The Greywood doesn't take. It watches. It waits. And then, it remembers.
Elias didn't know how long he'd been wandering in the grey forest.
Time had twisted itself around him like the fog that coiled low to the ground, blanketing the dead snow. He had walked until the ache in his legs dulled to numbness, until the cold stopped biting and simply lived in his bones. The sky never shifted, a flat blanket of pale gray that left no shadows, no sense of day or night. His only certainty was the weight in his stomach and the dread that something behind him was getting closer.
Still, he didn't turn around.
The trees were thinner now, taller and bare like the ribs of long-dead beasts. The bark was pale, almost white, and occasionally he would pass one that had been carved with symbols—long, curling patterns that reminded him of tree rings, but sharper, deliberate. Human. Maybe.
He noticed a change in the air before he saw the light. It carried smoke and the faint scent of something burnt. At first, he thought he was imagining it, but the snow underfoot had begun to blacken in patches. Ash.
Elias followed it.
He came to a ridge that overlooked a valley. Below, nestled within a tangle of massive trees that rose like living towers, was a village—if it could be called that. The dwellings clung to the trunks like moss, platforms built into the trees with ladders of twisted roots and planks stretched between them. Small fires burned in suspended baskets. And people moved above the ground.
He stood at the edge, watching.
They didn't dress the way anyone from his world would. Some wore stitched hides, others bark-like garments that moved stiffly as they walked. A few were naked, skin smeared with dark sap. Their bodies were lean, almost starved, but their eyes were alert. Too alert.
A woman saw him first. She didn't react. Just turned slowly and motioned to the others. Within seconds, five figures descended like spiders, silent and fast. Elias didn't raise his knife.
He didn't have the strength.
They circled him, examining him. One touched his jacket. Another sniffed his hair.
"Outsider," the woman said. Her voice was low, her face almost featureless—just weathered skin and pale eyes. "From the ash path."
Elias nodded. "I didn't mean to—"
"You were meant to," she interrupted.
They led him into the village without further question. Up wooden steps slick with frost, onto a wide platform lit by a ring of oil lamps. There, he sat. They gave him hot water laced with something bitter. They watched him drink it.
He learned they called this place Derin'nah. The Hollow Among Roots.
No one said what they worshipped, but it was in everything they did. The tree. Always the tree. They bowed to it when they passed. Touched it before speaking. Cut slivers of bark to eat before meals.
The next day, he was led to the center.
A platform higher than the rest, strung with bones. A tree rose through it, the largest he'd seen—gray and smooth, no branches until far above the canopy. At its base, a mound of offerings: bones, feathers, something that looked like a human hand.
"You belong to it now," said the woman. "Like your father."
He froze.
"My father's dead."
She tilted her head. "Yes. Because he broke the vow."
They gave him a place to sleep—a hollow cut into a tree, padded with furs that smelled of rot and smoke. He lay awake most of the night. Listening. The wind didn't whistle here. It moaned. Like something alive. And every so often, he thought he heard his name spoken.
He asked about his father the next day.
The woman—she was their elder, he'd learned—sat him by a small fire and gave him tea that numbed his tongue.
"Your father came through here when the snow first fell. Younger than you, but stronger. He thought he could take from the Greywood. He was wrong."
Elias frowned. "Take what?"
"A memory. A life. A way out."
They showed him a hut on the far side of the village. In it, wrapped in dry vines, was a satchel he recognized. His father's old work bag. Inside were tools, a small journal, and bones. Human. Small. Maybe a child's.
"He tried to make the forest forget," the elder whispered. "But it never does."
Elias spent the next days in silence, helping with menial tasks—hauling buckets of ash water, cutting bark, preparing roots to dry. They watched him constantly. One day, a boy followed him, eyes wide, mouth sewn shut with thin strips of leather. He held out a stone etched with a crude drawing: a man holding a tree.
Elias took it. He still didn't know what it meant.
That night, there was a gathering.
The villagers stood in a circle around the great tree. The air was thick with smoke from burning moss. The elder stood with a bowl in her hands.
She called him forward.
"You've seen what waits beneath," she said.
He nodded.
"You know what your father tried to erase."
He said nothing.
"Then you understand. We live here because we remember. You are the Root's son. You must speak its name."
"I don't know it," Elias said.
The elder stepped closer. Touched his chest.
"You've known it since you were born. It lives under your ribs. It waits in your blood."
Elias felt it then. The slow curl of something familiar. A dream he'd had as a boy—his father, weeping in the barn, carving something into his own chest.
"I can't."
"If you don't, it will take you."
The villagers began to chant. Low. Droning. The tree above them shuddered.
Elias opened his mouth—and screamed.
He saw it all. The tunnel. The thing that wore his mother's skin. The carving in the basement wall. His father's eyes, black with sap, whispering to the roots. And something deeper still. A voice like cracking wood.
The name came unbidden. Raw. Old. Like choking on soil.
And the Greywood listened.
To be continued...