They set a brisk pace and left the beach behind.

  The pale sand gave way to darker soil beneath the trees.

  The land subtly shifting.

  The sand-fine bone giving way to roots, damp leaves and dank earth.

  The forest loomed overhead unwelcoming.

  Illara half-expected it to rise up and lunge at them.

  But it did not hinder their passage.

  The forest simply sat, an eerie silence hung over it as a pall.

  Matthias’s eyes flicked to the mist-shrouded edges of the forest.

  His keen eyes caught fleeting shapes darting amongst the cluttered trees and undergrowth.

  He found the most insidious thing to be the mist.

  A shroud that crept around the edges.

  The trees grew too close together.

  As though edging them in.

  The trunks were coarse and damp, they wore their own bark as skin.

  Layers upon layers.

  Some mottled, some cracked.

  All ancient.

  He also saw some of the trees stripped of bark in places.

  As though something had polished them by touch alone.

  Moss clung in thick, veined sheets, dark green veering toward black.

  Warm beneath the palm when Illara brushed against it.

  His hand came away with a coat of slime.

  Matthias grimaced, wiping his hand on his tunic.

  It was, as any forest they had ever passed through.

  But the Nightblade felt eyes upon them.

  Even when he told himself it was but a trick of his mind, the sensation refused to dissipate.

  It was the air.

  Still. Silent. Unmoving.

  Matthias felt not the winds, but a stirring.

  The forest sat unmoving.

  No rustle of leaves, no cracks of twigs, no calling of the night.

  Its presence not serene, but still.

  Illara took point.

  Her long strides measured and deliberate.

  Unlike the Nightblade, her boots padded softly upon the damp earth.

  But the sound did not travel.

  Each footfall was muffled, swallowed by the loam as though the mist-shrouded ground strangulated any whisper of a voice.

  She looked up.

  And frowned.

  The stars above the canopy.

  They were… wrong.

  Illara stopped and reached for her compass.

  The brass lid clicked open.

  Her brows furrowed.

  The needle trembled, hesitated, then began to drift, circling lazily before seemingly pointing at a meaningless angle.

  She frowned and snapped it shut.

  Matthias appeared beside her.

  “Broken, perhaps.” he murmured, his voice pitched low, as if the forest might resent volume.

  Illara yelped in surprise.

  Matthias was instantly alert.

  His daggers appeared in his hands.

  Illara clipped him on the shoulder.

  He stared at her, “what was that for?”

  “Do not do that!” she said emphatically, after a reprieve half a breath too long.

  “Had I startled you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she hissed, “the silence was already deafening as it is.”

  “I am a Nightblade,” he stated flatly, as that explained it all.

  It does.

  “You are infuriating,” Illara hissed.

  “Do not be intimidated by the silence.” Matthias said, “learn to be still.”

  “You talked too much for a Nightblade.”

  “And you are far too jumpy for a Mistwalker.”

  Illara pouted, they walked on.

  The deeper they moved, the less progress they seemingly made.

  The trees repeated themselves.

  Illara swore they walked past by one a moment ago.

  A crooked trunk. A split root. A low branch warped like a skeletal figner.

  Illara caught herself marking them mentally, then realized she had done so twice already.

  Matthias broke the silence first.

  “This reminds me of that grove near the tower,” he said. “The one with the oak trees.”

  Illara snorted softly. “You mean the grove that radiated dread so terrifying no mortals can enter?”

  “That’s the one.” Matthias nodded.

  “You insisted we go in.” she said softly.

  “We are Astrastars, we should be insulated by our wards.”

  “I do not recall that was how it went.”

  “Only slightly.”

  “You were running away.”

  “…a little.”

  They sounded candid, but Illara felt their words were unwelcome here.

  The foreboding forest absorbed the words.

  Their voice did not travel, did not echo.

  The absence that followed felt heavier than silence was felt keenly.

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  Illara shook her head.

  “We lived,” she said wryly. “That’s the important part.”

  “For a definition of lived that involved running,” Matthias replied.

  “Which was the only reason,” she quipped, “that we are here today.”

  She smiled despite herself, but the expression faded before it reached her eyes.

  Matthias did not reply.

  The banter felt thin, stretched tight over a persistent silence that lingered no matter what they said.

  When their voices ceased, the encroaching quiet returned all too easily.

  Illara opened the compass once more.

  The needle spun freely now, then slowed.

  It pointed, briefly, between two trees before drifting again.

  She watched it longer this time.

  “Still broken?” Matthias asked without looking.

  She closed the lid with a decisive snap. “So it seems.”

  “Let us head there then.” The Nightblade said.

  “Yes,” she agreed absently.

  Any direction that felt no better than any other.

  The forest thickened.

  The ground rose and fell in shallow depressions, some filled with dark moisture that clung to the soles of their boots.

  Roots surfaced like ribs, slick and warm.

  The scent of the forest seem to revert gradually.

  From loam and rot to something sweeter, cloying.

  A metallic edge that caught at the back of the throat.

  Matthias slowed.

  His hands drifting closer to the hilt at his back. “You smell that?”

  “Yes.” Illara said.

  Then softly. “You see them?”

  Matthias gave the briefest of nod, “yes, they had been tailing us since we left the beach.”

  Illara nodded. “Copper weapons.”

  “And sulfur, brimstone.”

  “The denizens of the island.” Matthias continued, “nothing we cannot overcome.”

  Illara didn’t answer.

  She left it unspoken.

  There was something else.

  In the forest.

  The faintest of hooves and… teeth.

  She felt too the unease that settled behind the eyes, a faint pressure.

  The forest seemed closer now.

  Not physically, but attentively.

  Malevolent eyes watched them with interest.

  “Here.” The Nightblade said.

  They crested a shallow rise and entered a clearing that hadn’t been there a moment before.

  Illara felt her breath caught in her throat.

  At the heart stood a massive tree.

  Older and more ancient than the rest.

  Its trunk thick and gnarled, rising straight and unbowed.

  The bark here was darker, scarred in long, vertical grooves that suggested stress than age.

  Near the base, a hollow yawned open.

  Oval, smooth-edged, depthless.

  Matthias raised a hand, Illara stood back as the Nightblade moved closer.

  The hollow glistened.

  A translucent residue coated the inner surface.

  Thick and viscous, it caught the dim moonlight in slow, sluggish ripples.

  It pulsed faintly, contracting and relaxing as though attempting a shape it no longer held.

  Illara moved next to him and crouched, careful not to touch it.

  “It’s warm,” she murmured.

  Matthias knelt then, extending two fingers toward the edge of the hollow.

  He paused, then withdrew his hand without making contact.

  “This isn’t decay,” he said quietly.

  “No.”

  “It’s not a nest either.”

  Illara leaned closer, her gaze tracing the interior.

  There were no remains. No shell. No fragments of bone or hide.

  Whatever creature that once dwelt within was gone.

  “It is huge,” Matthias finished.

  The unspoken words lingered between them.

  Neither Nightblade nor Mistwalker was keen to name the thought that pressed insistently at the edges of reason.

  The residue bore faint striations, stretched in a single direction, leading away from the tree and into the deeper forest.

  The bark around the hollow was cracked from the inside, fibers pulled outward as though something had crawled forth its way through rather than into the trunk.

  Illara rose slowly after inspecting the spoor.

  Matthias followed her gaze. “How long ago?”

  She scanned the clearing. The residue had yet to dry.

  The scent was strongest here, thick enough to cling to the air.

  “Not long,” she said softly.

  Matthias swallowed. “Still close?”

  “Perhaps,” Illara kept her eyes on the trail.

  It bore no mark to any creature she known.

  It bore a myriad of them.

  It was as if the creature had no shape.

  Or several.

  Or whatever it chose to be.

  Illara straightened and reached into her coat.

  She flipped the compass open again.

  The needle pointed slightly to the east.

  Steadily.

  Not toward the hollow.

  Not toward the trail.

  But toward something in the mist-shrouded unseen.

  As Illara watched.

  The needle moved.

  Ever so slightly, more eastward.

  She closed it and slipped it away.

  Matthias looked to her.

  “We keep moving,” she said, her voice steady.

  Matthias nodded and stepped aside to let her pass.

  They circled their way past the tree.

  As they left the clearing, the forest closed behind them without sound.

  The tree remained where it was, its hollow dark and empty.

  Illara did not look back.

  Matthias did not press her.

  They did not speak as they moved on.

  The forest ahead had thickened again.

  The trees drawing closer until the space between trunks pressed in on them.

  The air grew heavy with a cloying sweetness that pressed against the back of their throats.

  a faint rustling.

  Illara slowed her pace.

  Her instinct flaring, but she found nothing to fix her fear upon.

  Nothing she could see.

  The ground softened beneath their boots, no longer loam or root, but spongy.

  The earth yielded too easily, rising back again after each step.

  It was warm. Not fevered, as though they stepped into a morass.

  A quagmire.

  Matthias shifted his stance instinctively.

  His breathing paced, shallow and controlled.

  His steps lighter now, the whispering walk of a Nightblade.

  is strides mirroring where Illara had stepped.

  They passed between two trees whose trunks leaned toward one another, their branches interwoven overhead.

  The canopy here was thick enough to blot out what little light filtered through the forest, casting everything into a dim, greenish gloom.

  Moisture clung to the bark in slow, viscous trails.

  Then the forest stirred.

  They froze.

  Blades appeared in the Nightblade’s hand.

  Illara unslung her shotgun from her harness.

  She cocked the hammer.

  Not wind. Not movement.

  A crack.

  Matthias raised his hand, his dagger poised.

  A finger to his lips.

  He urged silence.

  The sound was low and wet.

  It rolled through the trees ahead of them.

  A heavy impact followed by a slow, dragging shift.

  A hiss.

  It was irregularly. It was approaching.

  Something massive leaning its weight upon the ground without care for what lay beneath it.

  Illara froze.

  The sound came again, closer this time.

  A dull, meaty thud, followed by the splintering crack of wood bending under the weight but not breaking outright.

  Leaves shuddered overhead, shedding droplets that struck the forest floor with soft, obscene plops.

  Matthias kept his hand raised, urging restraint.

  They stood motionless as the forest reacted around them.

  Branches bowed. Moss slid from bark in thick sheets.

  Somewhere to their left, a tree groaned as though twisted from within, its roots tearing free of the earth with a wet, sucking sound.

  The ground trembled faintly beneath their feet.

  A presence the land accommodated, but does not embrace.

  Something far too large to be present.

  Illara’s pulse quickened.

  She forced her breathing steady, listening.

  There were voices.

  Not words. Not speech.

  A chorus of sounds rose and fell through the mist.

  Bleats, cries, wet inhalations, and the rasp of many throats struggling to shape sound.

  They overlapped and bled together, forming a low, constant murmur that pressed at the edges of perception.

  It wasn’t loud.

  It was everywhere.

  Matthias closed his eyes for a heartbeat, focusing inward.

  His instincts strained uselessly, unable to resolve threat from terrain.

  Whatever creature moved through the forest did not register as prey or predator.

  It was neither approaching nor retreating.

  It was occupying.

  The voices swelled, then dipped, as though something massive had shifted again.

  Illara felt it in her bones, a crushing pressure.

  Her vision blurred at the edges, colors dulling, contrast flattening until the forest felt unreal.

  A surreal landscape seen through fogged glass.

  A shape moved in the mist ahead of them.

  A misshapen, shifting silhouette.

  The fog itself thickened and thinned in pulses, drawn inward toward an unseen center.

  The air grew warmer, damp enough that Illara felt moisture bead along her jawline.

  The smell intensified.

  Sweet rot, iron, sap, and a lingering scent borne of the void.

  Rich. Fertile. Wrong.

  It does not belong.

  The forest floor bulged.

  Illara watched, transfixed, as a mound of earth ahead of them swelled upward, soil tearing apart to make room for something beneath.

  Roots snapped and slid free, not severed but displaced, curling around the rising mass as though seeking purchase.

  The mound shuddered once, then collapsed, releasing a viscous flood that soaked into the ground almost immediately.

  No creature emerged.

  Nothing revealed itself.

  But the voices surged again, closer now, layered and overlapping.

  Filled with a mindless vitality, a cacophony of voices, a life without restraint.

  Illara felt her skin crawl.

  She felt suddenly, overwhelmingly small.

  Matthias leaned toward her, his eyes spoke without words.

  Do not look.

  She nodded without turning her head.

  Another sound rolled through the forest—a deep, resonant impact that sent tremors through the trees. Something vast brushed past their awareness, its passage marked only by consequence.

  Branches snapped overhead.

  A nearby trunk bowed, bark splitting as pressure built within it.

  The split widened, sap oozing thick and dark, before sealing again with a wet, fibrous sound.

  Illara’s hand tightened around her blade.

  The urge to act surged within her, a reflex born of instinct and countless battles.

  Matthias’s hand closed around hers.

  Reassuringly.

  But forcefully.

  He held her weapons down.

  It would avail them naught.

  There was nothing to strike. No enemy to face.

  The forest itself recoiled from the presence moving through it, bending and reshaping itself in mute compliance.

  Then it passed.

  The voices faded.

  One by one, the sounds diminished.

  Bleats falling silent, cries dissolving into the damp air until only the low murmur remained.

  The pressure eased.

  The tremors subsided.

  The mist loosened its grip.

  Illara to realize she’d been holding her breath.

  The shadow passed.

  The shape moved past.

  It did not notice them.

  The forest exhaled.

  The warmth receded, leaving behind a chill that sank deep into her bones.

  The smell lingered, heavy and pervasive.

  Matthias opened his eyes.

  They stood there for a long moment.

  Neither moving, neither speaking.

  Both acutely aware of how close they had come to …something.

  Illara turned to him slowly.

  He met her gaze and shook his head once.

  A subtle, instinctive denial.

  He released her hand.

  “That was…” she began, then stopped.

  “It does not matter,” Matthias counseled softly.

  They did not name it.

  Naming it felt like invitation.

  They dismissed any attempt to understand it.

  Matthias sheathed his blades, he looked around.

  The forest around them had changed.

  The ground bore new depressions, fresh trails of disturbed soil and snapped roots leading deeper into the trees.

  The thing that had passed through here had not noticed them.

  They were beneath its attention.

  Illara reached for her compass.

  The needle spun wildly for a heartbeat, then settled.

  It pointed towards a dense outgrowth and deeper shadow.

  Illara snapped it shut without a word.

  They exchanged a glance.

  Brief, wordless, absolute.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Illara said.

  Matthias nodded.

  Together, they turned away from the forest where the night had walked.

  The mist closed in.