Chapter 5 — "The Heart Beneath the Bark"
---
The pendant sat on his chest like a second heart, its form closing with a rhythm that was not quite his.
Not quite… human.
Zayaan lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, the pendant rising and falling with each breath—as if it breathed too, but slower, deeper, older.
He hadn't taken it off since Rozin gave it to him. Not out of superstition. Not even out of trust. But because the moment it touched his skin, something inside him changed.
The dreams were no longer just dreams.
The trees in them no longer stood still.
They moved.
Whispered.
They watched.
He remembered his mother once saying, "Some things are planted before us, long before we ever come into being. But their roots stretch through us too."
He never knew what she meant.
Now, he was starting to.
He could feel it—the old rhythm in the woods. It was in the earth, and it was in him. A beat just beneath the skin. A slow, ticking echo that had lived in the roots long before his name was ever whispered. Something ancestral. Something cursed.
The trees weren't just symbols anymore. They were witnesses.
And maybe... they were waiting for him to see what they saw.
Zayaan turned to the window. The same dull sky pressed low over the earth. Even the morning light looked bruised.
Outside, the old Chinar tree in the neighbor's yard swayed slightly, though the wind had not stirred.
He narrowed his eyes. It wasn't swaying.
It was bowing.
To him.
Chapter 5 (Scene Two): "The Bark That Speaks"
Zayaan kept his hand over the pendant, feeling its silent throb against his chest, like the hush before thunder.
Kian walked beside him, not speaking, his gaze sharp and cautious. Ever since they had returned from Sheikh Rozin's home, something unspoken hovered between them—an understanding that none of this was just curiosity anymore.
They were in it.
Too deep to turn around. Too close to ignore.
The morning light cut through the mist like a warning. The town still slept, but the forest ahead didn't. It never did. The trees moved without moving, whispering behind their trunks, humming beneath the bark.
Zayaan felt it again—that strange pull in his bones, a soft drag toward the Chinars. The pendant vibrated faintly, not against the wind, but in rhythm with something older… like it knew the way.
"I saw something in the diary again last night," Zayaan said, his voice low as they walked down the empty road toward the tree-lined edge of the park.
Kian glanced at him. "Your mom's diary?"
Zayaan nodded. "She wrote… 'He doesn't just hear the woods. He listens. And they listen back.' I thought she was writing about someone else. Maybe the first child Rozin spoke of."
"Or maybe she meant you."
Zayaan didn't answer. The pendant pulsed once, like it was agreeing.
They reached the edge of the three Chinars—their old spot. The rock they used to sit on looked smaller now. The air here held stillness, but not peace. It was a kind of listening stillness, like walking into a room full of people just after they've all stopped talking about you.
Kian ran his fingers across the tree bark. His eyes narrowed.
"Do you see this?" he whispered.
The marks.
Symbols.
Not carved with hands, but raised like veins under skin. Old, winding, untranslatable.
They hadn't noticed these before. Maybe they hadn't been there. Maybe they had, and the woods had only now chosen to show them.
Zayaan moved closer. One of the symbols seemed to glow under his shadow. His hand reached out involuntarily, trembling slightly as it hovered over the bark. The pendant grew heavier, syncing with something beneath the surface.
Then his fingers touched it.
And he was no longer standing there.
---
Flash.
A memory—or not a memory—hit him like a wave.
A woman. His mother.
She stood beneath the same tree. Her face was younger. Her hair longer. In her arms, a child that was not Zayaan. Or maybe it was him. A voice whispered—soft, aching, layered with something not human:
> "He was never meant to stay…"
Then a figure in the distance. A man cloaked in grey. Watching. Holding something dark in his hands. Not coming closer. Just watching.
> "There is a pact made in sap and breath…"
The trees creaked.
The child cried.
> "To break it, someone must bleed."
And just like that, Zayaan was back. On the ground. His breath torn from him. Kian kneeling beside him, face pale.
"What happened?" Kian asked. "You blacked out for a second."
Zayaan stared at the tree.
"She was here."
"Who?"
"My mother. A long time ago. She was… hiding something. Someone else was there too."
Zayaan stood up slowly. The earth beneath him felt like it had shifted, subtly, as if the roots were winding tighter beneath his feet. He stared at the trees.
"You remember what Rozin said? About the bloodline, the curse—'the shrap'? I think… it didn't start with me. It started long before. My mom wasn't just protecting me from the woods. She was protecting the woods from something inside me."
Kian exhaled sharply. "What does that even mean?"
Zayaan turned to him, eyes hollow and afraid. "I don't know. But I think I've been lied to my whole life."
They walked back in silence, the symbol still glowing faintly behind them, as if the trees had branded them with a new truth.
As they turned onto the road toward Rozin's, Zayaan paused. Something in his pocket buzzed faintly.
His phone?
No.
He pulled out the pendant—it was warm. The metal shimmered like it had absorbed something… a memory? A name?
There was an engraving on the back he hadn't noticed before. Small. Barely there.
But it was her handwriting.
His mother's.
A single word:
"Return."
Scene Title: "The Roots Remember"
The pendant pulsed.
Not visually, not in any physical sense—but Zayaan could feel it. Pressed against his skin, just over his heart, it moved with something not entirely his own. A strange rhythm, like a second pulse. Like something older, something deeper, was waking inside him.
That night, sleep didn't come easily.
He lay staring at the ceiling, fingers grazing the pendant through his shirt. The words of Sheikh Rozin echoed in his skull:
> "The trees don't forget, Zayaan. They never do."
A clock ticked somewhere in the house—sharp, mechanical, jarring. Every second felt like it cut into him. The scent of earth lingered in his nose, though he hadn't stepped in soil all day.
Then he heard it.
Not the tick of the clock. Not the wind outside.
A whisper.
At first, it was so faint he thought it was the breeze brushing past the window. But it came again—soft, curling in the silence of the room like steam rising from cold ground.
Zayaan...
He sat up sharply.
His heart thundered. Or was it the pendant again?
He stood and walked to the window. The street was dark. Still. The lamplight buzzed above the corner, throwing golden halos on the wet pavement. He pressed his forehead to the glass.
Zayaan...
This time, it was clearer. More certain. The whisper came not from outside—but from inside his own head.
He turned toward the mirror in the corner of the room.
Something about the reflection stopped him.
It wasn't that it looked different.
It was that for the briefest second—he saw the trees behind him.
The same woods.
The same towering trunks.
They flickered in and out like a breath between heartbeats. And behind them, a light. Faint. Cold. Familiar.
A scream built quietly in his chest, but he swallowed it down.
You are not the first. You are not the last.
The voice wasn't his mother's. And yet… there was something maternal about it. Deep. Ancient. A voice that came from roots and rock, not lungs and tongue.
He didn't remember falling asleep.
But when he opened his eyes, he was in the woods.
Again.
Except this time, it wasn't a dream.
He could feel the cold air on his skin, the crackle of dried leaves beneath his feet. His breath fogged in front of him. Above him, the trees moved—not swayed, not bent—but moved, ever so slightly, like creatures stretching awake.
There was no path.
Only silence.
And yet, he walked.
The pendant was warm now. Each step forward brought with it a slow burn in his chest, like the metal was binding him to something beneath the soil.
After what felt like hours—or maybe only seconds—he reached the tree.
The one from the photo.
The Chinar.
Its bark was cracked with age, and in its center was a hollow, shaped almost like a keyhole.
And there, carved faintly into the wood—almost hidden by moss—was a name.
"Aamira."
His mother.
He reached out to touch the name, and the moment his fingers grazed the bark, everything vanished.
He woke up gasping.
Still in his bed. Morning light bleeding through the curtains.
The pendant? Ice-cold now.
Zayaan sat up, drenched in sweat.
And then he saw it.
A leaf on his desk.
A Chinar leaf.
Still green. Still damp.
The woods had followed him home.
---
Kian was the first to speak when they met at the park later that afternoon.
"You look like you didn't sleep. Let me guess… the pendant?"
Zayaan nodded and handed him the Chinar leaf.
Kian frowned. "Okay, that's not normal."
"No," Zayaan whispered. "It's not. And there's something else."
He explained the dream—if it was a dream—the carving on the tree, the whispering, the way the pendant seemed to breathe on its own.
Kian listened without interrupting.
"Zayaan… you know how you've always had this pull toward the woods? Since childhood?"
Zayaan nodded slowly.
"What if… it's not just memory? What if it's something deeper? Like inheritance? Not genes or features. But… weight."
Zayaan's breath caught.
"I think your mother made a pact," Kian said softly. "Or broke one."
---
Back at the shop, Sheikh Rozin was waiting.
He had expected them.
Without a word, he led them into the back again. The shelves groaned with old jars and powders. It smelled like ash and rain.
"I told you once," Rozin said, "your mother was brave. But even the brave pay prices."
"What happened to her?" Zayaan asked.
"She stepped where others feared. She tried to bind something to protect you. The sickness—the cancer—wasn't a coincidence. Not entirely."
Zayaan froze. "You mean she was cursed?"
Rozin tilted his head. "No. She made a deal. A shrap. A sacred bond. With the trees. With something older than we name."
Kian stepped forward. "Why?"
"To protect her bloodline," Rozin said. "To seal something away."
Zayaan's voice cracked. "Me?"
Rozin nodded slowly. "You."
Zayaan staggered back. The pendant against his chest felt heavier than before.
"There's more," Rozin said.
He reached beneath the counter and brought out a folded cloth.
Unwrapped it.
Inside was an old photograph. Black and white. Faded.
Zayaan's mother stood with another child. A boy. About seven or eight. They both stood in front of the woods.
"That," Rozin said, "was the first child."
Zayaan blinked. "Who is he?"
"We don't know," Rozin admitted. "But your mother knew him. They entered the woods together as children. Only she came back."
"And the boy?"
"Vanished. No trace."
Kian leaned in. "So the woods take?"
Rozin's eyes were distant. "Sometimes. When they are hungry. When the pact is broken. Or… when the wrong questions are asked."
Zayaan stared at the photo. There, in the corner, barely visible, was the same symbol they'd seen on the trees.
A threshold.
A warning.
Or an invitation.
Rozin held out a small key.
"This was found in your mother's diary. She left it with me. She said when the pendant begins to breathe, he'll be ready."
"Ready for what?" Zayaan asked.
Rozin's face was grim.
"To find the grave that isn't marked."
Zayaan's skin turned cold. "Grave?"
Rozin nodded. "Someone buried what shouldn't have been touched. And now it calls to you."
---
That night, Zayaan couldn't sleep.
The sky above him was starless. The pendant against his skin beat like a second heart.
He sat by the window.
The Chinar tree at the park swayed in a wind that didn't touch anything else. And in the silence, he heard it again:
You were not the first.
He closed his eyes.
And whispered back:
"But maybe I'll be the last."
Scene: The Pact Beneath the Leaves
The air hung still the next day, too quiet for the late autumn wind that usually rustled the Chinars near the lane. Zayaan walked alone through the narrow alley behind Rozin's shop, his breath sharp in the cold morning light. In his pocket, the pendant pulsed faintly—he could feel it. Not like a beat, not like metal brushing skin, but as if it were inhaling and exhaling, breathing against him.
He didn't tell Kian yet. Not everything. Some things had begun to feel too strange for words.
Rozin was waiting. A small clay stove burned low in the corner, giving the room a smoky scent of old leaves and cardamom. The herbalist motioned for Zayaan to sit, his eyes lingering too long on the pendant now resting on Zayaan's chest.
"It fits you," Rozin said quietly.
Zayaan stayed silent. He watched the man pull out a dust-covered wooden box from under the cot. He opened it carefully. Inside were worn-out papers, charcoal rubbings, and a photograph. Zayaan leaned closer.
In the photo were three people.
One was unmistakably Rozin—much younger. The second was a woman who looked eerily like his mother. And the third—a boy.
His heart paused. The boy's face felt familiar. Deeply, horribly familiar.
Rozin traced the boy's outline with his finger. "His name was Aarif. He lived in this village nearly thirty years ago. He wandered into the woods. He never came back."
Zayaan's mouth went dry. "But that's… I've seen him. In dreams."
"I know," Rozin whispered. "He was the first to be marked. The one who was taken… and never entirely let go."
Zayaan looked at Rozin in disbelief. "What do you mean taken?"
Rozin folded his hands. "Years ago, your great-grandfather made a pact. No one remembers the exact terms. Only that it was sealed beneath the Chinar trees, under the blood moon. They say he asked the woods to cure his daughter from a wasting illness. And they answered. But something else came in return."
Zayaan's blood turned cold. "A shrap?"
Rozin nodded. "A wound passed through generations. A curse. Your mother carried it in silence. She thought leaving the village would spare you. But you—"
"I dream what she dreamt," Zayaan interrupted. "I hear the same whispers. The trees… they remember me."
"No," Rozin said, voice tightening. "They remember the pact."
Zayaan stood, backing toward the door. "Why me? Why now?"
Rozin opened the other folded paper. A torn map. Faint markings.
"There's a path through the woods," he said, voice trembling. "A place even I've never gone. Your mother marked it, just once, before she left for the city. I believe that's where it lives—the origin. Where the pact was made… and where it can be broken."
Zayaan's head spun. Trees, dreams, children vanishing, cursed blood. Everything suddenly felt realer than it had any right to be.
"Then I'll go there," he said, barely recognizing his own voice. "I'll end it."
Rozin looked at him with ancient sadness. "Be careful, Zayaan. That forest does not forget. And it never gives without taking."
As Zayaan stepped out, Kian was already waiting for him outside the shop, his hands in his jacket pockets, eyes wide.
"I heard part of it," Kian said. "You're not doing this alone."
Zayaan looked at him—and for the first time in weeks, smiled.
"You'd come?"
"I've already seen too much," Kian muttered. "We both have."
And just like that, a new path was forming. Not just through the woods, but through everything they thought they understood about life, about family, and about whatever waited between the trees.
Scene Title: "The Hollow Where They Swore"
The woods weren't quiet tonight.
They breathed.
Not with the rustle of leaves or the calls of hidden birds, but with a thick, low sound like roots shifting beneath the soil. The air felt old—older than memory, older than myth. It pressed against Zayaan's skin like wet cloth. His pendant pulsed again, that same slow rhythm that didn't quite match his heartbeat.
Kian walked beside him, silent, his jaw tight. They both knew where they were headed: the place Rozin had called the hollow—the place where it began. The place of the pact.
None of them had ever gone this deep before.
The trail narrowed. Then disappeared altogether.
Zayaan stopped. "This is it."
He didn't know how. He just knew.
The trees were different here. Not just tall—but bent, as if leaning in to whisper something no one else was allowed to hear. Their trunks bore scars. Symbols, like the one on the letter from his mother. Like the one etched into the rock under the Chinars.
"Do you feel that?" Kian asked, his voice nearly swallowed by the silence.
"I feel watched," Zayaan whispered.
They stepped into the hollow.
And the world changed.
It was subtle at first. A sensation like static in the lungs. Then shadows began to pulse differently—almost alive, almost sentient. The clearing was round, unnaturally so, and in the center stood a stone circle, half-buried by moss and time.
And then—
A low creaking. Not from the trees, but from something beyond them.
Zayaan turned.
From the shadows, a figure emerged. Gaunt. Faceless. Made not of flesh but of bark and smoke. Its limbs too long. Its fingers like twigs.
Zayaan stepped back. The pendant around his neck burned cold.
Kian reached for a stone, ready to throw.
And then—
A shout from behind. "Move!"
Wizz burst through the trees, swinging a long branch like a staff. Yuwin followed, tossing what looked like powdered salt into the creature's path. The thing hissed—a hollow, dying sound—and recoiled.
"What the hell is that?" Kian shouted.
"Don't look at it!" Yuwin warned. "It feeds on attention. Just like the dreams."
Wizz dragged Zayaan back. "Told you we'd show up when things got weird."
The creature twisted. Splintered.
But it didn't chase. It simply stood there, staring with no eyes at all.
"It can't leave this circle," Yuwin said, panting. "But it's bound to whoever made the pact."
Zayaan clutched the pendant. "Who made it?"
The silence that followed said more than words.Wizz looked at him. "We think… your mother was part of it. Maybe not willingly."
The creature moaned. Trees around the hollow bent lower, branches groaning.
"It was a deal," Yuwin said quietly. "A promise made to protect something. Or someone."
Kian frowned. "And now it's broken?"
Wizz nodded. "And it's hungry."
Zayaan stepped forward. "I need to know everything. About her. About me. About this place."
Yuwin tossed another pinch of powder. The creature faded back into the trees, dissolving into ash.
Wizz placed a hand on Zayaan's shoulder. "Then it's time we talk to the last person who was there when the pact was made."
Zayaan turned. "Who?"
Yuwin glanced toward the village.
"Someone who's been lying to you your whole l
Scene Title: "The Man Who Never Forgot"
The village looked different at dusk—quieter, heavier. As if the very earth remembered something no one dared speak aloud.
Zayaan walked ahead, his breath ragged, his clothes smelling of ash and old bark. Wizz and Yuwin followed close, while Kian hung back, still shaken by what they had just witnessed.
Their destination was a small, faded house on the edge of the village—half swallowed by overgrown hedges, its roof patched with rusted metal sheets. The door creaked before they even touched it.
"He's always awake," Wizz murmured. "Even when he shouldn't be."
"Who is he?" Zayaan asked.
Yuwin glanced at him. "They call him Baba Taariq. But when your mother was young, she just called him Mamu Jan. Her uncle. Your great-uncle."
Zayaan froze.
No one had ever told him about Baba Taariq. He was a name unspoken in the house, a presence erased from photos and stories alike.
"He's the last one left who was there," Wizz said. "He remembers the pact. He remembers her."
Zayaan's hand clenched. The pendant around his neck was still cold, pulsing faintly.
Yuwin knocked.
The door opened before the knock finished.
A man stood in the threshold. Skin like old paper, folded and weathered. Eyes clouded but alert—too alert.
"You brought him," the man rasped. His voice sounded like dry leaves.
"Zayaan," Yuwin said softly, "this is Baba Taariq."
The old man studied him. Not like he was meeting someone new—but like he was looking at someone he had once buried.
"You're the boy," Taariq whispered. "The child the trees couldn't forget."
Zayaan stepped forward. "You knew my mother."
Taariq didn't answer. Instead, he turned and walked inside, slow and deliberate.
The house was dimly lit with oil lamps. Shelves lined the walls—packed with old books, dried herbs, cracked photos. Every corner seemed to whisper.
"Sit," Taariq said.
Zayaan obeyed.
Taariq sat opposite him, placing a small wooden box on the table between them. He opened it. Inside: a withered piece of bark with markings on it. The same symbol Zayaan had seen in his dreams. The same one beneath the Chinars.
"Your mother was one of four," Taariq began. "They made the pact when the woods still answered to silence. It was meant to protect your bloodline. But she broke the chain."
"Why?" Zayaan asked.
Taariq looked him dead in the eyes.
"Because she saw what the woods wanted in return."
He pushed the bark forward.
"You were meant to inherit the pact. But she tried to shield you."
Zayaan touched the bark. His fingers trembled.
"She called you the second heart," Taariq said. "Because she knew one day… your heart would beat with the trees."
"What are they?" Zayaan asked. "The things in the woods?"
"They're not spirits," Taariq said. "They're not demons. They are… remembers. The woods remember pain. They hold it. They grow with it. That's why they never die."
Zayaan felt a pressure build in his chest.
"Your mother thought she could leave it behind. But you were born with it. That's why they call to you. That's why they watch."
Silence fell like snow.
Then Taariq leaned in, his voice cold and final.
"She didn't just protect you, boy. She lied to everyone. Someone else went missing back then. A child. That was the first cost of the pact."
Zayaan's blood ran cold.
"Who?" he whispered.
Taariq stared.
"You'll find her name buried where your mother couldn't reach. But you already know where to look."
Zayaan stood. "The tree."
Taariq nodded once.
"Beneath the roots. Beneath the silence."
Final Scene – Chapter 5
"What the Trees Remember"
The wind twisted between the Chinar trunks like a voice with no tongue. The four boys stood in a half-circle where the pact had been made years ago — the clearing where time had once stopped, and now, refused to stay still.
Zayaan gripped the pendant tight against his chest. It pulsed, slowly, irregularly… like a second heartbeat that didn't quite belong to him.
"It's here," he whispered.
Wizz glanced around, flashlight beam shivering. "What's here, exactly?"
"The thing that's been waiting," Kian said, quiet and firm. "It remembers."
The trees loomed higher now, darker than the sky itself. Above them, branches clawed the clouds. The earth smelled of damp rot and ash. Everything was still — too still — as if the forest had exhaled and refused to breathe in again.
Suddenly, Yuwin gasped. "Guys—"
A whisper rolled through the grove like the rustle of dead leaves.
> You came back...
Zayaan stumbled back. The voice wasn't outside. It was inside. A thought not his own.
His mother's words echoed in the chambers of his memory:
"Never go too deep into what doesn't call you by name."
But it had called. Again and again.
And this time, it knew his name.
From the center of the grove, the ground cracked. Roots shivered and untangled, slithering like veins just beneath the surface. The soil shifted, revealing a faint symbol etched into a buried stone — the same symbol that had haunted Zayaan since the letter. Since the photo. Since her.
Then, a scream.
It wasn't human.
A shape rose — not fully formed, part shadow, part light. Its body was made of tree bark and long-forgotten bones, flickering like smoke in moonlight. Its face was not a face — just hollow space. But its presence was suffocating.
The pendant on Zayaan's chest burned.
> "It's him," Rozin's voice came back to him. "Or what became of him…"
The spirit twisted toward Zayaan. Its mouth never moved, but the voice boomed inside them all:
> You are the root of what was cut down.
You carry the blood. The breach. The memory.
You should not have returned.
Wizz stumbled back, nearly tripping over the roots. "What the hell is that?!"
Yuwin grabbed his arm. "It's not just a spirit. It's bound to the grove — to him. To Zayaan!"
Zayaan's legs felt heavy. Like the ground was trying to keep him. He stared at the spirit and suddenly… memories came. Not his. Or maybe once his.
A little boy running through the woods. A woman calling after him. A voice whispering beneath the bark. A child before him—another—drowning in voices.
"The first child," Zayaan whispered. "This is what happened to the first child."
And then the spirit lunged.
Kian grabbed Zayaan and pulled him back just in time. Wizz and Yuwin threw something—salt, or herbs Rozin had given them—toward the center of the clearing. The entity shrieked. Its form rippled, split, then collapsed inward with a horrible tearing sound. Not gone. Not banished. Just recoiling.
A single leaf — Chinar, burnt around the edges — landed in Zayaan's palm.
Written across it, not carved, not inked, but grown into the veins of the leaf:
> Leave while there's still something left of you.
—
They didn't speak much after that.
The four walked back in silence. No jokes. No theories. No plans.
The grove didn't try to stop them.
It didn't need to.
Zayaan left that night. Without a real goodbye. Something in him had unraveled, quietly. Like the trees had taken something back.
Weeks later, the others left too — spread across cities, across years.
But some nights — on the cold ones when sleep doesn't come easy — Zayaan still feels the trees breathing behind his dreams. Still feels the pendant pulsing, ever so faintly.
Like something waiting.
Something unfinished.
Something still remembering.
---
[End of Chapter 5]