Mother Village -ch. 1- -ch. 2 V1.0- By Shadow... -

Elara scrambled to her feet. She wanted to run. But the gate to the street was now closed. She hadn’t closed it. And standing just beyond it, in a neat row, were the villagers. Every single one. Old, young, faces blank as fresh plaster. The child whose ball had rolled to her earlier stood at the front, holding a small bunch of wilted flowers.

She stumbled back. Her heel caught a root, and she fell hard on the damp soil. For a moment, she lay there, stunned. Then she felt it: the ground was warm. And it was pulsing , slow and steady, like a heartbeat.

“Elara.”

But she didn’t remember it. Not really. Just fragments: a cracked porcelain doll, a well with a crooked stone rim, a lullaby hummed in the dark. She’d been six when her mother fled this place, dragging Elara into the neon-lit anonymity of the city.

Her name, spoken from the water. Not a voice, exactly. More like a vibration that traveled up through the stones, into her bones. Mother Village -Ch. 1- -Ch. 2 v1.0- By SHADOW...

“I inherited the Hawthorne property,” Elara said, voice steadier than she felt.

The old woman from before stepped forward. Her shawl had slipped, revealing a necklace of woven hair—gray, brown, black, and a few strands of bright red. Elara’s color. Elara scrambled to her feet

“You shouldn’t have come back.”

Before Elara could ask what that meant, the woman shut the door. The click of the lock was soft, but it echoed like a gunshot in the silence. She hadn’t closed it

The bus didn’t so much arrive at Mother Village as it gave up. With a final, shuddering cough, it wheezed to a halt before a rusted iron arch where a sign once read: WELCOME. WE’VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU.

The main street was empty. Doors were shut tight, curtains drawn. Yet she felt them watching—the narrow gaps in shutters, the slight tremble of lace. A child’s ball rolled out from an alley and stopped at her feet. No one came to fetch it.