Sameer stared at the cabin.
He didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Just stood there, like he was trying to decide whether he was looking at something real…
or something that had only pretended to be forgotten.
The structure itself looked ordinary — four wooden walls, a slanted roof, a single step up to a dark green door.
No windows.
No signs of life.
But it didn't feel abandoned... t's been waiting.
---
Ayaan slowly took a step forward.
"Sameer…"
"I've seen this before," Sameer said, not taking his eyes off it.
"In your dream?"
Sameer shook his head. "Not just in a dream."
Rehan stood a few feet behind them, eyes scanning the woods.
The trees weren't shifting anymore.
They were still now — but not relaxed.
Attentive.
Like they were watching to see what the boys would do next.
Sameer walked up the steps and stopped at the door.
He placed a hand on it.
It wasn't cold.
Or warm.
Just… familiar.
He turned the handle.
It didn't resist.
---
Inside, the cabin was almost empty.
A small wooden chair.
A folded blanket on the floor.
A photograph nailed to the wall.
That was it.
Sameer stepped in slowly.
Ayaan followed, glancing at everything, feeling a weight in his chest he couldn't name.
Rehan stayed at the door.
Sameer walked straight to the photo and froze.
It was blurry, but clear enough.
Three figures.
Two were definitely children — boys.
The third stood behind them.
Face obscured by shadow, hand on one boy's shoulder.
Sameer raised a shaking hand and touched the photo.
"I think this is us," he whispered.
Ayaan moved beside him.
His eyes adjusted.
It was them.
Sameer and Ayaan — maybe seven or eight years old.
Standing side by side.
But the background…
Not a city.
Not a house.
This forest.
---
Ayaan stepped back like the floor had shifted.
"That's not possible," he said. "We didn't meet until high school."
Sameer didn't answer.
He was still staring at the shadow behind them.
"Who's that?" Ayaan asked.
Sameer just shook his head, voice faint.
"I don't know."
But something in his face — some flicker of recognition — said otherwise.
---
Outside, Rehan turned slightly.
Something was moving in the trees now.
Not fast.
Not loud.
Just… deliberate.
He stepped back into the cabin, closed the door.
"Be quick," he said. "This place — it's not going to stay safe forever."
Sameer finally stepped away from the photo.
"There was another page," he said suddenly. "In the journal. One I never told anyone about."
Ayaan turned to him. "What was on it?"
Sameer hesitated.
Then reached into his pocket.
He pulled out a folded, crumpled page — almost translucent now with age and sweat.
He opened it slowly.
The same symbol.
The one burned into the trees, into the coffin, into the stone near the well.
But beneath it, a single line was written — in handwriting different from the rest of the journal.
"The one who forgets will suffer.
But the one who remembers… must lead them back."
---
Rehan read it over his shoulder. "Back where?"
Sameer didn't respond right away.
Because something had just clicked.
A memory — not new, not old — just buried.
A road.
A scream.
A voice calling his name from behind a wall of fog.
"I think this cabin is a marker," he whispered. "We've been here before. All of us."
Ayaan's breath caught.
"What if this wasn't our first trip?"
---
Back in the city…
Naira sat in the corner of the archive, flipping through records.
Most of them were useless — land disputes, power lines, rezoning applications.
But then she found it.
A file dated 1987.
"Incident at Path 46 – Area Reclamation Denied."
It was stamped confidential.
She slid it out slowly, opened the brittle pages — and found a photograph clipped to the front.
A cabin.
The same one.
With a single sentence scrawled beneath it in red marker:
"Structure exists in dimension but not in registry. Recommend no further action."
She blinked.
Her heart thudded.
Because underneath that stamp was something else.
A list of names.
Three of them scratched out.
And the last one still visible.
Rehan K.
(Age: 8)
---
Back in the cabin…
The floorboards groaned.
They all looked down.
A trapdoor had appeared — clean, smooth, like it had always been there, waiting for the right moment.
Sameer stepped toward it.
"Do we open it?" Ayaan asked.
Rehan's voice was quiet.
"We already did."
---