Teo woke up on his back, staring into faint darkness.
For half a second his brain tried to comprehend what he was seeing—trees, canopy, woods—and that tiny act of taking in the forest made it feel normal.
Then he swallowed.
Dirt scraped his throat. Something sour coated his tongue. He gagged, rolled, and hacked up mud onto the shredded leaves beside his face. His chest burned like he'd been holding its breath for hours.
He pushed himself upright too fast and the world spun. His stomach lurched like he'd stood up on a moving elevator. He slapped a hand down to steady himself.
Cold, damp soil. Leaves stuck to his palm.
He blinked hard, once, twice, waiting for the world to come back into focus—
He looked around.
There was a crater.
A shallow bowl of torn earth and snapped brush surrounded him. Roots were ripped up and exposed like veins. Dirt had been flung outward in a rough ring, like something heavy had hit and the forest had tried to swallow the wound.
Teo's breath hitched.
"What the—" His voice cracked, too loud, and he cut it off mid-sentence.
Not because he'd been told to be quiet.
Because hearing his own voice die in the air felt wrong, like shouting into a pillow.
He sat there, blinking, heart thumping so hard it made his ears ring.
Then the thought hit clean and ugly:
Where is my phone?
His hands went to his pockets with stupid hope.
Front pocket. Empty.
Other front pocket. Empty.
Back pocket. Empty.
Keys?
Nothing.
Wallet?
Nothing.
His fingers kept searching like they didn't believe him. Like he could pat the right spot and the world would apologize and hand everything back.
Nothing.
"No." The word came out louder than he meant. "No, no—"
No mames…
He spun in place, eyes snapping around for anything that made sense. A road. A fence. A sign. A distant building. A plane overhead.
Green and brown. Trunks. Vines. Ferns. Leaves.
That was it.
And the silence—
It was the silence that made him feel like he'd stepped off the planet.
No birds. No insects. No wind. No distant traffic. Not even that soft constant background noise your brain forgets until it's gone.
Teo swallowed and felt his throat click.
His hands started shaking. He clenched them, unclenched them, then wiped them hard on his jeans like he could wipe off panic.
"Okay," he whispered, because if he didn't put words in the air his thoughts were going to start screaming. "Okay. Think."
Respira. Por favor.
The rational part of him tried to stack explanations like a foreman stacking excuses:
Maybe he'd fallen asleep.
Maybe he'd crashed somewhere remote.
Maybe he'd hit his head and wandered.
Maybe—
None of those explained the crater.
None of those explained the canopy ceiling that turned daylight into a sick green haze.
Teo stood, then immediately regretted it. His head spun. His legs felt rubbery. He took two steps and stopped, swallowing bile.
Get it together.
He tilted his head up, searching for the sun—direction, at least. But it was leaf after leaf after leaf, packed so tight it might as well have been a roof.
He looked down again, scanning the ground.
No footprints but his own scuffed mess in the crater dirt.
No tire tracks.
No obvious trail.
There was a straight gouge line near the crater's edge—cleaner than the rest of the chaos—and his brain tried to cling to it as evidence. He crouched, brushed wet soil away with two fingers, followed it for a few inches, then lost it under the churned dirt.
He straightened, frustrated.
"I don't even know what I'm looking at," he muttered.
His throat tightened again.
Thirst.
Water. He needed water.
He reached for his pockets again out of habit—looking for his phone one more time—and his fingers hit something hard and familiar.
A clip.
He froze.
He pulled it out.
A battered utility knife, the kind he used at work for tape, straps, and packaging. Black handle. Silver blade housing. A little grit in the track.
Teo stared at it like it was a gift from a god that hated him but didn't want him dead yet.
"Okay," he whispered again, smaller. "Okay… at least I got—something."
Gracias… supongo.
His hands stopped shaking for half a second.
Then reality hit again and they started right back up.
He started walking.
No plan. No direction. Just away from the crater, because staying near the place he fell felt like waiting for something to finish the job.
The forest fought him immediately.
Vines snagged his flannel. Ferns slapped his shins wet. A creeper wrapped around his ankle and made him stumble.
"Hey—" he snapped, yanking his foot free.
He fumbled the utility knife open—thumb sliding the blade out with a shaky click—and sliced through the vine that had hooked him.
The cut wasn't clean. The vine was wet and fibrous. It frayed and snapped back.
Teo flinched like it might whip him.
His heart kept hammering.
He hated how loud the knife click felt in this quiet.
He kept moving anyway.
The ground alternated between firm and springy. Twice his boot sank enough to make him jerk back, panic spiking.
Then he smelled something sweet.
It rolled over him like heat from a dumpster. Sweet and rotten, like fruit liquefying in the sun.
Teo stopped dead.
His stomach twisted. His nose flared.
He didn't know what it meant—he had no reason to—yet his body reacted like it had heard a warning.
He took one careful step forward anyway because thirst was louder than instinct.
The light dimmed ahead, as if the canopy thickened on purpose. The ground dipped toward a darker patch.
He pushed past a curtain of wet leaves and saw it.
A shallow channel of still water, black as a hole.
Not dark water. Not muddy water.
Black.
Smooth as glass. It didn't reflect the trees. It didn't reflect the green light. It looked like a missing piece of the world.
Teo stared at it like it might start talking.
A bubble rose and popped.
No ripples.
His throat tightened so hard it hurt.
Near the edge, half-submerged in mud, thin black threads lay in a loose tangle—too straight to be roots, too uniform to be vines. One of them twitched when his boot scuffed the leaves, sliding back under the surface like it had heard him.
Teo's stomach turned.
"Nope," he whispered—stupid word, honest word—and stepped back fast.
His heel slid.
Mud grabbed his boot and pulled.
Teo yelped, arms flailing, and slapped both palms against a tree trunk to keep from falling in. His boot was stuck like the ground had teeth.
He yanked.
It didn't move.
Panic surged up his spine.
¡Chingado!
He leaned into the tree, braced, and pulled again. The mud resisted like it had an opinion.
His grip slipped on the wet bark. He cursed and dug the utility knife into the trunk—not stabbing, just using the housing like a hook against the ridges to get leverage.
It was stupid. It was desperate.
It worked.
The mud made a wet sucking sound.
His boot came free with a nasty pop and Teo stumbled backward, nearly falling on his ass.
He didn't care.
He scrambled away from the black water like it might reach out again.
He stood there shaking, breathing too fast, staring at the channel.
The sweet stink clung to his nose like a warning label he couldn't read.
His hands were muddy. His boots were heavier.
He looked around wildly, suddenly convinced he'd made noise that mattered.
Still silence.
But now the silence felt different.
Not peaceful.
Not empty.
More like… the forest noticed you when you did something.
Teo forced himself to breathe slower, not because he was disciplined, but because he was close to hyperventilating.
Tranquilo. Tranquilo…
He backed away and angled around the black channel, staying on slightly higher ground where the soil looked less wet.
He walked until the sweet smell faded.
Then he heard it.
A hush.
Flowing water.
Teo almost ran toward it and caught himself mid-step because his boot slipped on a wet root and he nearly face-planted again.
"Jesus—" he muttered, then swallowed the rest of it, suddenly aware again of how loud his voice felt.
He slowed, embarrassed by his own desperation, and pushed through the ferns until he found a narrow stream spilling over stones.
Clear.
Moving.
Alive.
Teo dropped to his knees at the edge.
His hands shook so much he spilled the first attempt to cup water. He swore, tried again, and finally got a mouthful.
Cold water hit his tongue and his chest loosened like something had unknotted.
He drank again. And again—three quick gulps before his brain finally screamed, You don't know if this is safe.
Teo froze mid-swallow.
Too late, he thought. Too late to be careful.
He sat back on his heels, chest rising and falling hard—and that's when his eyes caught movement beneath the surface.
Thin silver shapes, quick as blinking. Little fish, maybe. They darted between stones and vanished the moment his shadow crossed them, reappearing a heartbeat later like they'd never been there.
Alive.
But even that life felt careful, like it had learned not to waste motion.
He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked around for the first time since he started drinking.
That's when he saw it across the stream.
A small bundle of pale bones tied together with fiber, hanging from a tree trunk at chest height.
Neat.
Deliberate.
Not nature.
Teo's stomach dropped so fast it felt like missing a stair.
Someone had been here.
Someone had placed that there.
At the base of the tree, tiny pale insects moved in a slow ring around fallen fragments—quiet, methodical. Not swarming. Cleaning.
The bones looked… tended.
That thought made his skin go cold.
He stared into the brush, searching for a person, a shape, a face—
Nothing.
No movement. No sound. No hint of life.
But his skin prickled anyway, being watched didn't always come with a warning.
He swallowed. His throat went dry again, even with the water he had drank .
He didn't raise his hands like a professional. He didn't try to look tough.
He just spoke because the silence was making him feel insane.
"Hello?" he called, voice cracking on the word. "Hey—hello!"
Nothing answered.
Not even an echo.
Teo's heart hammered harder.
He tried again, louder, because fear makes you stupid.
"Is someone there?"
Still nothing.
He stared at the bone charm until his eyes watered, mind racing: hunter sign, warning sign, shrine, trap, joke—
He didn't know. He didn't know any of it.
He backed away from the stream one step at a time, boots squelching slightly from the earlier mud.
He almost turned to run.
He didn't.
Not because he was brave.
Because he had nowhere to run to.
He looked back in the direction of the black channel and felt his stomach twist.
Two bad options and no map.
Teo dragged a muddy hand down his face, smearing grit across his cheek.
"Okay," he whispered, and the word sounded like it might crack. "Okay… I'm… I'm gonna… I'm gonna find somewhere to sit."
He didn't know where "somewhere" was.
He didn't know what the marker meant.
He didn't even know if he'd poisoned himself.
But the light through the canopy was shifting, turning darker under the leaves.
And for the first time, the thought landed fully and cleanly, with no denial to soften it:
He wasn't going home tonight.
He turned away from the stream and walked—no plan, no confidence—just moving before panic locked him up.
Behind him, the water kept whispering over stones.
The bone charm kept hanging there.
And the silence pressed closer, like the forest was waiting to see what he did next.