The deeper they went, the more the forest pressed in.
It wasn't just the shadows—though they were thicker now, as if the sunlight had grown weary and stopped trying. It was the presence. Every step felt measured by an unseen witness. Moss muffled their footfalls, but the sound of breath, the faint rasp of leather straps, even the clink of Eliakim's chains seemed to hang in the air longer than it should, like the trees were holding the echoes.
Ezra walked with her head tilted slightly, her bark-linen blindfold filtering the dim light into a pale haze. Her steps were careful but steady. She had begun to extend her mana perception outward, just as Caleb had suggested.
In her mind, the forest was no longer just a physical space. Threads of energy coiled through the air, winding around trunks, drifting along branches. Some were faint as mist; others pulsed faintly, like heartbeats in the distance.
Caleb, moving a few paces ahead, glanced back at her once. He didn't speak—just gave a small nod when he saw her focusing.
At the front, Eliakim had the Codex of Imreth open in one hand. The ancient tome's pages glimmered faintly with shifting glyphs, recording the turns and inclines of their path. The Codex drank in details the way the forest drank in silence: without asking, without pause.
"Marking dead roots at thirty paces north," Eliakim murmured to himself, tracing a sigil across the page. The lines shifted to reflect a curling section of path. "Recording canopy density at seventy percent. Ambient mana: high, mutable."
Malachi's voice rumbled from the rear. "Recording's smart. But don't bother marking the trees. They'll move."
Ezra almost turned at that—but something shifted in her perception. The faint threads she'd been tracing suddenly… tugged.
She slowed.
There was movement ahead, not in the way of footsteps, but in the way mana itself shifted. It bent slightly toward them, as though curious.
"Stop," she said quietly.
The others froze instantly.
"What is it?" Eliakim asked, eyes scanning the shadows.
Ezra's head turned slightly toward the source. "Something's close. Not following the path. It's… circling."
A slow creak came from the left, the kind of sound wood makes when it's deciding whether to break. Then another, from the right.
Caleb's bow was in his hand before anyone saw him draw it. Malachi shifted his grip on the mace. Gideon's axe tilted, ready.
The forest seemed to inhale.
From the gloom between the trunks, shapes began to form—at first just knots of shadow, then glimmers of wet green eyes. Six. No… eight. All low to the ground.
They emerged on silent paws—creatures with bodies like stretched lynxes, but their fur was woven through with living vine and thorn. Their eyes glowed faintly, the same sick green as the moss underfoot. When they moved, the leaves along their backs rustled—not as fur, but as growth.
"They're not hunting for food," Caleb murmured. "They're hunting for a reason."
Ezra's perception told her the same thing—threads of energy from each beast bent toward the same point in their group. Not the front. Not the rear. Somewhere near the center.
Her breath caught.
"Spread out," Eliakim ordered quietly, stepping forward, chains uncoiling with a hiss. "Don't give them a straight line."
The creatures didn't lunge. Not yet. They paced in a slow crescent, studying. Their eyes flicked from one face to the next. Then—like the snap of a bowstring—they moved.
The first came for Caleb.
Eliakim's chain lashed out, catching it mid-leap, yanking it sideways into a tree trunk. Gideon's axe split the next one in a blur of motion. Malachi swung low, the mace cracking vines and bone alike.
But the others didn't attack at random—they darted in patterns, cutting through spaces in the formation, herding them. Ezra realized with a jolt—they were trying to separate one of them.
Her mana perception flared. The threads all angled toward her left.
No… toward—
A vine-clad beast lunged past her, ignoring her entirely, and went for Gideon.
The impact sent him staggering back into a root cluster, the creature snapping and clawing as though desperate to drag him away. Caleb's arrow thudded into its side, but the beast barely flinched.
Eliakim's voice rang sharp: "They're after someone!"
"Not me," Malachi grunted, crushing another beast's skull.
The fight turned vicious in seconds. The beasts weren't strong enough to overpower them head-on, but they moved with unnatural coordination. And always, they angled toward Gideon.
By the time the last one fell, cut through by Caleb's blade at close range, the forest had gone still again—but it was a different stillness.
The air seemed to lean in.
Gideon spat on the moss, shaking vine fragments from his axe. "Guess we know who's the favorite."
"Don't be so sure," Malachi said darkly. "Those might've been sent to test, not take."
Eliakim closed the Codex, its pages still faintly glowing. "If the forest reacts to presence… it just reacted. And it didn't like what it found."
They pressed on.
Ezra kept her mana perception active, the threads now weaving tighter around them. She could feel the awareness in the trees more distinctly now—like a slow pulse, syncing faintly with their own heartbeats. When one of them tensed, the pulse quickened. When someone relaxed, it slowed.
It wasn't just watching. It was listening to how they felt.
Once, when Caleb muttered something under his breath about the oppressive heat, a branch above seemed to twist slightly, leaves brushing together in a faint hiss—almost like a shushing.
They reached a section where the trees arched together overhead, forming a natural tunnel. Here, the moss on the trunks glowed faintly, bathing the path in a ghostly green light.
Malachi's eyes flicked upward. "We're close."
"How do you know?" Ezra asked.
He gestured to the moss. "The glow's stronger near the heart. And the air… thicker."
It was true. Every breath now felt weighted, as though they were inhaling more than just air. The taste of loam and sap clung to their tongues.
Eliakim opened the Codex again, the quill in his hand scratching notes even as he walked. "Entry marker… unknown age. Mana density: peak threshold." His eyes narrowed. "Something's here."
And then they saw it.
The tunnel of trees opened into a vast hollow—an almost perfect circle where no undergrowth grew, only soft, black earth. At its center stood a monolithic tree, its trunk so wide that ten men could not have encircled it with their arms. The bark shimmered faintly, as though light moved beneath its surface.
Roots coiled outward like the spokes of a wheel, vanishing into the dark soil. Around the base of the trunk, small white flowers bloomed in precise, unnatural rings.
Caleb exhaled slowly. "The Entrance."
Ezra felt the threads in her perception flare—every one of them bending inward toward that massive trunk, as if it were the source of all things here.
Malachi rested the mace on his shoulder. "Once we step closer, there's no turning back. The Canopy will know us. All of us."
The forest seemed to hear him. Leaves shivered overhead, though no wind blew.
Eliakim closed the Codex, tucking it under his arm. "Then we choose now—walk in together, or walk out alone."
No one spoke for a long moment. Then, one by one, they stepped forward, until their boots sank into the black earth of the circle.
The great tree's bark rippled faintly—like skin responding to a touch.