The forest had never been quiet like this.
Darin moved slowly now, his boots sinking into the dew-slicked ground with each cautious step. The trees loomed overhead, ancient and skeletal, their twisted limbs tangled like giant hands grasping at the gray morning light. Moss blanketed their roots in thick swathes, cold and wet against the soles of his boots. Not even a bird called from the canopy above. Not a single flutter of wings disturbed the stillness.
Behind him, Ashen waited on the edge of the road, ears flicking restlessly. Her dark form stood half-hidden behind a curtain of mist that seemed to thicken with every breath he took. Darin spared her a glance. The worry in her posture was a mirror of his own.
He turned back toward the path ahead. It was now more a trail of crushed leaves and thin mud than anything formed by human hands. The figure from before had vanished. That glitching ghost of a man, or maybe not a man at all. Darin wasn't sure anymore. He could still feel the residue of its presence in his mind. The cold, flickering voice that had bypassed sound entirely.
You're not supposed to be here.
He swallowed hard, his breath fogging in the chill. He should have turned around. He should have mounted Ashen and ridden until the strange vanished from his sight. But something deep in his bones urged him forward. Not curiosity. Not entirely. It was something older. Something heavier.
A pull.
He brushed a hand along the bark of a nearby tree. The surface was rough and knotted with age, but beneath his fingers it felt strange. Slick, almost waxen. Not natural. He drew his hand back. It shimmered faintly in the dim light.
He stepped deeper into the woods.
The ground dipped and rose, winding around gnarled roots and outcroppings of stone. The further he went, the less it felt like a forest and more like the memory of one. Details that should have been there, fallen branches, nests, burrows, were missing. As if the forest had been rebuilt from an incomplete reference. Like someone trying to recreate nature from a broken image.
Every few paces, the air would stutter. Just slightly. A flicker in the corner of his eye. The sound of a bird's call that never finished. A leaf that seemed to fall endlessly, never quite touching the ground.
Time did not feel right here.
Eventually, the path opened into a shallow clearing, no wider than a cottage. In its center stood a stone altar, cracked and weathered, choked in vines that pulsed faintly with blue light. The altar looked older than anything he had ever seen. Older than the roads. Older than the settlements that once bordered the forest.
But the blue light. That was not old.
He approached slowly, boots brushing through the long grass. The light coming from the vines was not constant. It shimmered in pulses, as if breathing. Beneath it, carved into the altar's surface, was a circular sigil.
Darin crouched down, brushing away dirt and clinging moss. The sigil was etched deep. It was precise despite the wear of years. Lines curved into each other like a rotating pattern, symbols flowing outward from the center in concentric rings. He didn't recognize the language. Not at first.
Then he blinked.
And something clicked.
Not in his mind.
Inside his mind.
A pulse. A momentary static burst that rolled behind his eyes. His vision blurred for a heartbeat. Then, without understanding how, he could read it. Not word for word, but the feeling of the message etched into stone was suddenly clear.
"One spoke the world. One silenced it. The rest forgot."
He stood abruptly.
Behind him, the trees groaned.
It was not the wind.
Something was moving through them.
He turned slowly, eyes scanning the shadows. Between the trunks, where mist curled around the base of the trees, the light shifted. A ripple. Not footsteps. Not rustling leaves. Just motion. Like a thought drifting too close to reality.
His hand instinctively dropped to the hilt of his blade. The cold leather grip grounded him. It reminded him that he was still flesh and blood. Still real.
A whisper cut through the silence.
Not spoken aloud.
It slid along the inside of his skull, like a memory returning without warning.
"Hello... can you hear me?"
He froze. It was not the voice from before.
This one was softer. Curious. Feminine.
"Where are you?" he whispered aloud, not expecting an answer.
But it came, immediate and near.
"Not here. Not yet. But I see you."
He spun around, heart pounding. The clearing remained empty. The altar hummed now, low and steady.
"I've been waiting. So long waiting. They buried me too deep."
Darin stared at the glowing vines. The light was stronger now. Almost blinding. He stepped back, shielding his eyes.
"Who are you?" he called.
The voice was right beside him now. Inside him.
"You knew me once. But you were overwritten."
The vines on the altar peeled away like melting wax, revealing something beneath.
A small crystal, half-embedded in the stone.
Its surface flickered with static, light rippling across it like the surface of disturbed water. Darin reached toward it, unsure why.
The moment his fingers brushed it, the forest shattered.
Not exploded. Not burned.
It fractured.
The clearing split into shards of light and darkness, like broken mirrors suspended in nothing. He was falling, but there was no ground. Only flashes of memory. Cities built from lines of glowing text. Faces he had never seen but somehow remembered. Screams. Laughter. Silence.
Then everything stopped.
He was on his knees in the clearing again. The mist was gone. The forest was still.
But the crystal was in his hand.
And his right eye was weeping blood