Spring returned to Everspring like a song long-forgotten, soft and hesitant. Liora and Jalen, now nearly twelve, had grown taller, but their eyes held the depth of lifetimes. They wandered the hills and fields like guardians of some secret melody.
Liora often stood beneath the willow with her eyes closed and hands stretched toward the bark.
"It talks to me," she said once, her voice distant.
Jalen frowned, watching her closely. "The tree?"
"No," she whispered. "Something through it. It's like a memory that isn't mine. Like… echoes in the wind."
Their connection to Dianne and Jimma was no longer just theory... it was truth, written in gestures, glances, words they couldn't possibly know. Villagers who had once adored the children now watched them with unease.
One afternoon, old Mrs. Caulder approached them at the market. She held out a carved wooden toy,a spinning heart Jimma had once made for Dianne.
"I found this in my attic," she said, her voice trembling. "And the boy said, 'I remember painting this.'"
"I did," Jalen replied simply, fingers brushing over the worn paint.
It became undeniable: these were not ordinary children.
But with that knowledge came a shift in the village. Eyes lingered too long. Conversations halted when they passed. Love stories became prayers, whispered quickly as though to protect them from whatever storm stirred just beneath the surface.
And someone was watching.