

In 1995, Swann, Kat, Nora and Autumn thought that summer would be nothing but music, recorded tapes and a diary full of lovely nonsense. But the forest had a memory. And Kat was furious. There, Kat spoke of curses, of Corey, of everything that had been done to them. They sang, they bled, and they left offerings to the void. On the night of the ritual, the four of them ventured deep into the Whispering Woods, following the light of the moths until they reached the clearing where the Abyss lay waiting: an impossible hole, dark, breathing as if it held secrets. But the Abyss was not magic. It was trauma. It was fear. It was the way their minds drew what happened that night. Corey fell there, not into a purple portal, but into an act that scarred them forever. A buried secret, a guilt none of them could name. Afterwards, everything fell apart. They promised never to see each other again. They promised to forget. But summers are not forgotten. And Kat… Kat didn’t have time. Illness took her years later, leaving only her absence, her box, her echo. In 2022, the three of them returned to the past to remember what the Abyss had taken from them: innocence, friendship, and a love that Swann never spoke aloud. The Abyss wasn’t a monster. It was the place where their childhood ended. The point where everything changed. The void that remained between them. And yet, when they remember, the four of them are together again for a moment: Swann, Nora, Autumn… and Kat (the raven), like a gentle ghost, watching from the edge of the Abyss.
Swann…
I don’t know how to begin without my voice shaking. I was always good at hiding what I felt, but with you I never could. With you, everything in me becomes transparent.
I’ve thought so many times about that night, about what would have happened if the Abyss hadn’t touched me, if I hadn’t felt that dark call that tore me away from you.
Sometimes I imagine that I came back. That I showed up at your door with the same blue jacket, with the same fear of telling you the truth, with the same desire to stay.
And in that world, Swann, you look at me as if summer never ended. As if I had never been a ghost. As if I could still be your future.
But I’m writing this letter because I know that world doesn’t exist. Because I know I hurt you without meaning to, that I left you with questions I never answered, that I stole a ending you deserved.
And even so… when I think of you, I don’t think of guilt. I think of light. I think of how you looked at me when you thought I wasn’t watching. I think of how your silence said more than my words.
Swann, if I had come back, if I had survived everything, if the Abyss hadn’t cast its shadow over my name… I would have chosen you.
Not as a summer. Not as a memory. Not as a wound.
I would have chosen you as life. As home. As destiny.
And I know you’re somewhere else now, that Autumn holds you, that you’ve learned to live without me. I know. And it makes me happy. Truly happy.
But let me stay here, in this letter, in this corner where I still exist, to tell you what I never could:
I loved you too. I would have searched for you too. I would have come back too. If the world had allowed me.
Kat.
She is always with you
Kat walks by your side as if she knows your shadows and yet chooses to stay.
She makes no sound, but her presence lights up the corners where the sun never reaches.
Sometimes she speaks with her eyes, as if she held within them all the answers you haven’t yet dared to ask.
And when she smiles, time stands still just long enough for you to remember that you are not alone.
There is an invisible thread that has bound you together since before you knew how to name it, a shared heartbeat that pulses even in the silence.
And though the path may break, though the forest may change shape and the abyss call to you once more, she is still there, steadfast as a promise that needs no swearing.
For there are loves that do not end, they merely transform into a gentle presence, into a whispering companion, into a burning certainty: Kat is always with you.



