The forest had changed so had she.
Seasons passed like pages in a book Lucy was still learning to read. The forest no longer threatened her with its silence. It spoke. And she understood now. She could feel the roots stretch beneath her feet, the shift in the canopy when a storm was near, the way each lantern's flicker told a different story. Memory had shape now. Color. Emotion.
She had become part of its rhythm.
And yet, not everything was peaceful.
One morning, the forest trembled. Not in fear but anticipation.
Mark appeared at her door, winded. A new lantern has appeared, he said, but no soul was lost. No one has died.
Lucy stood slowly. Then how?
Mark looked uneasy. It's growing. On its own.
Together they walked beneath the canopy. The Heart Tree glowed, its branches curled around a single lantern unlike any Lucy had ever seen. It pulsed with a golden red hue, like fire and sunrise. Not a memory. Not a remnant.
A birth.
Tim joined them in the clearing, his expression dark. Something's awakening. Something that was never meant to be lit.
Lucy stepped forward. She could feel it.
This lantern didn't remember the past.
It was dreaming the future.
Lucy stepped closer to the glowing lantern cradled in the Heart Tree's limbs. It pulsed in quiet rhythm like a heartbeat. Not flickering with memory, as the others did. This was steady. Alive. Becoming.
Mark stood behind her, rigid as stone. This shouldn't be possible. Lanterns are lit from death. From what was. This is... something else.
Tim knelt at the base of the tree. What if it's not a lantern of the past? What if it's from the future?
Lucy stared, thoughts racing.
Since becoming a Keeper, she had learned the rules of the forest. Each lantern was born from the essence of a life, a moment of memory, a story closed. But this one it wasn't holding a memory. It was gathering one. Gathering moments yet to happen.
She placed her hand gently on the tree's bark.
The Heart Tree thrummed beneath her fingers.
And then a whisper curled into her mind not a voice, but a sensation. Like an idea forming in the dark before thought.
One has been chosen.
Lucy flinched. Chosen? For what?
No answer came.
The lantern pulsed brighter for a moment, then dimmed.
Mark looked shaken. There are stories... old ones. Almost forgotten. Of lanterns not made from memory but from intention. Born from a soul not yet formed, a being destined to change the balance of the forest.
Lucy turned. You mean... a child?
He nodded. But not just any child. A Lanternborn.
Tim rose slowly. You're saying the forest is creating life now?
Mark's silence was confirmation.
Lucy felt her skin tighten.
For a moment, no one spoke. The forest had always held memories but this was new. Something ancient stirring to begin again. And for the first time since she crossed into the forest's heart, Lucy didn't feel like a visitor or a guide.
She felt like a guardian of something not yet written.
"What do we do?" Tim asked.
Lucy looked at the lantern, now glowing gently, pulsing in time with her own heart.
We wait, she said. We protect it.
She didn't know what this Lanternborn would be.
But deep inside her bones, she felt the shape of destiny bending again and this time, she was the one standing at its center.
Lucy couldn't sleep.
Even with the forest quiet, even with Tim's hand resting gently near hers, her heart felt like it was thudding against time itself. Something had shifted when the shard from the lantern touched the moss. Not just a vision but a ripple. As though the very pattern of the forest had changed.
And others felt it, too.
The animals that usually roamed the edges of the Heart Tree were gone. Even the wind birds those bright, sharp-eyed creatures that lived in the canopieshad gone silent. The only sound was the hush of the lantern above her, glowing gently.
Too gently.
Almost like it was pretending to sleep.
Lucy rose and stepped toward the tree. She laid her palm flat against the bark again.
This time, it wasn't a whisper she heard but a pulse. A rhythm. Something breathing. Something growing.
Suddenly, her vision blurred. Not into a dream into a presence.
A girl stood before her. Young. Barefoot. Her hair black as obsidian and eyes glowing ember gold. She wore no crown, no robes just a simple tunic stitched with thread made of light. She looked familiar, and yet Lucy was sure she'd never seen her before.
Who are you? Lucy asked.
The girl didn't answer. She stepped closer.
Then she spoke one word.
"Soon."
The image shattered.
Lucy stumbled back. Mark l caught her.
You saw her, he said. Not a question a knowing.
Lucy nodded. She's not just a child. She's something more. Like... A story the forest hasn't finished writing.
Mark's jaw tightened. Then we're no longer Keepers of what was. We're guardians of what might be.
Tim stepped forward, his eyes scanning the trees. Then we'll need to watch for who else might come looking.
Lucy looked up at the sky now streaked with hints of silver. A new dawn was rising.
But for the first time, the light felt... foreign.
As though this dawn didn't belong to the world they knew.
She turned back to the lantern in the tree.
It flickered once softly.
And in the stillness, the forest whispered not in words, but in a feeling that wrapped itself around her spine:
She is coming.
And the world will not be ready.
The lantern that dreamed
The child had not yet come.
But the dreams had.
Every night, Lucy woke with ash on her fingertips.
Sometimes it was only a smear. Other times it was clumped between her nails. She would rub her palms raw in the morning stream, scrubbing until her skin turned pink. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't forget what she saw when she slept.
The girl. The forest on fire. A voice that wasn't hers speaking through her mouth.
The Lanternborn will not be controlled.
That voice haunted her now.
Tim tried to comfort her, but even he was changing. He had always been quiet, but lately he grew distant like something inside him was drifting beyond reach. He spent more time near the outer trees, listening to them, staring at the sky. Watching.
Mark noticed it too.
She's already affecting us, he said one night as the three of them stood beneath the Heart Tree. Even unborn. Even unshaped. The Lanternborn is pressing through the veil.
Lucy looked up. The golden red lantern still floated, still pulsed but now, when she looked too long, it flickered with shadow along its edges. Like it was being watched.
Is it her doing this? she asked.
"No," Mark said. She's calling to someone. Or something.
Tim turned slowly. Or someone is calling to her.
A silence fell over them.
Far in the distance, something howled.
Not a wolf. Not a creature. Something older.
Lucy's blood turned cold.
The next morning, Lucy went to the Memory Pool a small, sacred lake at the edge of the forest where lanterns sometimes dipped low enough to reflect the past. She had not visited it since her Keeper trials. Now, she knelt at the water's edge and whispered:
Show me what's coming.
The water stilled.
Then it shimmered.
She saw flickers quick, blurred.
Flames rising.
The Heart Tree blackened.
A girl standing barefoot in a circle of ash.
And then something darker behind her. Cloaked. Watching.
Its voice echoed not in the water, but in her bones.
She will bring balance. Or ruin.
The lake went dark.
Lucy stood slowly, heart hammering.
The forest was not simply dreaming.
It was preparing.
And somewhere perhaps beyond the veil, perhaps inside the very roots beneath her feet a child who did not yet breathe was shifting the threads of fate.
The Lanternborn was no longer just a myth.
She was coming.
Lucy turned from the Memory Pool, the vision still thrumming behind her eyes.
She did not speak of what she saw not to Mark, not to Tim . Some truths weren't ready for air.
But as she walked back through the forest, something strange began to happen.
The other lanterns those born of memory and death began to flicker in unison. Tiny pulses, like a heartbeat. Some dimmed. Some flared. And one, high in the trees, shattered like glass and vanished into light.
Lucy stopped in her tracks.
The forest wasn't only responding to the coming of the Lanternborn.
It was rearranging itself.
She whispered to the trees, hoping they would answer.
But all she received was the same wind drawn echo that had been following her since the first night she touched the unborn lantern:
She dreams in fire.
And Lucy knew then what she feared might be true.
The Lanternborn was not waiting to be born.
She was already here, somewhere between dream and waking.
And she was no longer dreaming alone.