The fog pressed in like a wet cloth. It had weight. I could feel it clinging to my shoulders, curling down my throat. I blinked the burn from my eyes and turned to Lyra.
She hadn't moved.
Still lying beside me, curled into herself, shivering. Her hands were raw from bramble-thorns. Blood had dried across her cheek in a sharp line. Her chest rose and fell in quick, shallow bursts.
I touched her shoulder. "Lyra."
No answer.
"Lyra, we need to move."
Her eyes flicked open. Dull. Distant.
But she nodded.
I helped her to her feet. We stumbled through the low mist, half-crawling up the incline. The trees above us creaked with something that wasn't wind. The ground made a low groaning sound as we stepped, like the earth itself was straining not to scream.
We didn't speak. We just moved.
Then something cracked.
Not wood.
Bone.
I froze. A wheeze echoed from the bramble to our left, wet, ragged. Someone was there.
I crouched and crept forward, parting the branches with the edge of my hand. A shape slumped against a tree, smeared in blood and mud. A man. Not young. He had a mess of grey hair and a gash that split his ribcage like a smile.
His eyes opened when I got closer.
"You", he rasped. "They didn't take you."
My heart leapt into my throat. It was him.
The old man.
The one from the cages. The one who watched the guards. Who vanished when the chaos began?
"You said to wait," I said, crouching. "What do I do now? What do you want?"
His mouth twitched into something between a grin and a grimace.
"Not what I want," he murmured. "What the forest wants."
Lyra hung back. Her eyes locked onto him, but she didn't move closer.
"You're dying," I said. "Let us help"
"No," he cut in, breath rattling. "Don't waste it. You're on the path now. You must finish."
"Finish what?"
He reached into his cloak, blood smearing across the folds, and pulled out a strange object, small, wrapped in leather. He shoved it into my hands.
I stared at it.
A key?
No, it had no teeth. Just an ornate twist of metal, glowing faintly.
"It opens nothing," he said. "But it shows what's hidden. There's a door in this forest. When the blood moon rises, you'll see it."
"What's behind the door?" Lyra asked suddenly. Her voice was sharper than I'd heard it since the fire.
He looked at her.
Then he said, with absolute certainty: "Truth."
He collapsed.
His breath stopped.
The forest leaned in.
I didn't know why, but I closed the old man's eyes. His body was already cooling. The mist gathered around him like a shroud. When I stood, I felt the key burn faintly in my palm.
I didn't owe him that. He hadn't earned my kindness.
But his chest had gone still, and something about leaving his eyes open felt like a promise I couldn't make good on.
What if I wanted him to die?
What if part of me, some small, rotten piece, was relieved?
I felt sick. My fingers curled into fists, then loosened again, the key burned in my palm. I didn't look at Lyra. I was afraid she'd seen that flicker of something else in me.
Lyra stood a few paces back, arms crossed tight.
"Don't trust it," she said. "Any of it."
"I don't."
But I still pocketed the key.
Because part of me… wanted to see what he meant.
We kept moving.
The forest changed again.
At first, I thought the trees were leaning. But it was more than that. They weren't growing, they were shifting and bending to trap us in a corridor. A maze that hadn't been there before.
We tried doubling back.
The path we'd come from was gone.
"This tree we passed before," Lyra said, pointing.
I looked. The bark was carved deeply, but not with names. With tally marks. Hundreds of them.
"I've never seen this", I said.
"We have", Lyra whispered.
We stared at it. I counted the marks. Eighty-seven on one side, maybe more spiralling behind. I blinked, and they were gone.
"Luell," she whispered, "did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"My name. Something said my name."
I hadn't heard anything. But I wasn't sure.
Suddenly, the bark cracked just a tiny split, but I jumped.
"Let's keep moving," I said.
The tally marks didn't return.
No tracks. No slope. Just more trees, silent and watching.
We were deep now.
Too deep.
The sounds changed, too. The clicking grew faint but never stopped. Sometimes it came from above us. Other times from beneath the ground.
I caught glimpses of the Beautiful Ones again.
Their light flickered behind trees like reflections on broken glass. One passed ahead of us, walking backwards but moving forward. Another turned its head toward me without moving its body.
They didn't attack.
But they didn't help either.
They watched.
Like we were insects in a jar.
That night, well, we guessed it was night, as everything turned colder.
We saw fire in the distance. Not orange or red. Blue. Cold.
It clung to a fallen tree, burning without smoke, without heat.
When we got closer, our shadows stretched toward it. Not away.
Lyra wouldn't go near it. I couldn't stop staring.
"We need to continue, there's no telling when they'll find us". I nodded we couldn't afford to stop, not right now at least, as we turned to find a new direction, I took one last glimpse of the fire, the sparks that flew and the light that dimmed.
This forest was unnatural in every way, supernatural even and yet I was growing more intrigued by the minute, wanting to unravel its secrets.
Soon, gone were the smells of burned wood and harsh blood, and instead returned the old metal and burnt skin we were used to. Across from us was a narrow stream, we decided to stop by it to drink and quench our thirst we hadn't noticed until now.
I took a sip and almost gagged. The water was clear, yet it tasted of rotted rust. Nevertheless, I gulped down mouthfuls and washed parts of my body. I took a moment to take in the peacefulness, the water we drank trickled upward, against gravity, toward a rock that pulsed faintly with red light.
Lyra wouldn't touch it. I wanted to, just to see what would happen. But something in the back of my skull told me: Not yet. Lyra didn't speak for a long time. When she did, it was barely a whisper.
"You don't think he was lying… do you?"
"The old man?"
She nodded.
I didn't know how to answer.
"I think he believed it," I said.
"That's not the same thing."
"No. But it's something."
She stared at the trees. Her face was lit by moonlight that barely broke through the canopy.
"I hate this place."
"So do I."
I didn't say it, but I knew what she meant. It wasn't just fear. It was wrongness. The kind that creeps into your bones. The kind that whispers while you sleep.
"We should get some rest, we've been moving all day, enslaved all night". Lyra nodded her head. She lay still, and for a moment I watched her before taking my turn to rest.
Flames. I had dreamed of flames again.
But this time, the Beautiful Ones were there.
Not watching.
Smiling.
We didn't make a fire. The forest didn't like fire.
We overslept.
I knew it the second my eyes opened, my bones felt heavy, like they hadn't rested in weeks, and the ache in my legs told me I needed more. But rest was a luxury we couldn't afford.
Lyra was curled beside me, her breath steady but shallow. For a second, I didn't want to wake her. Just one more minute. Just one more moment where we weren't running or hiding or bleeding.
But the forest was already awake.
The mist had thickened again, and somewhere in the distance, I heard the first sharp click.
"Lyra," I said softly, shaking her shoulder.
Her eyes opened slowly, bloodshot, dazed, but she nodded without complaint.
We rose in silence, stiff and cold. The path ahead was unclear, but staying put was worse.
We didn't speak much after the stream. Just walked. Slowly.
The forest pressed close around us, the air growing heavier with each step. Moss coated everything, trees, rocks, even the path itself, like the forest wanted to bury us as we moved.
We passed a tangle of roots shaped like fingers, a stump that looked too much like a curled spine. Lyra kept glancing over her shoulder. I didn't ask what she thought she saw. I didn't want to know.
We didn't speak much after the stream. Just walked. Slowly.
The forest pressed close around us, the air growing heavier with each step. Moss coated everything, trees, rocks, even the path itself, like the forest wanted to bury us as we moved.
We passed a tangle of roots shaped like fingers, a stump that looked too much like a curled spine. Lyra kept glancing over her shoulder. I didn't ask what she thought she saw. I didn't want to know.
Eventually, the mist thickened again, and the light died with it.
That's when we found it, a half-fallen tree, its roots twisted like broken ribs, jutting from the mud like it had once tried to stand and failed.
We stopped there. Too exhausted to go further.
I got up half groaning, my limbs cried for me to rest, and I almost complied, but I felt it. That watchful eye that never felt like it would leave us alone. Before I could open my mouth to tell Lyra we had to move, she beat me to it.
"You keep saying we have to keep moving," she snapped. "But where, Luell? Into what? Another cage? Another nightmare?"
She hit the ground with both fists, her voice breaking. "You don't get it! I don't want to be strong. I want to go home. But there's nothing left."
I didn't know what to say.
Because she was right.
There was nothing left.
"What if we die here?" she asked.
"Then we die."
It sounded cold. But I was tired of pretending I had answers.
We huddled beneath the half-fallen tree. Every rustle made Lyra flinch.
Somewhere, something scraped bark. Not close. Not far.
I couldn't tell if it was breathing or the wind.
"We're going", I was stern. I had not wanted to learn what was seeking us, and neither did Lyra. We continued south, heading hopefully in the right direction. The window continued to pester us on our journey, and the forest continued to direct us to doom. As if to warn us of the danger that lurked ahead, we were gifted a gift.
A figure hanging from a tree.
Not a creature.
A person.
Or what was left.
The bones had been hollowed. Clean. Hanging like decorations. The face still had scraps of skin, stretched into a grin. Beneath it, carved into the tree trunk, were the words:
WE SEE YOU.
I don't know if Lyra screamed or if I imagined it.
But we ran and we didn't stop for hours.
When we thought it was safe, we slowed down our pace, allowing ourselves to breathe. But that's when I saw them. Footprints, fresh ones forming in the mud ahead of us. Step by step.
Yet, no one was there. I took a closer inspection and noticed they were small, child-sized footprints. Walking toward the same path we were on. Lyra saw them too. She didn't ask. She just kept walking. Faster.
"Last night, I saw my mother. I thought I smelled soap. Not the good kind, the cheap kind they used to pour in buckets to wash blood from brothel floors. The memory came fast: my mother's hands, cracked from cold water. The way she sang under her breath when she didn't think I was listening. I looked behind me. The trees were still. But for a moment, I swore I saw her again. Her apron was stained. Her mouth pressed into a tight line. She lifted a hand. I blinked. Empty forest. Maybe it wasn't her."
I listened in horror, these dreams for both of us were becoming too realistic, it was torturing us, and when we woke, we were being physically abused too. First, it was the rich old men at the brothel, then the slavers, now it was the forest that owned me, owned us.
I hadn't offered any words to Lyra after she spoke, how could I? I was fighting my own battles, I had no answer to. We simply continued our way, not speaking another word for the rest of the day.
We walked for hours. Maybe more.
The forest made it hard to tell. It bent time around itself like a snake swallowing its tail. What felt like minutes stretched into something longer, heavier. Our legs moved, but the world around us didn't seem to change.
Roots rose like knuckles from the soil, bruised and swollen. Trees leaned in too closely, like they were listening, or judging. Branches snagged at our clothes, sometimes soft as hands, sometimes sharp as claws.
We passed a grove of hollow trunks that echoed as we stepped, the sound warped, as if the trees were mocking our movements. Insects clung to bark that pulsed faintly, like it had veins beneath the moss.
I stopped keeping track of direction. North. South. It didn't matter. The forest had no edges. Only more of itself.
Lyra spoke only once.
"It's like we're walking in a circle that never ends."
She wasn't wrong.
We crossed a dry creek bed, then another. At one point, we saw a boot, just a single, child-sized boot resting on a stump. It was clean. Untouched. Waiting.
And then the trees thinned.
It didn't happen gradually. One step we were in darkness. Next, the sky cracked open.
That evening, the sky finally opened above us. Moonlight poured in not like light through clouds, but like something spilling through a wound in the heavens. It painted the clearing in silver, so bright it felt artificial.
It felt wrong.
Like we weren't supposed to be here.
Like the forest had shaped itself around this space just to let it exist.
At the centre, waiting without motion, without breath.
The Beautiful Ones.
All three.
Still.
Glowing.
Watching.
I reached into my pocket.
The key pulsed the moment my fingers touched the seam, the forest was gone.
I was somewhere else. High above a ruined city that bled fire from its cracks. Spires of glass shattered inward, not outward, as if something had screamed and the world tried to fold itself around the sound. I looked down and saw people, no, figures, crawling through ash on hands and knees. One lifted their head. It was me. Older. Hollow-eyed. Lips stitched shut.
A woman's voice sang nearby, low, cracked. My mother's lullaby, the one she sang when she thought I was asleep. But it was wrong, slower, like a record warped in heat. Her hands were stained with something dark. She looked at me. She smiled. She said nothing.
A voice whispered to me, not from outside but from my ribs.
You asked for the truth…
The key still pulsed.
But I wasn't sure I wanted to know anymore.
The vision vanished like breath in frost. The forest returned. But I hadn't left it. Not really. The path ahead waited, quieter now. Too quiet. We moved and were greeted by the unknown.
The one in the centre raised their hand and pointed to a tree.
It didn't look different from the others.
But when we stepped closer… we saw it.
A door.
Half-rotted. Wooden. No handle. No hinges.
But the key burned hot in my hand.
"Don't," Lyra whispered. "Please don't."
I couldn't answer. I was too busy listening. Not to her but to the door.
It was humming like a bone flute. No melody. Just vibration. I stepped closer. My feet sank into the moss.
"What do you think is behind it?" she asked.
"The truth," I said.
"You don't even know what that means."
"No. But I want to."
The key in my hand felt hot now, like it wanted to be used. Like it ached for it.
She grabbed my arm.
"What if it shows you something you can't survive?"
I didn't look at her.
"Then I'd rather know than keep walking blind."
My hand shook. I told myself it was from the cold, but we both knew better. I didn't want to do this, not really. I wanted to run. To drop the key into the mud and pretend none of this ever happened. But that would mean living without answers. Living without knowing if I could've saved her. Or if I was already too late.
So, I didn't run. I reached forward.
I pressed the key toward the wood.
The bark shifted. A seam widened. A light blinked, dim and red, like a heartbeat.
I didn't answer.
Because the door…
It was humming.
Calling me.
And somewhere behind us, in the dark, the forest clicked louder than ever.