Light rose behind the treetops and stayed there. It pooled along the branches, caught behind mist that had not lifted. Morning had arrived but the day had not. The trail softened. Mud caught at boots but made no sound. Even breath felt dulled. Padded. The forest absorbed everything.
The fog had thickened.
Sera slowed. Her hand twitched toward her glyph glove. The mist ahead swallowed the path by degrees. Ten paces. Fifteen. No further. She stopped mid-step and frowned toward the space that should have opened by now. Behind her, Ryn angled their stride to avoid a sunken patch.
"Feels like we're walking into a throat."
No birds. No hum of flies. Not even the nervous trill of leaves rubbing together. The weight of silence grew dense enough to hold shape. At the rear, the Cripple kept pace. Fog slid heavier between the trees here. Thicker near the trunks that had grown too smooth. The pattern repeated — always the same kind of tree, leaning slightly inward.
The sixth tree had shifted. Not moved. Shifted. Off by less than a pace. But it hadn't been there before. The Hero raised a hand. The party stopped clean.
"Something's wrong."
Sera traced a single glyph into the air, soft blue across her palm. It flared once and died. No residue. No distortion. No ley drift. Just blank. The Cripple stepped nearer, slow, steady.
"There was a tree there."
His voice was raspy; he had not uttered a word since last night. Perhaps he should have kept quiet. But it did not feel right to him.
"Six," he added. "Now there's five."
Thorne squinted at the direction the Cripple pointed.
"You're sure?"
"I—" His mouth opened, then closed again. "I count things."
The sentence hung there. He looked down. He should have said nothing. Or said it better. Ryn snorted.
"He counts. Guess that's something."
The Hero drew his sword, and they advanced without command. Formation closed tight: the Hero forward-left, Ryn sweeping right, Thorne steady between. Sera hung just behind the line, her glove already glowing with faint glyphlight. The Cripple walked in their wake. Fog closed around their ankles. Every step came slower now. The mist no longer drifted; it pressed. A weight that sank into joints and sleeves, into breath and rhythm.
A curl of motion passed through the rootline. The Hero moved first, closing the distance in two strides. His blade cut in a clean diagonal, edge biting bark. The wound opened fast. Sap hissed out — black, wet, and sharp-smelling — and hit the ground in thick drops.
The tree did not fall. It split. The trunk peeled back in silence, splitting clean along the grain, as if the bark had been stitched and was only now allowed to open. Inside stood something taller than a man, not flesh and not wood, but a cage of bone wrapped in rootlike tendon, the muscle formed from twisted fibre. Its limbs were too long, the joints bent too smoothly. A ridged skull sat above a hollow chest. It stepped free.
The Hero struck. One stride forward — slash across, then up. His blade gleamed radiant in the foglight. A split opened from shoulder to chest, more shallow than anticipated. Black sap spilled fast. Thick. Gummed. The creature recoiled. One limb curled back to shield the wound. Its head snapped toward the Hero. He had chosen his target. The arm not shielding the wound lashed out.
The Hero dodged left. The strike missed. Bark splintered where it landed, deep enough to split root. The speed was wrong — too fast for a creature that large, too sharp for something built from thread and bone. It struck again. The Hero caught the limb with the flat of his blade, deflecting it down and away. The contact made no sound — only a judder, like stone scraping wood from the inside.
Ryn appeared behind it. Twin knives, downward arc. Metal hit plating. The edge skidded off like flint on wet stone.
"Shit," they hissed. "This thing isn't made of wood."
The creature twisted hard, lashing in a blind sweep that forced Ryn back. Sera's glove lit in a pattern glyph — three links rotating fast, gold and rust red. She released it before the creature rebalanced. The spell struck the upper chest. A crack tore across its torso — visible, splitting the outer shell. Still, it did not fall. It pivoted, arms rising in sync, spine bending at the middle in an unnatural fold. In the blink of an eye, the creature had lunged. Straight at Sera. Not random. Not reactive.
It had waited through the Hero's strikes. Absorbed Ryn's blades. Weathered the first glyph chain without deflecting. But now — now, it moved with purpose. Sera's hand snapped up. The glyph cast instantly, a binding weave meant to arrest forward motion, but the creature barely slowed. The spell flared against its chest, then blinked out. Nullified. She cast again. Faster this time, tighter — a burning strike built for raw contact — but the creature twisted low in a motion far too deliberate for instinct. It moved through the glyph as though it had seen her casting pattern before. Sera's eyes widened.
That pivot was not a dodge. That fold had bought it space. Her hand rose instinctively, and the glyph snapped half-formed. Too late. The creature raised one arm, straight across her cast vector, angled to disrupt the completion sequence. Not a mere killing strike, but a caster's kill. The Cripple saw it. Its weight leaned left. Too much force on the outer stride.
"Wrong side!"
Sera turned slightly and the cast vector tilted. The glyph snapped wide — not where she had aimed, but enough to delay the creature by a breath. It adjusted mid-lunge, still fast. Still committed. Thorne moved. He met the creature mid-stride — shield braced, shoulders locked. The blow landed with a sound like a dropped beam. The shield cracked inward. Thorne took the force and fell hard, sliding across the mud in a sharp line before coming to a stop.
Sera's glyph completed — not the original weave, but a pressure-burst shaped on instinct. The release came from the lowest vertebra in the ridge, the one anchoring the spine to the second limb. A point no monster would guard. The blast struck. There was no scream, but the body convulsed. All at once, every limb jerked wide — elbows flared, chest distended, spine snapping backward in a sharp curve. For a breath, it stood arched and shuddering, as if the nerves inside had fired their last orders without a mind to guide them. It spasmed again. Joints clicked in sequence. Head rolled twice around a non-existent neck. Then the weight gave out. The body crumpled in stages. First the torso. Then the hips. Then the limbs folded in, dragging loose, twitching once more before stilling.
The mimic laid crumpled in the dirt, limbs locked in unnatural angles, spine bowed as if in supplication. Steam rose from the torn core. Sera did not lower her hand. Her glove still glowed faintly, the final glyph-thread unspooling at her wrist. Her breath came fast — not panic, but the kind of recovery that followed deliberate violence. Her body had not left the fight.
The Hero stepped past her without a word. He moved straight to Thorne and dropped to one knee. That movement brought Sera back. She turned and followed, already reaching for her satchel as she crossed the space. A diagnostic pulse lit across her fingers, runes forming before her palm touched cloth. Light weaved down his side, threads tightening across bruised ribs and torn soft tissue. Stabilisation only. She would not risk deeper magic until they cleared the area. Thorne stirred beneath her hand, not fully conscious yet.
Blood ran slow beneath his shoulder. The earth drank it without sound. The Hero watched. His hands remained at his knees, the blade untouched at his side. He did not look at Sera. Or Thorne. Just at the line of blood beneath the armor's edge.
"He went before I did."
He was not speaking to be answered. There was no anger in his voice. No guilt, either.
"That cannot happen again."
Sera did not look up. Her hand passed once more over the ribs. The rune had settled, threads dimming into the cloth at Thorne's side. She wiped her palm against her sleeve, slowly, and folded the glove closed. Behind them, Ryn paced a wide, uneven arc around collapsed husk, blades still drawn. He nudged a limb with their boot.
"That thing was planted here."
The Cripple stood off to the side, eyes on the mimic's corpse. He had not moved since the others began tending to Thorne. He replayed the attack in his mind — how it had moved, every response measured. His feet took him to its side, and he instinctively reached for one of the fallen segments. Beneath it, soil, moss peeled back. And under that — a circular mark. A glyph, barely visible, etched deep. The edges had worn down with time, but the structure remained intact. He did not touch it.
***
They moved forward in silence. The clearing had offered no shelter. The fog had not lifted — only stretched. It no longer hung above them but drifted low and wide, pooling between roots, sliding over the trail in slow, deliberate folds.
Thorne could not walk. The Hero carried him without complaint. He adjusted the weight once, then once more. His pace remained even, but the shift in his grip left a mark. Sera walked beside him. Her glove cast a wide net, the spell drawing steadily across the forest floor in a low, repeated pulse. The threads curved outward every few steps, gauging range, mapping contact. She could not speak while it held. The strain had settled across her jaw. Her eyes were focused and unblinking.
Ryn walked ahead. Their steps were light, but their posture had stiffened. One hand hovered near the hilt of a blade. They stopped near a fallen branch and bent down. When they rose, they held a strip of cloth in one hand — weathered, heat-scored.
"Imperial scout issue."
The fabric had scorched unevenly. The crest at the centre had curled in on itself, the metal stitching warped by heat. The blue had burned pale at the edge.
"It's still warm."
The Hero took the fabric, turned it over once and passed it back. He did not slow. Paths had begun to open. The trees ahead formed corridors — narrow and regular, spaced like teeth. One trail curved left. Another opened ahead. The forest had begun to behave like a host.
The Cripple lingered at the back. His steps fell light. He watched the spacing between trunks, how the roots adjusted underfoot. Nothing blocked the trail behind them, but the shape of it had changed. The soil had settled where they had passed, smooth again. The marks of boots, the scatter of crushed leaf — gone. He slowed to watch it happen. The air did not stir. The branches did not move. But the path they had taken was no longer there.
[System Notice: Terrain Sync Incomplete]
[Discrepancy Detected: Physical Displacement vs. Environmental Recall]
[Designation: Memory-Bound Zone – Revision Phase Active]
[User Classification: Unaffected]
[Directive: Forward Progression Required]