The pickup truck's battered suspension groaned as Silas took the turns too fast, the headlights cutting shaky paths through the predawn darkness. Vinny sat wedged between Deborah and Lena in the backseat, the switchblade's hilt digging into his palm. His marked arm burned like someone had poured gasoline under his skin and lit a match, the silver lines now creeping past his elbow in intricate, pulsing patterns. Every pothole sent fresh waves of agony radiating up to his shoulder.
Deborah's fingers hovered over his wrist without touching. "Your arm—"
"It's nothing," Vinny gritted out.
Silas barked a laugh from the driver's seat. "Bullshit." He jerked the wheel hard, sending them fishtailing onto an overgrown logging road. "Those marks are spreading 'cause you woke them up proper. Now they're hungry." His golden eye flicked to the rearview mirror. "And they ain't the only ones."
Lena had been silent since they'd fled, her silver-tinged eyes fixed on the passing trees. Now she leaned forward, her voice rough. "Where did you get that blade?"
The cabin appeared suddenly in the headlights—a crumbling structure nearly swallowed by the forest, its porch sagging under decades of neglect. But the door was reinforced with steel plating, and the windows were barred with what looked like railroad spikes.
Silas killed the engine. "Welcome to the family estate."
The inside looked like a war bunker crossed with a mad scientist's lab. Newspaper clippings and topographic maps papered every wall, all centered around the oak tree and the school. Glass jars lined makeshift shelves, each filled with murky liquid and floating, root-like strands that pulsed with the same silver light as Vinny's arm.
Deborah recoiled from the nearest shelf. "What is this?"
"Insurance." Silas tossed his keys onto a table littered with hunting knives and worn leather journals. "Every Calloway who bore the mark left a piece of themselves behind. In case the tree ever got loose."
Vinny's stomach turned as he realized what floated in those jars weren't roots at all. "Those are—"
"Memories. Yeah." Silas yanked open a rusted floor safe with a screech of metal. "Your mama was supposed to teach you all this. But after your dad—" He cut himself off sharply, pulling out a leather-bound journal and tossing it to Vinny. "Just read."
The pages were filled with cramped handwriting and sketches of the oak tree. One entry near the middle made Vinny's breath catch:
*"The roots remember what the mind forgets. To break the pact, you must reclaim what was taken—no matter the cost."*
His stolen memories of Deborah weren't just collateral—they were the key.
Lena, who had been prowling the cabin's perimeter, suddenly went still. "We've got company."
The forest outside had gone eerily silent. No crickets. No wind. Just the faint, unmistakable sound of something moving through the underbrush—too many somethings, sliding and slithering through the dirt.
Silas was already moving, snatching jars from the shelves. "They followed the marks."
The first root punched through the floorboards like a spear, missing Vinny's foot by inches. Black sap oozed from its severed tip as Silas smashed a jar against it, the liquid inside igniting into silver flames that raced along the root's length.
"Lena! Salt line!" Silas barked.
Lena overturned a trunk, revealing bags of salt and iron filings. She poured a frantic circle around them just as the cabin's front door exploded inward, revealing Sheila standing framed in the moonlight. Her vine-strung hair writhed like living things, her smile stretching too wide.
*"Little bridge,"* she crooned. *"The Lady is tired of waiting."*
More roots surged in behind her, smashing through walls. The salt line held—barely—but Vinny could see it wouldn't last.
Deborah's hand found his, her fingers ice-cold. "Vinny—"
He knew what she was going to say. Knew she'd offer herself up if it meant saving them. The thought sent white-hot rage through his veins.
"No."
The marks on his arm burned like live wires, the pain so intense his vision went red at the edges. The switchblade flared in response, its glow illuminating the sudden fear on Sheila's face as Vinny stepped over the salt line.
"You want a bridge?" he snarled. "Fine."
He drove the blade into his own marked arm.
The world exploded into silver fire.
Vinny stood in a vast, hollow darkness—the heart of the tree. Roots coiled around him like arteries, their surfaces slick with glowing silver fluid. Suspended in the center, wrapped in thorned vines, was the Lady.
She wasn't human anymore.
Her body was a patchwork of bark and bone, her face a shifting mask of every person the tree had ever taken. Daniel's eyes. Sheila's smile. Dozens of others Vinny didn't recognize.
*"You came back,"* she whispered, her voice layered with stolen memories.
Vinny's arm bled silver, the droplets sizzling where they hit the roots. "I want what's mine."
The Lady laughed, the sound like splintering wood. *"You can't handle what's yours."*
The roots parted, revealing a pulsing, silver core—a tangled mass of memories. Vinny's. His mother's. Every Calloway before them.
And there, glowing brighter than the rest, was Deborah.
Her laugh. Her tears. The way she'd kissed him that first time behind the gym, clumsy and sweet and perfect.
Vinny reached for it.
The Lady screamed.
Vinny came back to himself on his knees in the cabin's wreckage. The roots were retreating, smoking where his silver blood had splattered. Sheila writhed on the floor, her vine-hair withering to dust as she shrieked:
*"You don't know what you've done!"*
Silas hauled Vinny upright. "Kid—your arm—"
Vinny looked down. The marks were gone. In their place was a single, pulsing symbol carved into his skin—a key.
And in his mind, crystal clear, was every stolen memory of Deborah.
The cabin door burst open—not from roots, but from a boot.
Daniel stood there, panting. His veins were no longer black. His eyes were his own.
"Deb?" he rasped.
Deborah sobbed.
Outside, the oak tree burned with silver fire.