The forest breathed.
Not like wind rustling through leaves, but like something alive old and watching.
The air was too still, unnaturally still, and thick with rot and pine sap. Dew clung like cold sweat on the trees, their black bark twisted in unnatural knots. What little sunlight filtered through the canopy came fractured and gray, like the forest itself rejected warmth.
They had been walking for hours. Or maybe days.
Time had started to bleed, like ink in water.
Leo was the first to feel it the pressure, like something unseen was coiling around them. The silence pressed in. No birds. No wind. No life. Only breath and heartbeat.
"Where… are we?" El whispered, hand already at the knife sheathed behind her back.
"I think the fog's getting thicker," Leo muttered, his voice muffled, like the air swallowed sound before it could echo.
Matthew stepped forward, but froze. "The ground… it's breathing," he said in a dry voice. The moss beneath his boots shifted with each step, like it pulsed.
Then came the footprints. Or rather the lack of them. Every path they took erased itself behind them.
"We've been walking in circles," El growled, crouching by a tree root she'd marked earlier. Her dagger was still lodged there, unmoved, untouched.
"That's impossible," Matthew replied, though his voice cracked mid-sentence.
And then the forest struck back.
It started as whispers. Slithering just beneath the skin of silence.
"Leo."
It was a voice familiar and soft, like a memory wrapped in silk.
Leo froze. His heart stalled.
"Help me."
He turned sharply. There through the trees a figure. A girl. Her long silver hair shimmered unnaturally in the fog. Her face was hidden, blurred in the haze. But something in him stirred. Recognition? Guilt?
"El, do you see that?" Leo asked, already stepping forward.
But El wasn't looking. She was facing something else entirely. Her lips trembled.
"Mom…?" she whispered.
Her mother stood there, framed in ghost-light. Pale. Still. Unmoving.
"I told you never to come back," her mother hissed, voice soaked in venom.
"I—"
"You don't belong here."
El flinched as though struck. Pain twisted her chest.
"I wish you were never born"
For a moment, she believed it. But something's wrong, she thought. Her mother would never say that.
And then, clarity, sharp and brutal.
"This isn't real," she growled.
Her instincts surged like a flame. She clenched her teeth, turned and slapped Matthew hard across the face.
He'd been staring ahead, tears rolling silently down his cheek.
Snap out of it!"
The slap broke whatever held him.
"El?" he rasped.
"This place is feeding on us," she spat. "It's showing us what it wants. Whatever this place is—it's testing us."
They realize the forest is testing them. Those who are weak of heart or mind get swallowed lost forever in the illusion.
But Leo didn't hear them. He had already broken into a run, chasing the silver-haired girl through the trees.
"Where are you?!" he shouted, panic thick in his voice.
"You promised," her voice echoed, softer now, fading.
"Promised what?!" he cried, the trees spinning around him. "Who are you?!"
"You promised you'd remember."
Then the forest howled.
Then came the voices not one, but dozens. Layered and distorted, like multiple versions of someone crying out from every corner of the forest.
"Remember…"
"You promised…"
"Remember!"
The sound wrapped around him like a storm. His head throbbed. The world spun.
"Her!"
The sound attacked his skull. Leo screamed, dropping to his knees, hands pressed to his ears. The whispers became screams. The screams became thunder.
Then—silence.
A hand. Warm, grounding.
"Leo!" El's voice broke through the fog like light through storm clouds. She knelt before him, gripping his shoulders.
"Are you with me?" she asked.
"El!" Leo gasped as he was shaken violently
Leo's eyes fluttered open. "I… I saw someone. A girl. She needed help."
El's jaw tightened "Forget it. It's not real. None of it is," she said grimly.
Behind her, Matthew emerged, face pale, haunted.
The fog was lifting.
But something remained.
The chill. The dread. The way the forest reached into them and twisted the places they thought safe.
Leo stood, helped by El, and for a long moment they just breathed real breaths, ragged and cold.
They said nothing as they walked forward, deeper into the unknown. The forest still whispered behind them, but quieter now, like it knew it had been denied its prize. For now.
No one laughed.
No one dared to speak.
Something had changed.
Their eyes no longer wandered the path.
Their footsteps, once light with wonder, now feel like lead.
Whatever illusions had haunted them, whatever voices had clawed at their past they were still inside.
The three walked in silence.
Marked.
Haunted.
The river emerged like a mirage from the thinning trees, wider than the last one they'd stumbled across. Its surface was glassy and slow-moving, reflecting the sun in pale ripples that scattered like fragments of light across the bank. From its calm surface stretched a web of narrow tributaries, winding off into the forest like veins through a living thing. It looked ancient deep-rooted and knowing.
They stopped.
Not because they wanted to, but because their legs had begun to betray them, and their minds were still fogged with the residue of the forest's illusions. The silence between them hadn't broken since they escaped that place, but it was a silence no longer from fear it was mourning. Mourning for a part of themselves they left behind.
They knelt by the edge of the water, letting the cool stream run over their palms, their faces, their arms. The river was cold but it grounded them. They didn't speak. There was nothing to say.
Matthew and Leo stripped off their dirt-caked shirts, rinsing their skin of sweat and grime. They didn't care if it was proper this wasn't about comfort. It was survival.
El, as always, kept her distance, a few feet upstream. She remained dressed, using a ragged cloth to dab at her arms and neck. Yet now and then, Leo caught her eyes drifting toward them. Not with judgment or discomfort. Just... curiosity. Or maybe something else. But whenever their gazes met, she quickly turned away.
After a while, El's voice cut softly through the quiet.
"Where did you get that?"
Leo blinked, confused. Then he followed her gaze she was looking at the small pendant around his neck, a bronze chain holding a flat stone carved with a faded symbol.
"This?" He touched it with two fingers. "It's from my parents. It's… all I have left."
"Can I see it?" she asked, stepping closer.
He hesitated just for a heartbeat but then took it off and handed it to her.
El held the pendant in her palm, examining it with a strange intensity. Her face, unreadable as ever, softened for a moment. Then she returned it, but not without a quiet warning. Her fingers brushed his shoulder as she handed it back.
"Never show it to anyone," she said.
Leo nodded, startled by the sudden gravity in her tone. "Why?"
But she didn't answer. And somehow… he didn't press her.
They sat on the riverbank a while longer. Still no jokes. No laughter. Just the sound of water and breath. Then El, in a voice almost too quiet to hear, said:
"I saw my mom."
Leo and Matthew both looked up.
"She was angry," El continued, her tone brittle. "Of course she was. I disobeyed her..." She gave a small, bitter chuckle. "That's what the forest showed me. Her face. Disgusted. Like I was some stranger who ruined everything."
A heavy pause followed.
Matthew finally broke it, his voice ragged. "I saw mine too. She said we're dying here… and that it's my fault." He sniffed, wiping his sleeve across his eyes. "Because I'm too weak."
Leo leaned over, resting a firm hand on his shoulder. "It's not your fault," he said. "And we're not dying here. We're still moving. That means something."
Then, Leo sat back and stared down at his reflection in the water.
"I didn't see my mom," he said. "I wish I had."
El and Matthew watched him.
"It was a girl. Her hair was silver… shining. But I never saw her face. She just kept saying I made a promise that I should remember."
El frowned. "A memory?"
Leo shook his head. "No. I don't think I ever met her… Nor remember making a promise to anyone ."
"Maybe it's a vision," El said softly. "You'll know what it means when it's time."
He didn't respond. The memory was still raw. The voice, the pain, the guilt. It wasn't just a hallucination. It clung to him. Like something waiting to unfold.
Eventually, they pulled themselves up and gathered what little they had.
No one said a word as they began walking again.
But Matthew kept glancing toward the treetops, an unease twitching in his fingers. Eventually, he stopped and stared upward. Then, without a word, he grabbed a nearby branch and began to climb.
Leo noticed he was halfway up a tree before he noticed "Matt—what are you doing? That's dangerous." he called up.
"Just want to get a better view. Chill, I'll be careful," he shouted back, already high above us.
El and I waited, staring up, but the branches were thick and leafy. He vanished from sight in seconds.
"Matt? How's it looking?" I yelled, trying to squint through the green blur.
A beat of silence. Then, "I'm at the top!"
We waited for more.
And then his voice came again, louder this time part awe, part fear. "I can see everything. It's… insane."
From his perch, Matt saw what we couldn't. An endless sea of forest stretched out in all directions, no cities, no roads just nature. Untouched, untamed. It hit him, the same way it hit us earlier: we were in the middle of nowhere.
And then… he saw it.
Something flying in the distance. Small, because it was far off but far too large to be anything ordinary if it was still visible from here. It had vast, leathery wings and a long, pointed beak. More of them followed smaller, probably young. Like something out of a museum, a prehistoric display was brought to life. It was like a dinosaur but not quite. Not exactly.
He made his way down slowly. A few scrapes, some muttered curses.
By the time he touched the ground again, El and I were already waiting.
"Well?" I asked. "What did you see?"
"Trees," he said. "A lot of trees. Oh, and a freakin' dinosaur flying around to the north."
I blinked. "Ha ha."
"No joke."
"Wyverns," El chimed in calmly, almost too casually. "They're harmless unless provoked."
I stared at them both. I honestly thought Matt was messing with me. But El? She sounded dead serious. I had to accept it again that we were somewhere entirely… else. Like Narnia or some fantasy world but real.
"I also saw smoke," Matt added. "Far south-west. Could be people."
El frowned. "Could be a village. Could also be bandits."
We all exchanged a look.
"But we won't know unless we check it out," she added. "If we're lucky, they'll help us."
"And if we're not?" Matt asked.
She didn't hesitate. "Then we might get sold as slaves. Simple as that."
Gulp.
Still, we had a direction now. So we pressed on.