The snow thinned after the third day of walking west.Patches of brown earth showed through like old bruises, and the air no longer bit—it whispered. The forest changed color as they entered it: needles darkened from silver to green, trunks rose wider, roots thick as bridges. The quiet here was heavier than in the mountains, not empty but listening.
Kael felt it first in his feet. The ground had a pulse.
He paused mid-step, toes pressing into the cold soil. Beneath the frozen crust something moved—not fast, not loud, just steady, as if the entire forest breathed once every few minutes. When he looked up, the girl was already watching him.
"You hear it," she said.
He nodded. "It's like the mountain."
"Same blood. Quieter."
She crouched and placed her palm against the dirt. Kael copied her. The heartbeat of the earth answered both of them, faint and patient. When he pulled his hand away the Lines in his arm shimmered, not with heat this time but with a calm glow, like embers buried deep.
"Don't let it take you," the girl said. "It will if you listen too long."
He asked, "Take me where?"
"Nowhere you can come back from."
They walked until their shadows grew long and crooked. The trees closed tighter, branches interlocking overhead until light filtered through like water through stone. Somewhere distant, something groaned—the sound of wood bending under its own age.
When the girl finally stopped, Kael almost stumbled into her. She pointed to a cluster of black stones jutting from the roots of a fallen oak. A faint mist rose from between them.
"Warm ground," she said. "Good for the night."
They cleared the snow and built a shelter using the oak's ribs as walls. Kael gathered branches while she set traps in silence. Every time he bent to pick up wood, the faint throb under his soles reminded him that the world still lived.
When they finished, the girl sat cross-legged beside the small hollow they'd made. She took a stone from her pouch and struck it against another, coaxing a spark. Kael flinched at the brightness.
"Still afraid of fire?" she asked, not unkindly.
"It's not the fire," he said. "It's what comes after."
She didn't press. The flame caught, small and orange, eating the mist until warmth spread through the hollow. Kael held his hands near it, half expecting his Lines to flare, but they only pulsed in rhythm with the glow.
The girl watched him. "You control it better now."
"I think it listens," he said.
"It doesn't listen," she corrected. "It remembers. You're asking it to forget."
They ate the last of the dried rabbit. The taste was dull, but it filled the space where fear usually lived. When the fire dimmed to coals, the girl began drawing shapes in the dirt again—lines and circles, intersecting patterns that looked almost like veins.
"What is that?" Kael asked.
"Breath paths," she said. "For training."
He leaned closer. The pattern reminded him of the lines under his skin—same symmetry, same branching. She tapped one of the circles. "You breathe from here." Her finger traced a curve to another. "You send it here. If you skip the path, the body burns itself."
He tried to follow, mirroring her movements with his own breaths. The air in the hollow grew warmer; the coals brightened. Sweat gathered on his brow even in the cold. His Lines responded instantly, glowing a soft red that spread up his arm and across his chest.
The girl nodded once. "Good. Again."
They repeated it until his shoulders trembled and the light dulled from fatigue. When he stopped, she said, "Now you can rest without freezing."
Kael sank back against the oak's roots, chest heaving. "How do you know all this?"
"Someone taught me," she said.
"Who?"
She shook her head. "Doesn't matter."
He wanted to ask more but her tone ended the talk. The forest answered for them anyway, sighing through the branches like an exhale.
That night he dreamed he was lying on the forest floor with his ear pressed to the dirt. The heartbeat under him grew louder until it became his own. The two merged—no difference between Kael and soil, between blood and sap. When he woke, the dream pulse was still in his chest, slow and heavy, matching the rhythm outside.
The girl was awake, sitting near the embers, listening. Her eyes were open but distant.
"What is it?" he whispered.
She raised a finger for silence. Then, very softly: "The forest is shifting."
Kael listened. The usual sounds—wind, branches, far-off cracking—had all gone still. Even the mist had stopped moving. The world was holding its breath.
Then, somewhere in the dark beyond the roots, a tree groaned—not from wind, but from pressure, as if something enormous pressed against it.
The girl grabbed his arm. "Don't move."
They waited. A branch snapped. Snow fell in slow cascades. Kael's heart hammered once, hard. His Lines flared bright enough to show through his sleeve.
"Quiet lung," she hissed.
He tried. The heat fought him, crawling up his neck like panic made real. He bit his lip until he tasted blood, forcing the rhythm back down.
The groaning faded. The silence returned.
Only then did she let go. Her hand was shaking.
"What was that?" he whispered.
"Something old," she said. "Something that remembers us."
They left before dawn, not speaking, not looking back. The trail ahead was a long, dark ribbon winding through trees that leaned close as if to listen. Kael followed the girl's steps exactly, copying her balance, her breath, the way she touched the earth as though it were alive.
By midday, sunlight finally broke through the canopy. For the first time in weeks, he felt warmth that didn't come from pain or fear. The Lines in his body stayed quiet.
He caught himself smiling—small, fleeting, but real.
The girl noticed and asked, "What?"
"Nothing," he said. "Just feels different."
She looked at the light breaking across the trees. "It won't last," she said, but her voice carried less warning and more truth.
Kael nodded. "Then I'll remember this part too."
They walked on until the forest's heartbeat faded into wind again, and only their own remained.