The forest had gone unnervingly silent.
Not the soft quiet of peace, but the smothering kind that made the air feel heavier, thicker, harder to swallow. It was the quiet of a thousand eyes staring without blinking.
Even the wind had stopped. Not a whisper through the pine needles, not a flutter of the leaves. The tall, ancient trees seemed to lean in on themselves, as if straining to hear something. Or to hide something.
Kael's boots sank deep into the wet earth, each step leaving behind a dark print that instantly filled with rainwater. His breath came slow, deliberate — not from exertion, but from the way the stillness pressed on his chest like a weight.
The path ahead looked wrong. Not just unfamiliar — wrong.
They passed the same crooked tree again, its trunk split halfway up like it had been torn open from within. A moss-streaked boulder loomed beside it, slick with rain. They'd walked past it already… ten minutes ago.
