In the brush and thicket, voices of those long silenced weave through the teeming vines like spectral tendrils. Their stories are etched into the very soil of the briar patch, where none dared to tread lest the shadows of echoes raise uncomfortable truths from beneath the underbrush.
It was here in the brittle twilight, amidst curling leaves and whispering grasses, that Eliza first heard them—the silent murmurs conscripting letters to forgotten histories, only glimpsed in dappled light and memory's faded prints. A name escaped once, fleeting and lyrical, as if sung by a boy leaning against aged bark: Aisling.
The name meant nothing to her then but dew-laden syllables on a summer breeze, yet lingered, ensnared in the briars of remembrance. Years folded back upon one another like the heart of a rotting log, disclosing caverns and chambers void of any light, save the persistent echo of lives lived captive to the bounds of Nature's mercy.