Chapter 10: The Weight of Knowing

The rain had let up by the time they got back to Elena's cabin, but the air still felt heavy, like the sky was holding its breath. Daniel sat at the table, flipping through Eleanor's journal, his brow furrowed. Elena paced the room, her arms wrapped tight around herself. She couldn't shake the image of that figure in the shadows—its glowing eyes, the way it seemed to dissolve into the dark. It didn't feel real, but the chill in her bones told her otherwise.

"You think it's still out there?" she asked, her voice breaking the silence.

Daniel didn't look up. "Dunno. But if it is, it's not gonna follow us here. Not yet, anyway."

"Not yet?" Elena stopped pacing and stared at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He finally met her gaze, his expression unreadable. "It means we're playing with fire, Elena. And if we're not careful, we're gonna get burned."

She wanted to argue, to tell him she didn't care about the risks, but the words caught in her throat. Instead, she sank into the chair across from him and reached for the journal. "What else does it say? About the Gathering, I mean."

Daniel hesitated, then slid the journal toward her. "See for yourself."

Elena opened it to the page he'd been reading. The handwriting was shaky, like Eleanor had been scared when she wrote it. The words were hard to make out, but one sentence stood out:

*"They called it forth, but it was never theirs to control. It watches. It waits. And it hungers."*

Her stomach twisted. "What does that mean? What's 'it'?"

Daniel leaned back in his chair, his eyes distant. "I think it's whatever they summoned during the Gathering. Something… old. Something that doesn't belong here."

Elena's mind raced. "And you think it's still here? After all this time?"

"Maybe," Daniel said. "Or maybe it never left."

The room felt colder suddenly, like the walls were closing in. Elena hugged herself tighter, trying to push the fear down. "So what do we do? How do we stop it?"

Daniel shook his head. "We don't. Not yet. First, we need to figure out what Mara knew. If she found a way to deal with it, it'll be in her sketchbook. Or maybe in Eleanor's notes."

Elena glanced at the sketchbook lying on the table. It felt heavier now, like it was full of secrets she wasn't sure she wanted to know. But she didn't have a choice. Not if she wanted to find Mara.

"Alright," she said, her voice steadier than she felt. "Where do we start?"

Daniel leaned forward, his elbows on the table. "With the symbols. They're the key. If we can figure out what they mean, we might be able to piece together what Mara was trying to tell us."

Elena nodded, though the thought of decoding those strange, twisting shapes made her head hurt. She opened the sketchbook to the first page with the symbols and stared at them, trying to make sense of the lines and curves. They looked almost alive, like they were moving on the page.

"What if we can't figure it out?" she asked quietly.

Daniel didn't answer right away. When he did, his voice was low, almost a whisper. "Then we're in trouble. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

Elena wanted to ask more, but the look in his eyes stopped her. There was something he wasn't telling her, something he was afraid to say. And she wasn't sure she wanted to know what it was.

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