.”

His grip tightened, and he leaned in closer, his breath warm against my ear. “You’re still you. You’re still Vivian Montrale. You’re the one who came back, the one who survived it. I know you. You don’t have to let it make you like them.”

The girl—the one who had been a part of the grove—took a step forward. Her black eyes locked onto mine.

“Fight it,” she hissed. “You cannot escape what you are. You are a part of me now. You will lead them.”

The power in the air crackled. I could feel it pressing against my skin, pulling me closer to the center of the grove. The temptation to give in was overwhelming, but I remembered something. Something my father had said before he… disappeared.

“The grove is power,” he’d told me. “It takes what it wants. And if you aren’t careful, it will make you its slave.”

But Mason was still there. His voice was still anchored to me, and I had never been someone who backed down. Not when it mattered most.

“No,” I said, my voice firm, despite the trembling in my limbs. “I won’t let you take me.”

The girl’s form flickered, like an image on a cracked screen. For a moment, I thought she might disappear entirely, but then she roared—a sound that wasn’t human. The ground shook beneath us, sending cracks spidering through the earth.

“You will regret this,” she spat. “You will come back. And when you do, it will be too late.”

The shadows retreated, pulling the girl with them, and the trees creaked, groaning in displeasure. The power I had felt moments ago vanished as quickly as it had come. But something inside me had shifted.

Mason didn’t speak for a moment, just watching the clearing as the tension in the air faded. The trees slowly settled, the whispers dying down to an eerie silence.

“You were right,” he finally said, voice strained. “It’s… in you. The grove. It’s part of you now.”

I turned toward him. The weight of his gaze was heavy, but I didn’t look away. I needed him to know the truth.

“I can feel it,” I whispered, my hand pressed to my chest. “But I’m not… I’m not them. I don’t want to become what they’ve made of this place.”

He nodded, his face softening.

“We’ll figure this out,” he said. “We’ll fight it. Together.”

And for the first time in a long while, I believed him.

Chapter Eight: The Choice

The night air was thick with silence as we left the grove behind, the trees looming like dark sentinels, watching us retreat. Mason’s hand still gripped mine, his fingers cold against my skin, but neither of us spoke. My mind was a whirlwind, the remnants of the grove’s whispers still echoing in my thoughts.

I wasn’t human anymore. Not entirely. I could feel it—the power that had burrowed into my soul, the darkness that danced beneath my skin. The grove had marked me, and now there was no going back.

Mason broke the silence first, his voice barely above a whisper. “Vivian, we can’t let it win. We can’t let it turn you into—”

The earth trembled beneath our feet, and the ground split.

A deafening roar erupted from the trees, louder than anything I’d heard before—more furious, more desperate. And before I could react, something rose from the earth.

A figure. Shrouded in shadow.

It was him. The one who had started this all. The one who had been lost to the grove, just like my father.

Frank Montrale.

To be continued...