Deep inside the Veil, the roots grow above me, braided with the tiny bark doors I carved as a young fawn. They represent every wish I was too afraid to say out loud. The Veil drops one final door before me, larger than all the others.

The door opens, and I am standing on the path behind our old den. And for a moment, I can’t breathe.

The crescent root is still there, curling above the entrance like a sleeping tail. The fern wall leans against the stones in the same crooked pattern I remember. A small hollow sits beside the moss path, half-hidden beneath leaves, where Rosemary once buried three acorns and cried when a squirrel found them.

Everything is exactly as it was. I look down. My hooves are smaller. My legs are thinner. I am not the fawn who entered the Veil. I am younger than Rosemary is today. Young enough that the world still feels like something adults can fix if they just decide to. Young enough that I still believe promises are stronger than distance. Young enough that when my father steps out of the den behind me, my heart forgets what will happen next.

“Willow,” he says.

I close my eyes. “No,” I whisper to myself.

But the Veil has no patience for refusal.

When I open them, he is still there.

He looks the way he looked that morning. Tall beneath the crescent trees. Gentle-eyed. Tired in a way I did not understand then. There are bits of silver moss caught near his hooves and a small scratch on one side of his face from where Rosemary had tried to climb over him the night before. It is him in more detail than all my dreams combined.

My father lowers his head and nudges my forehead. “You’re awake early.”

I want to say something wise. Something brave. Something that proves I know this is only the Veil, only memory, only a wound. Instead, the words that come out of me are the words I said that morning.

“Are you leaving again?”

His face changes. Only a little. Just enough.

“I will be back before the fireflies rise,” he says.

This is the sentence that became a door I never stopped waiting beside. The forest around us goes still. I know what comes next. I know he will turns toward the trees. I’ll ask if I can come. He’ll smile, tell me to stay with Mother. He will tell me to watch Rosemary. Tell me I am good at keeping little things safe. Then he will leave. And every moment afterwards will become waiting.

“No,” I say.

The memory shivers. My father pauses. I never said that before. I take one step toward him.

“No,” I say again. “Don’t say that.”

He looks at me.

“Don’t say you will come back before the fireflies rise if you’re not going to.”

The trees bend closer. The den behind me darkens. Inside, I can hear Mother sleeping. Rosemary makes a small sound beside her, curled into the warm place near Mother’s chest.

Father watches me quietly.

My throat tightens. “I waited.”

Father does not move.

“I waited until the fireflies rose. Then until they went dark. Then until Mother told me to stop standing at the edge of the moss path because my legs were shaking. But I waited the next day. And the next.”

The memory around us begins to hum.I can feel the Glimmers in my chest, small and warm, trying to keep me from disappearing into the old ache.

“I kept thinking maybe you were lost. Maybe you were hurt. Maybe if I made enough doors, an ancient magic would find you and bring you home.”

I look past him toward the trees. The little bark doors are everywhere now. They appear one by one among the roots, behind stones, tucked into hollow logs, pressed into the moss like small prayers. Each one a wish I was too ashamed to speak out loud.

Father looks at the doors. Then he looks at me. “Willow,” he says softly.

I hold my breath. I want him to explain. Even knowing the Veil is not giving me the real him. Even knowing this is a memory, a test, a wound, just truth braided together. I want an answer so badly.

As I stare into his eyes, The Veil asks, ‘What if there is no answer that can make it hurt less?’

I shake my head. “There has to be.”

The sky above the den turns white at the edges. The memory does not break, but it strains.

Father takes a step toward the trees.

Panic rises through me so fast I nearly choke. “Wait.”

He stops. I know this moment. This is the place I have returned to in dreams more times than I can count. The last second before he becomes a shape between trees. The last second before the moss path is empty. The last second before my life divides into before and after.

The Veil has brought me here for a reason. It wants me to face the thing I have spent my life building around. But I’m not ready. The white trembles. The Glimmers at my chest flicker.

Father turns back to me. “I have to go. Take care of your mom and sister for me.”

Those were his words. But now they sound different. Like the Veil has placed them carefully in front of me and is asking me what I made them mean. I made them mean I was responsible. I made them mean Mother was mine to steady. Rosemary was mine to protect. The den was mine to keep warm. The missing piece was mine to fill.

I made them mean that if anyone else left, it would be because I had failed.

My legs begin to shake. “I was a child,” I whisper. The forest stills. The words surprise me.

“I was a child,” I say again, louder this time. “I couldn’t have followed you. I couldn’t have stopped you. I couldn’t have made Mother stop waiting. I couldn’t have made Rosemary understand.”

All the small bark doors begin to glow faintly.

Father watches me with eyes full of something I cannot name.

My voice becomes very small. “If you loved us, why did you leave?”

The doors flare. For one terrible, beautiful second, I think I have done it. I think the Veil will open. I think the pain will loosen the way it did before. I think a Glimmer will rise from the moss and tell me that naming the question is enough.

But the Veil does not open. Because I have asked the question… but I haven’t faced the answer.

Father turns toward the trees again.

I call after him, begging, "Don't leave us.”

He pauses.

The Veil holds me in the moment. I can feel what it is asking… To let him walk away.

The Glimmers flicker.

“I can’t watch you leave again!”

The white at the edge of the forest darkens, but I’m watching Father, his hooves, the tilt of his head, the space between his body and the trees. Every part of me has become that space.

The Veil is waiting for a truth I am not ready to give. I step toward him instead.

“Please,” I say. It is the one word I never said that morning. Maybe because I was proud. Maybe because I was scared. Maybe because some part of me already knew begging would not change anything, and I could not bear to learn that while he was still close enough to touch.

“Please don’t go.”

Father looks back at me. For the first time, his face blurs. The memory cannot hold him steady. Or I can’t. Behind him, the trees deepen from green into something colder.

The pale white of the Veil pulses once. Far away, so faint I almost think I imagine it, something answers. It’s not Father or Aurora… It’s something from the human world. A pressure gathers in the dark between the trees. The Glimmers at my chest go cold. I freeze.

The Veil changes. Until this moment, every question it asked had come from inside me. Every doorway, every mirror, every pool, every forest of thoughts had been made of my own hidden truth. Painful, but mine. This is different. This feels like something listening from outside me.

Father’s blurred face stills. Then he speaks.

“You were right to wait for me.”

My heart stops. I know those are not his words.

The trees behind him bend without wind.

“You were the only one who could have saved me,” he says.

The Glimmers flicker wildly.

“No,” I whisper.

“If you had come after me,” he says, “I might have found my way home.”

The memory splits. A thin green light cuts through the trees behind him. I step back as the Veil shudders.

The shape of my father remains at the edge of the moss path, but something dark is behind his eyes. Something that has listened long enough to learn the sound of what I wanted most.

I try to call for Aurora, but my voice catches in my throat.

The green light spreads between the trees. It is the color of moss without sun. The color of a bruise beneath skin. The color of something alive that has forgotten how to grow toward light.

The Veil pulls at me, trying to move me away, but the memory holds. No. Not the memory. Me. Some part of me is still reaching for him. Still wanting the shape in front of me to be Father.

The thing behind his eyes feels that wanting. It leans closer. “Willow,” it says.

The Glimmers flare once, then dim. The green light pulses again, but this time it carries something foreign. Something from beyond Aurora Hallow. Human loneliness. Human grief. Every abandoned feeling that found no place to go. Every silent hurt that grew teeth in the dark.

The trees split open. A dark line appears in the white. Thin at first. Then widening.

I stumble backward. “You are not him. You’re the shadow”

The shadow smiles with my father’s mouth.

Far away, impossibly far away, I feel a burst of red-gold fire. Rosemary. My sister’s fear reaches through the Veil like a flame searching for air.

The Shadow turns toward it. I feel its hunger sharpen.

“No,” I whisper. “Leave her alone.”

The shadow wearing my father looks back at me. Then past me. Toward the place where Rosemary’s fear burns.

“Another door,” it says.

The dark line widens. I try to run toward it, though I do not know if I am running deeper into the Veil or farther from myself. The moss path breaks beneath my hooves. The bark doors rattle in the roots. The Glimmers at my chest flicker, fighting to stay lit.

I call for my sister. “Rosemary, no!”

But the Veil swallows my voice. The green light surges.

The Shadow rips a hole into Aurora Hallow.