The forest was silent.

Not the peaceful kind, not the quiet that came with wind threading through the branches. This was the kind of silence that followed violence. That pressed in around the blood-slick ground and the bodies sprawled across it.

Wolves—half a dozen at least. Throats crushed, ribcages shattered. The dirt beneath them was soaked dark.

And standing at the center of it, gripping a splintered stick like it was the only solid thing in the world, was a girl.

She didn’t speak.

She barely moved.

Just stood there, breathing hard, staring down at the wreckage like she was trying to make sense of it. Trying to understand why her body knew how to fight, even when her mind didn’t remember how.

---

Wynonna almost didn’t believe it.

She’d seen a lot of things that didn’t make sense—demons, curses, ghosts that refused to stay dead. But this? This was impossible.

She stepped forward, boots crunching against the frost-hardened dirt. Dolls held back, watching. Calculating.

The girl lifted her head.

Wynonna’s breath caught.

She knew that face. Not in a way anyone else would. Not in a way Waverly could—Waverly had been too young to remember anything.

But Wynonna remembered.

She remembered that night. The gunfire, the screaming. The way their father had shoved her toward the closet, hands shaking, telling her to hide.

She remembered them taking Willa.

She remembered them taking her.

She’d buried that part somewhere deep, let it fade into a dull ache she never looked at directly. Because it had been easier to think there had only been one sister lost that night, easier to forget that she wasn’t just supposed to have been the heir—

She was supposed to have been a twin.

Fraternal. Different in every way. Where Willa had been all sharp edges and certainty, the girl standing before her had been something else.

Until she was gone.

Until she was erased.

And now she was here.

Alone.

Covered in blood.

Looking at Wynonna like she was seeing nothing.

Like there was nothing left to recognize.

She didn’t speak.

Didn’t flinch.

Didn’t know who she was.

But Wynonna did.