“Willow?” Ivy breathes.

For one impossible moment, every heart in the Hallow believes the same thing: Willow is crossing.

The green light moves again through the Veil, brighter now, spreading beneath its pale surface like roots finding water. The fireflies begin to tremble in the air. Around me, the Orders hold their places, but I can feel hope rising through them, fast and dangerous.

Rosemary steps out from among the Embers.

“Willow,” she says, louder than her mother.

Snow moves beneath the glassleaf trees, pale blue light flickering at her chest. Her eyes narrow, though she says nothing yet.

Ivy takes another step toward the Veil. Her eyes are fixed on the glow inside. For days, she has stood like stone at the edge of the trees. Now, for the first time, she moves as if something inside her has been called forward.

Another pulse of green light moves through the Veil, followed by another, until the color begins spreading in thin branching lines.

A sound escapes the youngest fawns gathered among the Feathers. Some gasp with relief, some begin to laugh, and some start crying before they understand why.

The Hallow wants this to be Willow so badly that for a breath, we almost let ourselves believe it.

Then the fireflies go out. One by one, a dark ripple passes through them, extinguishing their small golden bodies until the air above the meadow is filled with black dots where light should be.

The hope inside me turns cold.

“Back away from the Veil,” I say.

No one moves.

They are still staring at the green light.

“Back away,” I say again, sharper now.

This time, the Vines hear me first. They begin pulling the younger fawns away from the crossing stones, clearing space without waiting for instruction. The Embers tense near the warm stones, their red-gold light flaring in answer to the sudden fear. The Lumen go silent beneath the glassleaf trees, watching every change in the Veil with wide, terrified eyes.

The Feathers lower their heads and press closer together. They do not know what to do yet. None of us do. The Orders have only just been named. Their lights still feel new against their chests. Their instincts are awake, but their training has not begun. I fear I’ve failed them.

The Veil keeps changing. It is no longer moving like water. It is moving like something inside it is pressing against the other side. The green light gathers into one place, then darkens. The color shifts into something worse than black, like a bruise beneath skin, like moss left too long without sun, like something alive that has forgotten how to grow toward light.

Snow speaks first, “That is not Willow.” Her voice carries farther than it should.

Rosemary turns on her instantly, “You do not know that.”

Snow does not look away from the Veil, “Yes, I do.”

The words strike Rosemary like sparks, but before she can answer, the Veil makes a thin, high, almost delicate sound, like ice beginning to split. Every fawn freezes.

The green-dark light sharpens into a single line across the surface of the Veil, and then the line cracks outward toward us.

The crack is no longer than a thorn at first, but the moment it appears, the whole Hallow feels it. The moss paths dim at once, the warm stones lose their heat, and the glassleaf trees ring with a sound like distant bells smashing.

Ivy staggers. I reach her before she falls, supporting as she leans into me. Her body is trembling, but her eyes remain fixed on the crack.

“What is that?” she asks.

I do not answer immediately.

Because the truth is already forming inside me, and I do not want it to be real. The Veil was made to protect Aurora Hallow from the Shadow. But Willow is inside it now. And if the Shadow sensed her there, if it felt a fawn alone in the realm between worlds, it may have entered from the other side, the human world, to stop her from getting to her human… to stop her from being able to exit.

It has been feeding on beyond us, through human loneliness and grief and disconnection, through every unspoken hurt, every abandoned feeling, every place where someone believed they were alone and no one came. It has gathered there, grown there, and learned there. And now it has sensed Willow.

A fawn inside the Veil, facing her deepest wound. A fawn who may believe, even for one moment, that she was left by her father because she was not worth staying for.

That is how it found her. The Shadow knows the shape of abandonment.

The crack in the Veil widens. A breath of cold moves through the meadow, carrying memory inside it. Every fawn who feels it remembers something they have tried not to remember. A moment they were left out. A word that made them feel small. A time they reached for comfort and found nothing there. The exact shape of being misunderstood.

The youngest fawns begin to cry.

The Embers flare wildly, some stepping toward the crack as if they can fight it with heat alone.

“Hold your places,” I command.

My voice is louder than I expect. It cuts across the meadow.

The Embers stop.

Barely.

The Lumen begin whispering to one another too quickly, asking how it entered, whether the Veil can be breached from both sides, what it means if the crack expands, whether the purification has failed, whether Willow is still alive.

“Enough,” I say.

The Lumen fall silent, but their fear remains alive in their eyes.

The Vines begin forming a half-circle around the youngest fawns, not because they have been taught to do it, but because their bodies seem to understand before their minds do.

The Feathers press close to those shaking hardest, though many of them are shaking too.

This is why Aurora gave us the Orders.

For moments like this.

Not because they are ready.

Because now we know where readiness must begin.

I climb back onto the glimmer stone.

The crack in the Veil lengthens behind me.

I can feel it without turning around, like a wound opening in the air.

“Listen to me,” I say.

The Hallow turns toward me, though no one wants to look away from the crack.

“That is not Willow.”

Ivy makes a small sound.

I hate myself for saying it.

But false hope is one of the Shadow’s favorite doors.

“Something has entered the Veil from the human world.”

The words move through the meadow like a storm.

Rosemary’s face goes white.

“Something is in there with her?”

I look at her.

“Yes.”