"One… two… three…"
The voices weren't in Emily's head anymore.
They were in the forest—real, echoing from all directions, layered like a twisted choir of children, each one counting in a different pitch, some slower, some faster, some… out of time.
"Four… five… six…"
Emily clutched Leah's stuffed bunny to her chest, her eyes locked on the tree. The pale bark pulsed like skin, faintly veined beneath the surface, as if blood ran through it. Every time a number was spoken, a thin black line etched itself deeper into the trunk.
The tree was counting, too.
"It's alive," Ava whispered. "God, it's alive."
Marcus took a step back. "It's a new Heart. A new anchor. Just like the one in the Hollow."
Emily nodded slowly. "It's not just a tree. It's the game's memory. That's how it keeps going."
"Seven… eight…"
The voices were closer now.
Too close.
They spun around, half-expecting to see the figures from their dreams charging through the trees. But there was no one. Just shadows stretching long across the earth, and wind that carried the scent of soil, rot… and something faintly sweet, like rotting candy.
"We have to stop the count," Emily said suddenly. "Before it reaches twenty."
Ava looked at her sharply. "What happens at twenty?"
"I don't know," she admitted, "but it's always been the threshold. That's when the seeker opens their eyes. That's when it finds you."
"Then how do we stop a tree?" Marcus asked.
Emily walked toward it, carefully, reverently. She reached out and placed her palm on the bark. Cold. Slick. It felt like touching the surface of a still pond. And beneath it—movement.
A heartbeat.
She pressed the bunny against the tree.
The counting stopped.
For a moment.
Then resumed. "Nine… ten…"
"No," she whispered. "No, no, no—"
With trembling hands, she pulled Devon's journal from her backpack. Pages fluttered in the wind as she scanned them, looking for something—anything—that could tell her how to kill it. A ward. A symbol. A ritual.
There—on the back cover, scrawled in red ink:
To end a game, you must finish the round. To finish the round, the Seeker must win.
The Seeker must find all who hide. Even those who do not wish to be found.
Emily stared at the words.
"Finish the round…" she repeated.
"But Leah's the Seeker now," Marcus said.
Emily met his eyes. "No. I was marked again. The boy said it—'you're the seeker now.' The game chose me. Leah's a lure. A piece. But I'm the one playing."
Ava's jaw clenched. "You're saying… you have to find them?"
"All of them," Emily said. "Even the ones already taken."
Marcus shook his head. "That's impossible. We don't even know where they are."
"We do," Emily whispered. "We've been there before."
The Hollow.
The Root Heart.
And now, this place—the Counting Tree.
They weren't random. They were rooms in a twisted house of games, a place that rewrote its shape around those who entered.
And Emily had the key.
They returned to the clearing that night, just before midnight. Ava brought salt, old bones from her uncle's hunting cabin, and a black candle. Marcus carried a rusted compass they'd stolen from the museum's display case on the town's early settlers. Emily brought only the journal and Leah's bunny.
The tree stood waiting, white and silent.
Emily stepped into the circle around its base.
"Where are you going?" Ava called.
Emily didn't answer.
She counted.
"One…"
The forest grew still.
"Two…"
A wind rose around them, spiraling inward.
"Three…"
The tree cracked open.
The bark split down the middle with a sound like dry paper tearing. Inside was darkness—pitch-black, swirling, depthless. Like looking into the mouth of a cave that had never seen light.
Emily turned to Ava and Marcus.
"I'll come back," she said, unsure if it was a promise or a prayer.
Then she stepped into the hollow.
The transition was instant.
One step through the tree, and she was elsewhere.
Not in the Hollow, not in the real world. But something between.
A bridge.
She stood in a hallway made of forest—branches for walls, leaves for floor, the air thick with pollen and memory. Portraits hung from the trunks of trees, but they didn't depict faces. They showed moments.
Children playing.
Running.
Laughing.
Hiding.
She recognized some.
Tommy.
Erin.
Dylan.
All the kids who had disappeared.
Each painting flickered.
Each one incomplete.
This was it—the archive. The Game's memory.
And if she was the Seeker, it was time to find them.
She moved quickly, guided by instinct.
The hallway split into corridors, each narrowing and widening in impossible ways. Time pulsed like a heartbeat. Shadows blinked into existence and vanished. Sometimes she heard whispers. Sometimes giggles.
Once, she heard her own voice calling for help.
She ignored it.
Room by room, she entered scenes pulled from the memories of lost children.
In one, she stepped into an abandoned carnival. Rides spun with no riders. Balloons floated upside-down. She heard Erin laughing beneath a rusted popcorn cart. She lifted the curtain—and saw her.
Frozen.
Trapped in shadow.
Emily touched her shoulder and whispered, "Found you."
The room dissolved.
The portrait changed.
Next, she found Tommy in a twisted classroom, where the chalkboard bled ink and the teacher had no face. He hid beneath a desk, weeping silently. Emily crawled to him, reached out—
"Found you."
Another room gone.
Another portrait complete.
It was working.
Each time she found a child, they were released from the Game's grasp—at least in this place. Emily didn't know where they went after. If they'd wake up. If they'd return. But she had to believe.
Room after room, the search continued.
Dylan was hidden beneath a frozen lake. She broke through the ice with her fists, dragging him out as the Game screamed around her.
"Found you."
Claire was locked in a library where every book was a scream. Emily tore open the silence with a whispered truth: "You're not alone."
"Found you."
Her voice grew hoarse.
Her legs grew heavy.
But she kept going.
One more.
Just one more.
The final room was her own.
The scene from that day: the old forest, golden sunlight, laughter before it all changed.
And hiding behind the same fallen log—
Leah.
Emily approached carefully. "It's me."
Leah turned.
Her eyes were full of tears—but she was real. Solid.
"You came back," Leah whispered.
Emily nodded. "I never stopped looking."
They stood there, in the memory, hand in hand.
"You ready?" Emily asked.
Leah wiped her eyes. "Ready."
Emily exhaled.
"Found you."
The Game screamed.
The world broke.
Light poured from every crack in the memory halls. The portraits burned. The walls shook.
And Emily ran.
With Leah in her arms, she sprinted back through the twisting tunnels of forest, the collapsing hallways of shadow, until she saw it—
The split tree.
The exit.
She leapt through just as the tree snapped shut behind her.
She landed hard in the clearing, gasping for air.
Ava and Marcus were there. Ava ran to her, crying. Marcus caught Leah before she could fall.
"You did it," Ava whispered.
Emily nodded, too tired to speak.
The white tree cracked, groaned… and collapsed inward, folding into ash that scattered on the wind.
The counting had stopped.
And this time, it didn't start again.