Chap­ter X con­tin­ues with Ade­line, her foot­steps echo­ing through the thick, damp air of the Vil­lon-sur-Sarthe woods, feel­ing increas­ing­ly alien in the famil­iar space of her home vil­lage. As night encroach­es, the woods around her become suf­fo­cat­ing, and her sense of dis­con­nec­tion grows more intense. The usu­al sounds of the vil­lage, the mur­mur of life, have been replaced with a pro­found still­ness that only serves to under­score the over­whelm­ing iso­la­tion she feels. Her jour­ney, once filled with dreams of escap­ing the con­fines of her life, has tak­en an unex­pect­ed turn, and the free­dom she thought she sought now feels like a hol­low and unful­fill­ing exis­tence. As she trudges through the woods, she is not just phys­i­cal­ly lost but deeply unsure of her place in the world—a world that no longer rec­og­nizes her for who she is, or was.

The real­iza­tion that she has been erased from the mem­o­ries of those she loved strikes Ade­line with an almost phys­i­cal pain. Her arrival at her fam­i­ly home is met not with the warm embrace she had envi­sioned but with cold, fear-filled stares. Her moth­er, whom she had once shared every­thing with, looks at her as if she is a com­plete stranger. Addie’s attempts to explain herself—to speak her name, to assert her identity—only deep­en the wound, as her words fall flat, swal­lowed by an invis­i­ble force that denies her exis­tence. She is now a ghost in her own home, invis­i­ble to those who should rec­og­nize her the most, forced to con­front the cru­el truth that she has been sev­ered from her past, from every­thing that once defined her.

With nowhere else to turn, Ade­line seeks out Estele, hop­ing to find some com­fort or recog­ni­tion from the one per­son she thought would under­stand. How­ev­er, Estele, despite years of famil­iar­i­ty, does not seem to know her, respond­ing with con­fu­sion and fear, as if a veil has descend­ed between them. When Estele retreats, refus­ing to acknowl­edge her, the enor­mi­ty of Addie’s sit­u­a­tion becomes unde­ni­able. The curse, which had once seemed dis­tant and the­o­ret­i­cal, now looms large, its con­se­quences bru­tal­ly clear. Estele’s rejec­tion is the final con­fir­ma­tion that the pact Ade­line made has bound her not only to a life of unyield­ing soli­tude but also to a fate where noth­ing in her past remains intact. She is cut off from her fam­i­ly, her friends, and even from the place she had once con­sid­ered home.

As she retreats into the woods, now even dark­er and more oppres­sive, Ade­line grap­ples with the mag­ni­tude of her sit­u­a­tion. The soli­tude of the for­est mir­rors her inter­nal des­o­la­tion as she con­fronts the full weight of her curse. Her very exis­tence is a paradox—she lives, but she is con­stant­ly erased, per­pet­u­al­ly invis­i­ble to the world around her. The world she knew is no more, and her life is now one of iso­la­tion, devoid of mean­ing or con­nec­tion. It is as if she has become a shad­ow, wan­der­ing through the world with­out a place, with­out a name, and with­out a past. The act of being for­got­ten, of hav­ing no one to remem­ber her, is a cru­el irony that gnaws at her every moment, inten­si­fy­ing the grief of her loss.

In this new­found iso­la­tion, Ade­line reflects on the cost of her immor­tal­i­ty. The end­less years have brought her knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence, but they have also tak­en from her the very things that make life worth living—human con­nec­tion, love, and the com­fort of belong­ing. Her path for­ward, though uncer­tain, is now shaped by the haunt­ing truth that she must con­tin­ue on alone. Her search for mean­ing becomes more press­ing, as she real­izes that in a world where she can­not leave a mark, her very iden­ti­ty, once so cer­tain, is slip­ping away from her grasp. The end­less expanse of time now feels like both a bur­den and a prison, with no end in sight. Addie has become a wan­der­er not only of the phys­i­cal world but of her own exis­tence, for­ev­er seek­ing some­thing that she can nev­er ful­ly attain—recognition, love, and a place in the world that nev­er for­gets her.