The forest had always been close — a low green wall that framed Veilmoor's southern edge like a border drawn by old gods. But now… it leaned.
It loomed more than it ever had. Trees that once stood straight now tilted ever so slightly toward the village, like listeners at a door. Branches reached beyond their boundaries. Roots coiled under the fence posts near the pastures. The mist no longer stayed trapped in the lower hollows. It crept into the edges of the fields, kissing the barley with damp breath before curling down roads and alleys.
It came with sound.
Not the usual hum of insects or the distant hoot of owls. This was something deeper. Voices. At first, just the suggestion of them — like a song caught in the wind and carried across stone. But by the seventh night after Lina's disappearance, the whispers became unmistakable.
It was Marlen, the butcher's widower, who heard it first. He'd been chopping wood near the back of his shed when the air thickened around him like syrup.
At first, he thought it was the breeze — but there was no wind.
Then he heard her.
"Marlen…"
The voice was unmistakable. Gentle, throaty. His wife had whispered to him just like that in the small hours, when the candles had long burned down. But she'd been dead five winters. Buried with rosemary in her hands.
"It's cold, love. Come find me."
The axe dropped from his fingers.
He ran into the village screaming.
---
The next day, three other villagers reported the same.
One man claimed to hear his mother's voice — she'd been missing twenty years. A young girl swore her cousin had whispered her name from the apple grove before twilight, calling her to pick wildflowers near the trees. But she hadn't gone. She hadn't. And still… there was dirt on her bare feet when her mother pulled her into the house.
Even the priest, Father Corin, began to tremble during his homilies. He kept his sermons short. He didn't meet Elira's eyes anymore.
They gathered in the square.
It was not a formal town meeting — Veilmoor had no such luxuries. But by the tenth night, it was clear the village could no longer pretend.
The old stone square, once a place of cider festivals and spring dances, now held only tense bodies and flickering lanterns. People clutched shawls tighter. Eyes darted toward the trees. The forest pulsed with pale green shadow beyond the last cottage. It watched.
"We need to seal it off," someone said. "The forest path. Burn it shut if we have to."
"And when it comes anyway?" cried the blacksmith's apprentice. "What happens when it reaches our doors?"
Murmurs rose.
"Maybe we should leave."
"There's nowhere to go!"
"We could try the mountain roads—"
"No. We've lived here for generations. We don't run."
And then… silence.
Elira had stepped forward.
She said nothing at first — just looked at them, her silver-green eyes reflecting torchlight. Her dress was dark violet tonight, and her hair moved in the breeze, though no wind touched the others.
"There is something in the woods," she said quietly. Her voice didn't rise, but everyone heard her. "And it is no longer sleeping."
The crowd stilled.
Elira looked toward the trees.
"It calls because it remembers. The voices are not lies — but they are not truths, either. They are fragments. Echoes of what was loved, what was wanted, what was given."
She paused.
"And what was taken."
"What is it, Elira?" asked Marta, the midwife, her voice thin with fear. "You know more than you say."
Elira didn't answer. Not directly.
Instead, she spoke without turning around. "There is a story older than this village. Older than me." She smiled faintly. "Barely. A creature born not of flesh, but of longing. It takes form from what we most crave. But it feeds on what we forget to protect — ourselves."
"You have seen it…" someone whispered.
"I helped make it," she nearly said.
Instead, she turned her head slightly. "You must not listen to the trees."
"But what if it is them?" someone else asked. "What if our loved ones are still alive?"
"Then they are lost," Elira said softly, "and no longer what they once were."
---
That night, as the villagers returned home, they found the mist thicker.
And through it — unmistakable now — the moaning had returned.
Low. Guttural. Feminine.
It rolled through the air like thunder wrapped in silk. Long sighs of pleasure and pain, so intermixed no one could tell them apart. Some covered their ears. Others listened with shameful arousal.
And for a few unfortunate souls, the sounds were familiar.
A wife. A sister. A daughter.
A moan they remembered hearing behind bedroom doors, once sacred and now forever echoed.
---
From the shadows of her ivy-choked home, Elira sat in silence, her fingers brushing the rim of a worn chalice filled with something dark and steaming. Her eyes fixed on the forest.
Not with fear.
With… recognition.
A sound drifted in through the broken window — a laugh, light and silvery, followed by a man's voice crooning a name.
"Elira…"
She didn't flinch.
But the cup trembled in her hand.