Capítulo 139: Chapter 139
The Well had always been there, nestled deep in the woods, where the village stood at the edge of a dying forest. People came to it for years, an ancient thing built long before anyone could remember, its stones smooth from the countless hands that touched them. It was a whisper. A rumor. A myth—until it became the village's reality.
For as long as the people had used it, no one asked where it came from or why it granted wishes. They didn't care about the price. The Well was there. It was powerful. It worked. That was all that mattered.
At first, it was small things—wishes for better crops, a well that never ran dry, the safe return of a lost son. But with each wish granted, the people began to feel something darker underneath. The Well didn't just give. It asked for things, though it was hard to tell exactly what it wanted, and no one dared ask. The price was always subtle, a thread of something missing that no one quite noticed until it was too late.
Elders began disappearing. No one knew where they went, but the night after each one vanished, the Well's surface would ripple as if something unseen stirred deep below it. The village wasn't large, so when someone went missing, the entire place noticed. But they didn't stop using the Well. They couldn't. It had become too important.
By the time Elena was a teenager, the people had used it so many times that they no longer cared about the consequences. Wishes piled upon wishes, bigger ones now—money, land, power, lovers. All the things that made life easier, but not necessarily better.
Elena's family was no exception. Her mother had wished for her father's return, a wish that had been granted, but at a price. He wasn't the same. His eyes were different, colder, and he never spoke of what had happened to him during his time away. He'd often stand by the Well at night, staring into its depths, his fingers trembling. He said nothing about it to Elena, but she could see the way he avoided the village after dark, as if it pulled him in like something hungry.
Her mother, too, had changed. She no longer had the same energy, the same joy that Elena remembered from her childhood. Instead, she sat by the fire, eyes fixed on nothing, waiting for something, or perhaps, waiting for nothing.
One night, Elena sat by the fire, the crackling wood the only sound between them. Her mother's hands were still as stone in her lap, the faraway look in her eyes more unsettling than ever. Elena had heard the stories, of course. The ones where people went mad. Where they forgot themselves. Where they vanished into nothing.
But it wasn't until the night she found her mother standing at the edge of the Well, staring into it as if in a trance, that she realized the price was far worse than she could have imagined.
"Mom," she called softly, her voice breaking the silence. "What are you doing?"
Her mother didn't respond, her head slowly tilting downward, as if she was listening to something just beneath the surface. Elena's heart pounded in her chest as she walked closer, her hands trembling. She knew something was wrong. Deep down, she had always known.
"Mom?" she said again, louder this time, panic rising.
Her mother's head snapped up, eyes wide, but empty. "It's here," she whispered, her voice shaking. "It's finally here."
Before Elena could say anything, her mother stepped backward, right into the Well. Elena lunged forward, but it was too late. Her mother was gone, swallowed by the darkness below. Not even a splash. Just gone.
Screaming, Elena tried to pull her back, but the stones were slick with something—some kind of thick liquid that wasn't water, but something else. It was sticky and cold, like the very air had thickened around her, wrapping around her body.
She stood there, frozen, watching the ripples that formed after her mother had vanished, the surface of the Well still and smooth once again.
The next few weeks were a blur. The village tried to pretend that nothing had happened. They said her mother had gone into the forest, that maybe she was just lost, that she had left of her own will. No one came forward to speak about the Well, not even Elena. What could she say? That the Well had swallowed her mother whole?
But it didn't stop there. One by one, people began to go missing, each one tied to a wish they had made at the Well. It was like a slow erosion, the fabric of the village fraying one thread at a time. One morning, Old Man Kendrick was gone, and that night, the Well rippled again. He had wished for eternal youth, a wish that had cost him everything. The next day, his daughter wandered into the woods, her face blank and her movements slow, like she wasn't even aware of her own body. She vanished the day after.
Elena tried to leave. She ran, leaving behind the village, the Well, and everything that was once familiar. But the Well's grip on the village wasn't just physical. It was in the air, the ground, the trees. It had infected everything. It was everywhere.
A week after she left, Elena found herself walking back toward the Well, her legs moving on their own. She could feel the pull—heavy, like a magnet inside her chest. The trees had started to bend in unnatural ways, as though the very earth was watching her, waiting for her to return.
When she arrived at the Well, she found a crowd of people gathered there. None of them spoke. They were just standing, staring into the depths, their eyes hollow. A man—someone she had once known, a friend of her mother's—stepped forward, and in his hand, he held a knife.
"Make a wish, Elena," he said, his voice low, void of emotion. "All your pain, all your sorrow. It can be gone. Everything can be made right. All you have to do is ask."
Elena felt the tears come, but they weren't hers. They were something old, something twisted, forced from the deep recesses of her mind. She opened her mouth to scream, to beg for them to stop, but nothing came out. Her body trembled with an uncontrollable force, her hands shaking as she reached out for the Well.
She didn't even know why she reached for it. She didn't want anything from it. But somehow, the Well wanted her. It wanted everything she had left. It wanted her soul.
As she gazed into the dark, something looked back at her. Something was there. Something ancient and cold, waiting. And just as the others had before her, she whispered her wish.
"I want it all to stop," she said, her voice cracked, dry. "I want everything to go back."
A laugh, hollow and empty, filled the air. It didn't come from any one person. It was everywhere. A thousand voices, all twisted into one. The man with the knife stepped forward, his hand slowly moving toward her throat, as if in slow motion.
The Well didn't care about her wish. It had what it wanted. And in return, it gave her the one thing no one ever spoke of—the thing they had all paid for. The thing that came with every wish, with every greed.
It took her, slowly, piece by piece.
Her legs went first, like they were never truly hers. Then her arms. Then her mouth. Finally, it came for her heart. There was no screaming. No final thought. Just emptiness. Her body, hollowed out, sank into the depths of the Well, swallowed whole by the very thing she had hoped would save her.
The villagers who were left behind never spoke of Elena again. They had no need to. The Well had claimed its final prize. And in its silence, it waited. It always waited.
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