The wind howled through the Montgomery family house eaves, carrying whispers that wrapped about Sarah like fingers of specters. She crouched at the attic window, Emily's diary open in her lap, the pages quivering as though shaken by unseen hands. The words flashed before her eyes, the ink dancing and changing like specters by candlelight.

"He promised that we would see each other again," Emily's voice seemed to be sighing through the rustling leaves outside. "No matter how many lifetimes that may require."

Sarah's breath frosted the cold glass as she rested her forehead against the windowpane. Below, the garden slept silvered in moonlight, sentinel hawthorn tree at its center, branches grasping the air. For a moment, she would have sworn she saw someone wearing a flowing blue dress standing beneath its branches, tilted face looking up towards the attic window.

A floorboard creaked behind her.

She turned round, her heart racing against her ribs. The attic was empty—apart from the portrait of Emily and Thomas, their eyes seeming to follow her in the dim light. But the atmosphere. the atmosphere was heavy with the scent of rosewater and paper, as though Emily had just stepped back.

Sarah's hand discovered the locket resting against her throat—the one she and Lucas had discovered. The metal was warm against her skin, pulsating in a second beat.

"Follow the roots," the wind whispered.

Her hand trembled as she traced the etched initials—*E+T*—Worn smooth by time. A bitter gust rattled the windowpane, and the diary opened to a page she was sure wasn't there previously.

"They buried him beneath the hawthorn," said the new addition, the black ink still fresh. "His blood feeds its roots. His soul waits there for me."

Sarah's vision blurred. The words twisted and curled on the page, reforming themselves into one harsh, agonized word:

"Dig."

A thud from below—the sound of shattering glass. Sarah jumped out of bed, the diary falling from her hands. Down the stairs she ran, her bare feet pounding the chill hardwood floor.

The kitchen window was shattered, pieces of glass glinting like fallen stars on the floor. And amidst the ruin a solitary paintbrush—its bristles stiff with dried blood.

Lucas's words echoed within her mind: "I awoke with my hands covered in ultramarine."

Wind screamed through the broken window, and she caught the faintest breath of Emily's voice:

"Hurry."

Sarah looked toward the garden, where the hawthorn roots coiled like skeletal fingers up into the ground that was crust-frozen.

And beneath them, something glittered beneath the moonlight.