Chapter 4 The River Remembers

The next morning, Ava didn't remember falling asleep.

She remembered the mirror. The eyes. The way her reflection didn't match her expression. But after that nothing. Just a gap. A dark, echoing space where dreams might have been. Or nightmares. It all felt like silt at the bottom of her mind, stirred by unseen things.

When she woke, she was lying on the floor next to her bed. Her palms were covered in dirt. Her feet were bare.

And there were pine needles tangled in her hair.

She got up slowly, her limbs sluggish and cold. She didn't feel hungover she felt displaced. Like her body had been driven by someone else, and now the wheel had been handed back to her.

Lex was already awake in the kitchen. She handed Ava coffee without a word.

"You sleep?" Lex asked.

Ava shook her head. "Sort of."

Lex didn't push. "We're going back to the river."

Ava blinked. "The one Elijah warned about?"

"Exactly that one."

Ava sipped the coffee. It was bitter. Too strong. Perfect.

They didn't speak much on the drive. The road narrowed, then vanished entirely. The truck bumped along the edge of a ravine before they abandoned it altogether and hiked the rest on foot.

The river wasn't wide. It wasn't fast. It didn't roar. It watched.

Ava crouched by the bank. The water looked dark enough to swallow anything. Trees bent inward, leaning like eavesdropping neighbors.

Lex walked the perimeter, scanning the mud for tracks. "I don't like this. The air's too still."

Ava leaned forward.

Her reflection stared back at her.

But the eyes didn't match again.

They were golden.

Not glowing. Just wrong.

She blinked.

The reflection didn't.

She jerked back. "Lex."

Lex was already on alert, one hand on her belt. "What?"

Ava pointed to the water.

Lex looked. Her brows furrowed. "I don't see"

The reflection smiled.

Neither of them were.

Then the surface rippled.

And something reached out.

Ava fell back. The water hadn't moved. But her mind had. She blinked, and suddenly it was night. Not just around her inside her. A dream-memory pressed in.

She saw a forest burning. Wolves howling around a stone circle. And in the center a woman. Bound. Screaming. Her eyes glowing the same way Ava's had in the mirror.

Then darkness again.

She woke with Lex slapping her.

"Ava! You were gone. Just gone. You weren't breathing. You looked wrong."

Ava sat up, gasping. Her skin felt like it had been soaked in cold ash. "It showed me something. A memory. Maybe not mine."

Lex stared. "The river drinks memory, Elijah said. Maybe it also shares it."

They didn't stay long after that.

That night, Ava stood in front of the bathroom mirror again. No tricks this time. No reflections breaking rules. But something was wrong. Her scar had shifted. The edges weren't jagged anymore. They were curling. Like something beneath the skin was growing.

Lex knocked. "You okay in there?"

Ava didn't answer. She opened her mouth instead. Wide.

And for a split second just a heartbeat, she saw canines that didn't belong in a human face.

She closed her mouth.

"I'm fine," she said.

They called Elijah the next day.

He didn't answer.

They drove up to his cabin. The door was open. Smoke still clung to the charred beams. Inside, everything was scorched.

But not burned randomly.

The maps were gone.

The journals gone.

Only one thing remained: the sketch of the creature above the fireplace.

But this time, it had been updated. Drawn over.

With Ava's eyes.

And under it, carved deep into the wood: YOU ARE THE SEED.

Lex stepped back. "This is some prophecy shit. I don't like it."

Ava didn't either.

But the part that scared her more?

Some deep part of her did.

That night, the dreams came in full.

She stood in the river, waist deep. The water burned. Across from her, the creature waited.

It didn't move. Just stared. Just waited.

When she opened her mouth to speak, it mirrored her.

Then it said her name.

Not aloud. Not with sound.

Inside.

Ava.

She woke up outside. Again.

Barefoot.

Twenty yards from the trailer.

Pawprints beside her.

Her own.

She didn't tell Lex.

But she started keeping a journal.

And every morning, when she woke, she checked the mirror first.

Not for her reflection.

For its.