Chapter 15: Mysteries of Restvale
Selene eased the jeep onto the shoulder. The van behind us slowed in response and came to a stop a short distance away. Moments later, the driver's window slid down, and a middle-aged man leaned out, offering a polite smile.
"Everything alright?" he asked.
Selene didn't return the smile. She folded her arms across the steering wheel. "You've been tailing us the entire way."
"Oh?" The man looked genuinely puzzled. "Sorry about that. I'm just heading to Restvale."
Restvale. Clara stiffened beside me.
"Business there," he added with a casual shrug. Before anyone could press him further, he raised a hand in farewell and pulled away.
The van passed slowly, its tinted windows hiding anyone else inside. When it finally disappeared, we got back into the jeep.
Selene didn't take her eyes off the road, her jaw tight, the engine humming as we pushed forward.
"Clara," she asked, "where exactly is Restvale?"
"It's where the village relocated," Clara replied without hesitation.
"So... can you finish what you were saying earlier—about why they moved?" I pressed.
Clara glanced out the window before lowering her voice. "An old man with one eye told them to leave."
My chest tightened. "A one-eyed man?"
"Yes. The villagers called him the Sage. He helped them in ways no one else could."
"Tell me more about him," I urged.
"He wasn't from our village," Clara said. "He came from somewhere else. He knew medicine, treated the sick, tended the animals, never asked for payment." She paused, reverence flickering in her eyes. "But more than that—he performed rituals."
"What kind of rituals?"
"He could contain spirits. Evil ones."
Selene's shoulders twitched. Her voice came out thinner than usual. "Spirits? You're saying your village actually had a haunting?"
"I never saw it myself," Clara admitted, "but the elders talked about it. About four hundred years ago, strange things began happening. People would hear their names called when no one was there. Some wandered into the woods at night and woke the next morning with no memory of how they got there. Then it got worse. Children, the elderly, the sick—they started seeing shadows. Some were terrified to the point of death."
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
She swallowed. "The villagers went to the Sage. He told them the village was too beautiful—it drew spirits in."
"So he told them to leave," I said, following the thread.
"Yes. And he helped them find a new place to settle. They trusted him completely. Slowly, little by little, they moved to what became Restvale—the village I was born in." Her voice caught. "But he didn't go with them."
"Why not?"
"He stayed behind to contain the spirits. Some villagers saw him bringing strange women to his house at night. A few followed once—they heard crying and screaming coming from the cellar."
She paused, letting the weight of her words settle.
The jeep bounced over the rutted track, the forest pressing in on both sides like dark walls.
"Did the spirits follow them to the new village?" Selene asked suddenly.
"No," Clara said. "The villagers said the Sage drew them all to himself. When he died, he left instructions: Don't move my body. Even in death, I'll keep them contained."
Selene exhaled, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. "That old man... still protecting them after all this time."
"That's why we call him the Sage," Clara replied.
I stared into the darkness beyond the window. Elena's words echoed in my mind: Alrik. One eye. Young women. A cellar beneath the house.
It had to be the same man.
But the man in Clara's story and the one Elena spoke of felt like two entirely different people.
"Look! A village up ahead!" Selene's voice snapped me back to the present.
Pinpricks of light flickered through the darkness, the vague outlines of houses emerging, uneven and haphazard. The threshold of the village lay just ahead.
"This is it," Clara murmured. "Restvale."
Selene killed the engine and turned to me. "Rhan? Should we keep going, or stay here tonight?"
I nodded slightly. Here felt safer.
I studied the village. Firelight bled through cracks in wooden shutters. Mountains loomed in every direction, but the night was too thick to read the terrain clearly.
"What's that?!" Selene pressed herself against me, her body rigid.
The headlights illuminated a figure about a hundred meters away. A woman, dressed all in white, stood motionless.
Clara gasped and clutched my arm. I felt trapped between them.
"Get back in the car," I urged.
They scrambled inside, both huddling in the back seat, refusing to sit up front.
"Is that a spirit? Why isn't she moving?" Selene's voice trembled.
The woman stood at the edge of the headlight's glow, watching us. She didn't advance, didn't retreat, as if daring us to cross the road.
"Yes," I said, no point hiding it now.
"Clara—you said the new village had no spirits," Selene whispered.
"I don't understand. I grew up here. I've never—" Clara's voice faltered.
"What does she want? Why is she just standing there?"
"Don't look at her. Don't think about her. We wait for midnight," I instructed.
I glanced back at the woman. She moved—not walking, gliding toward us.
"She's coming! She's coming!" the two of them gasped in unison.
Twenty meters out, she stopped. The headlights caught her face: pale as bone, hair hanging loose, hiding her features. Yet something in her gaze was urgent, insistent—a warning more than a threat.
She didn't advance, didn't leave. She simply stood there, as if the road itself belonged to her.
Inside the jeep, we pressed together in the back seat. Selene's shoulder pressed against mine; Clara's breaths came shallow and fast.
The woman remained at the edge of the light, just beyond the circle the headlights cast.
Then, from somewhere across the hills, a distant bell tolled. One slow, resonant chime.
Midnight.
Her outline wavered in the headlights, the air around her rippling as if it had turned to water. For a heartbeat, she seemed thinner, almost transparent—then the road was empty.
Selene let out a shaky breath. "She's gone."
I pulled my gaze away from the empty road.
Something dark was gathering in the sky beyond the trees—thick, coiling like smoke, but heavier, almost tangible, curling slowly above the hills.
"What place is that?" I asked, eyes fixed on the dark shape.
Clara followed my gaze. Her face went pale.
"That direction..." she whispered. "That's Ashcroft."
