Even the forest forgets—until you remind it.
The next morning, Elias woke with frost caught in the ridges of his breath. He coughed and tasted iron. The air in the Hollow Among Roots had changed overnight. Denser. Metallic. Like the breath of something diseased exhaling through the trees.
Outside the tree-hut, the village had fallen into a disturbing silence.
The usual soft creaks of suspended walkways, the murmurs of chants or fire crackling—gone. The branches overhead were motionless, and not a single rope bridge swayed, even though the wind was still present, rustling somewhere far above. But not here.
He stepped out. The sky, once a dull gray, had gone bone white. Colorless. And the world below it followed suit. Every plank, every hut platform, was bleached, like the forest had been drained of life.
And where the villagers had been… nothing remained.
No bodies. No clothing. No blood.
Only the trees—and the symbols carved into them. Symbols that had once glowed with faint warmth, now ran black, bleeding down the bark like oil or congealed sap. Elias approached one and reached out. The texture had changed. No longer bark—it felt like skin. Cold. Rough. Alive.
He withdrew his hand.
Something had happened overnight.
"Where did you go?" he whispered to the trees.
The trees whispered back.
Not words. Just a sense of pressure. Like a weight dropped somewhere beneath his thoughts. A reminder. He wasn't supposed to speak yet.
He descended to the forest floor. Snow no longer crunched—now it crumbled like ash. Beneath his boots, dark water wept from the ground. There was a wrongness spreading, from the roots up. He followed the flow downhill.
But the deeper he went, the more the forest repeated.
He passed the same cluster of twisted trees three times. The same hollow stump. The same pile of stones arranged like a ribcage. No birds. No animal tracks. Just a dull, looping silence that thickened around him like fog.
Each time he tried to break the loop, it bent back on him.
His thoughts spiraled. He tried counting steps, scratching trees, breaking branches—but always ended up back at the blackened stones. The air had the stale taste of fear. Not his. The forest's.
Only one thing had changed: a sound.
Breathing.
Not his own. Slow. Guttural. Like lungs filled with water. It followed him from a distance, neither close nor far—always just behind a tree or beneath the snow. At one point, he stopped abruptly, and it continued for one breath too long.
That's when he saw the stump.
Perfectly round, wide as a well. At first glance, it looked dead. But the surface lacked tree rings—just a smooth face of pale wood, pulsing faintly.
In the center: a single handprint.
Elias approached slowly. The pulse matched his heartbeat. No, it controlled it. He touched the handprint.
And fell into memory.
---
He stood on the edge of his childhood again.
The farm stretched around him—gray fields, a wind-beaten barn, the old house leaning to one side from years of storms. The air smelled like it had before the world changed: wet soil, rust, pine.
His father was there.
Younger, bearded, flannel shirt stained with grease and blood. Kneeling before the barn's rear wall. Carving.
Elias crept closer. The boy version of himself sat on a windowsill, watching from the second floor, silent and pale. In the yard, his father muttered as he dug the knife into the wall. Strange symbols. Not words. The same ones that bled in the trees.
Then his father raised his palm. Took a nail. Drove it through the center of his hand with a stone.
The scream never came.
Just silence. The tree accepted the blood. The symbols glowed faintly.
Then—
The scene shifted.
His father knelt before the trapdoor in the farmhouse. The wood around it warped. Breathing. The door was bone-white. His father wept into his hands.
"I gave it everything," he whispered. "Everything. But it remembers."
Something moved beneath the floor. Something massive, stretching under the land like roots through rotten soil.
Elias blinked.
And the stump beneath him cracked.
---
He was back. On his knees. Breath ragged.
The wood beneath him split open.
A tunnel. Descending into darkness, slick with moisture. The scent of rot rose from it like a slow exhale. Elias stared. It was the same tunnel from days ago. The same smell, same curve in the earth. But something was different.
Now, it wanted him to come back.
He stood. The forest didn't resist.
He descended.
The tunnel tightened around him. Roots pressed against the walls like ribs. The air was warmer down here, sticky with decay. His boots squelched in soft, wet dirt. He kept going. No torch. Just instinct.
Then he heard it.
Not a voice. A vibration. A word trying to form itself in the meat of his brain.
"Father."
He froze.
The walls moved.
Slow, rhythmic pulses. Like something alive was wrapped around the tunnel. The further he went, the louder the pulse grew—until he could barely hear himself think. Then the passage opened.
A chamber.
It wasn't natural. Too symmetrical. The walls were made of wood and bone, interwoven like veins. In the center: a chair. Carved from a single twisted root. Sitting in it...
His father.
Pale. Hollow-eyed. Dressed in the same flannel. Except now, his skin was etched with symbols. Head to toe. Like bark had grown over him. He looked at Elias and smiled.
"You made it," he croaked. "I never left."
Elias didn't move. "What is this?"
"The only truth. The root. It remembers us, Elias. It grows through us. And we grow back into it."
His father stood. The bark cracked. From his chest, black roots spilled down, writhing like worms.
"It took me when I tried to leave. But you—you belong to it. Like I did."
"No," Elias whispered.
"Yes. We all return. Flesh to root. Memory to sap. This is the price of cutting the forest. You fed it when you found the tunnel. You brought it breath."
The roots surged forward.
Elias turned and ran.
Behind him, the forest screamed.
He didn't look back until he reached the surface.
When he emerged, the Hollow Among Roots was full again.
But no one moved.
Every villager was frozen, arms outstretched toward the great tree. Eyes black. Mouths open. And their skin—cracking, as if bark grew beneath.
The forest had taken them back.
And Elias realized:
He hadn't escaped.
He'd only just entered the root.
[To be continued…]