Chapter Five: A Name That Shouldn't Be Known

The town was too quiet when Leon arrived.

Not in the way small towns often were, where silence was simply a lack of movement. No—this was different. This was deliberate.

Shops were open, their doors propped just slightly ajar, but no one stood behind the counters. The streetlights hummed faintly, flickering in a slow, uncertain rhythm.

Leon stepped out of his car. The air was thick, charged with something unseen, something watching.

And then—

A whisper.

Not from any direction, but from everywhere at once.

"Blackwell."

Leon stilled.

It was not his first name.

It was his true one.

The name no one in this town should have known.

The street remained empty. The sound of a distant wind chime shuddered through the air, its melody sharp, discordant.

A trick, perhaps. A remnant of something old trying to unnerve him.

He had lived too long for that.

And yet—

Leon turned, gaze scanning the rooftops, the alleyways, the unseen corners where things often hid.

Nothing.

A test, then.

A warning.

But warnings meant nothing to him.

Not anymore.

---

Meanwhile, at the Carter Farm

Elena had not moved since Leon left.

The night pressed close against the windows, the trees outside swaying in a wind she could not hear. The farmhouse walls creaked, the old wood shifting as if something unseen passed through it.

She sat at the kitchen table, an old ledger spread open before her. The pages were yellowed, the ink faded in places.

She traced a name with her fingertips. A name she had never spoken aloud.

Blackwell.

Not Leon.

The other one. The one from before.

The one they had buried.

And yet, somehow, impossibly—

He had come back.

A sharp knock at the door shattered the silence.

Elena inhaled once. Steadied herself.

Then she rose, and without hesitation—

She unlocked it.