In the dead hush of the forest, where even the birds dared not sing, the veil between worlds shimmered. It hung low over the moss-carpeted floor, a gossamer curtain rippling with breathless tension. Sunlight filtered weakly through towering ancient trees, their bark gnarled with time and secrets. Here, the air was thick with memory, and something else—something watching.

Liora had come seeking silence.

She’d wandered for days, away from the crowded noise of the cities, their machines, their endless demands. Grief had made her feet restless. Her sister, Ayla, had vanished two months prior without a trace. No blood, no body—just her favorite boots left by the garden gate, the laces untied as if she had simply… stepped out of them.

But Liora had seen something the others hadn’t. The grass around those boots had been pressed inward in a perfect spiral, scorched ever so faintly. And the wind had whispered her name.

Here, deep in the unmarked heart of the forest, the spiral pattern returned—etched into the bark, woven through vines, even burned faintly into stone. The deeper she went, the more surreal it became. Trees shifted when she wasn’t looking. Shadows twisted, stretched, returned to place when she turned around. Her compass spun in slow, deliberate circles, like a creature too afraid to point.

Still, she pressed forward.

She felt it before she saw it—a pull, gentle but insistent, like gravity had changed its mind. Then she reached the clearing.

The Rift was not a doorway, not exactly. It hovered between two crooked trees like a living bruise in the air, violet and black, pulsing softly like a heartbeat. Beneath it, the grass grew blue and silver, petals curling in slow motion. The air was dense with whispers—not words, but impressions. Questions without shape. Memories not her own. Dreams she hadn’t dreamed.

She should have been afraid.

Instead, she stepped closer.

The moment her fingers brushed the edge of the Rift, the forest stopped breathing. Time staggered. Light bent. And Liora fell—not through space, but through memory.

She landed softly.

Not on ground, but on water that held her weight like glass. Around her, the forest was both the same and utterly changed. The trees loomed taller, their branches like skeletal arms; the sky above was lavender and fractured by three moons. The Rift now hung in the sky, a great bleeding eye that watched and pulsed.

A voice echoed—not in her ears, but in her bones.

"You’ve followed her path."

Liora spun around.

A figure stepped forward, emerging from between two trees whose bark wept glowing sap. It was cloaked in shadow, features indistinct, but its presence was unmistakably female. Her shape shimmered, fractured by the same ripple that distorted the Rift.

“Ayla?” Liora whispered.

The figure tilted her head, and for a moment, it was her sister. Eyes wide, familiar. Mouth half-open as if to laugh. But then the shimmer broke, and the image shifted—older, weathered, ancient.

"You seek the girl. She crossed the veil uninvited. This world has rules."

Liora’s voice cracked. “What did it do to her?”

The figure didn’t answer. Instead, she reached out, and in her palm bloomed a flower made of frost and flame. It twisted with impossible color.

"The Rift remembers."

Suddenly, visions seared through Liora’s mind—Ayla standing where she now stood, eyes wide in wonder… then panic… then surrender. She had not been taken. She had stepped through—willingly, unknowingly becoming part of something older than time.

“What do I have to do?” Liora asked, tears streaming silently.

The figure turned.

"Find the memory she left behind. Follow it, but beware the shadows it cast. Every whisper has a cost."

Liora followed.

The forest beyond the Rift was a maze of memory and dream. Paths shifted. Voices lured her from both sides. One spoke with her mother’s voice. One sounded like Ayla at age ten, giggling through the trees. Another whispered her own darkest thoughts back at her—echoes she didn’t know were echoes.

She resisted. Mostly.

When she reached the center of the dream-forest, it was a mirror that waited. But not a normal one. This mirror was rippling silver, held in place by vines that hissed and bloomed with watching eyes. The reflection showed not her, but Ayla—standing in the real world, reaching out. Crying.

Liora pressed her hand to it.

It burned.

“What is this place?” she screamed into the air.

A thousand voices replied in one:
“It is where the forgotten go to remember.”

And then the mirror shattered.

Liora awoke.

She was lying at the base of the Rift again, in the clearing, in the real forest—but something had changed. In her hand was the frost-flame flower. Still alive. Still burning.

And next to her…

A pair of boots.

Worn. Mud-stained. And beside them, a single strand of long, golden hair.

Liora wept—not out of sadness, but relief. Her sister had made it through. Somehow. Somewhere.

The Rift pulsed.

A whisper echoed again.

"You opened the way."

Then it faded.

The forest breathed.

And Liora—though still uncertain, still afraid—stood up. She would return. She would prepare. She had heard the Rift’s whispers, and now it had heard hers.

In the dead hush of the forest, where the veil between worlds shimmers and breathes, two sisters had touched eternity. And eternity had whispered back.