The lake was quiet that morning.
Not peaceful, never peaceful but quiet in that uncanny way the forest always was: like the world had forgotten how to make sound.
Søren sat at the water's edge, legs crossed, boots tossed beside him on the mossy bank. The lake stretched before him like a mirror of black glass, perfectly still, as if time itself refused to ripple its surface. Trees bowed toward it in twisted reverence, and fog clung low over the water, hiding the far shore like a secret.
It had been several days since Søren arrived at the cabin. He no longer asked what day it was. Time did not behave properly here.
Each night he dreamed. Always the same dream.
The black ocean. The writhing tendrils. The presence in the deep.
He had begun to expect it now, like a second life that waited behind sleep. The fear hadn't vanished but it had dulled into a strange familiarity, like the smell of old blood.
The dreams were changing him. He could feel it, subtle shifts beneath his skin, like something stirring that hadn't existed before. Sometimes he heard whispers in the water. Sometimes the shadows of birds didn't match the birds themselves. Sometimes he swore the moon had too many faces.
But today, everything was still.
Until he saw the letter.
It wasn't there a moment ago. But now it floated a few meters from the bank, bobbing gently in the water, perfectly untouched by damp.
Søren blinked. He didn't move for a long moment. Just stared.
Then slowly, cautiously, he reached out with a long stick and drew it toward him.
The envelope was pale, sealed with wax the color of bone. No name. No address. The paper smelled of salt and dust and something older than decay.
He hesitated. Then broke the seal.
Inside was a single sheet of thin, grey paper. At first, the writing made no sense a tangled mess of runes and loops that looked like they were moving, shifting away from comprehension.
Søren frowned.
And then, the letters changed.
The ink stirred, yes, stirred, rearranging itself into words he could almost read. Lines formed. Sentences took shape. The script settled into something he recognized, yet still felt wrong, like a voice speaking with someone else's mouth.
He read:
_____
To the One Touched by the Deep,
The silence remembers you.
The pulse beneath the threshold stirs again, tracing the lines between Now and Not.
The city you do not know calls for your arrival.
It is neither remembered nor forgotten.
It is simply unwritten.
You must walk the path through ■■■■■■.
Speak the name that cannot be spoken.
Follow the wound in the world.
Not all who endure are meant to remain.
–The Memoryless One.
_____
The name of the city was there. He saw it. He was certain he saw it, but already it was gone. Blotted out. Not smudged or erased, just... absent. A blank where meaning should be.
As if the world itself refused to remember it.
Søren lowered the letter, fingers trembling slightly.
The fog over the lake had thickened. He could no longer see the other side.
Behind him, the trees creaked softly. Not from wind. From awareness.
And for the first time in days, he realized...
he wasn't sure if he had ever been alone by this lake.
***
Søren walked back to the cabin with hurried steps, though everything around him seemed to slow. The mist from the lake had begun to stretch into the woods, coiling between the trees like something that had no true shape. No birds called. No wind stirred the branches. Even the leaves had gone still.
In his hand, the letter remained clenched, damp and cold and growing heavier with every step. It wasn't just wet, it felt soaked from the inside out, as if the paper itself had absorbed something it wasn't meant to carry.
The trail curved, and the crooked silhouette of the cabin emerged between the trees.
He paused for a moment, heart beating faster. Something felt off.
Søren pushed open the door.
Inside, Bryony and Feran stood facing each other near the hearth, locked in quiet conversation. They hadn't noticed him yet. The air in the cabin was dense with the scent of ash and old paper. In their hands each of them held a letter.
Søren froze in the doorway.
Feran's letter looked half-devoured. The edges were jagged and damp, gnawed through as though by tiny, invisible teeth. Small, pulpy bits clung to his fingernails, and the paper twitched slightly in his grip almost as if it breathed.
Bryony's letter was worse.
Mold had bloomed across it, strange, spiral fungi of a pale green-blue hue, spreading in delicate patterns across the surface. The growths pulsed softly, alive but unmoving. The ink had bled into the veins of the mold, forming symbols that shifted when stared at too long.
Bryony was speaking. Their voice no longer sounded fully human.
It was low and soft and wet like the sound of moss growing in the dark, or of something stirring beneath the soil. It wasn't unnatural. But it was... wrong. As if nature had tried to invent a voice and only gotten halfway there.
"...they come when you're ready," Bryony said, unaware Søren was listening. "Not before. Not after."
Feran glanced at his letter again and chuckled without humor. "Mine looks like it got dragged through a beast's gut."
Bryony tilted their head, eyes flickering. "Maybe it did."
Søren stepped forward, holding out his own letter. The moisture had spread now, curling the edges, staining his fingers. "I got one too."
Both of them turned to look at him. There was no surprise in their eyes. Only recognition. As if they had been waiting for this exact moment.
Feran whistled softly and held out his chewed paper. "Looks like the family's complete."
Søren moved closer, looking at each of their letters in turn. "Do yours say... the same thing?"
Bryony nodded. "It told us to go to a city. One with no name."
Søren's brow furrowed. "■■■■■■?"
Feran gave a slow, theatrical clap. "Good memory, even if it's already gone."
"I saw the name, i saw it. But now... it's blank."
"That's the point," Bryony said. Their fingers grazed the moldy paper as if it were sacred. "The place it names doesn't exist anymore. Not in memory. Not in maps. Not in time. It's been erased. What's left is just a wound in the world."
"But we're meant to go there?" Søren asked.
"Of course," Feran replied, with a grin that didn't reach his eyes. "That's how these stories work. The sea calls. The memory fades. And the ones who remember what shouldn't be remembered... they walk."
Bryony nodded slowly. "It's not about where. It's about what waits at the place no one remembers."
The three of them stood in silence, letters in hand, each one touched by something different, something personal.
Søren looked again at the lake-soaked paper he held. The ink was bleeding now, running like veins. But he could still see the last line, written in a hand that was far too steady to belong to anything human.
"Not all who endure are meant to remain."