The Friend That Died Twice

Seraphina Cole has spent years trying to forget the night the forest took everything from her. A vanished best friend. A memory carved out of her mind. A story no one fully believed, not even her. But when her six-year-old daughter begins speaking to someone only she can see, and unnerving signs appear around their home, Sera is forced to confront the possibility she’s spent her adult life outrunning: whatever happened in those woods didn’t end that night. Desperate for answers, she turns to the last person she wanted to need, Eli Reyes, the childhood sweetheart she lost, the boy who once knew every piece of her. Eli believes her without hesitation. Protects her without question. But the secrets he carries from that night are darker than she ever imagined, and the bond they share isn't as buried as she pretended. As Sera and Eli flee with Maya to escape the escalating danger, the past begins to claw back with terrifying precision. Strange footprints follow them. Voices slip through cracks in the walls. Doors open on their own. And Sera’s missing memories return in shards, fragments sharp enough to cut, never quite revealing the face she’s trying to remember. The deeper they run, the stranger the truth becomes. Every mile pulls Sera closer to a horrifying realization: something in the forest marked her long before she understood the word haunted. Something still wants her. Caught between a past she can’t escape and a threat she can’t identify, Sera must uncover what really happened that night before the thing following her finally steps out of the dark. A gripping psychological thriller with a supernatural edge, this is a story about memory, survival, and the shadows that grow from the wounds we hide.