They walked in silence.
The Dark Forest swallowed sound as easily as it did light. Wind didn't rustle the leaves. No birds sang. Even their footsteps seemed muted, like the ground itself was muffling their presence out of pity — or warning.
Elara moved with care, each step deliberate, ashwood staff tapping softly at her side. Fig drifted behind her without a word, his usual stream of complaints replaced by quiet flickers of wariness. His fur had dulled slightly in the damp, as though the trees drank in his glow.
Branches overhead knit into a jagged canopy, filtering what little sunlight remained into long, trembling shadows that made the path ahead a shifting blur.
But Elara didn't look at the path.
She was somewhere else.
Somewhen else.
Kayden's voice echoed in her memory — warm, sharp-edged, frustrating in its familiarity.
"You never listen, Elara. That's why you're always bleeding."
Her lips twisted into a bitter smile.
It had been raining that day. No… not rain. Mist. Heavy and warm. Clinging to her like a shroud.
She remembered the weight of the spear — not the impact itself, but the cold pressure after. Like her chest had become hollow.
Her knees had hit the stone. She remembered Kayden's hands on her face, blood pouring between her fingers like silk ribbon, and the horror in his eyes.
Why had he looked horrified?
And why—why had there been a third person?
Someone else had been there.
Just beyond the smoke. Just out of reach.
Her brows furrowed, and she squeezed the ashwood staff tightly in one hand.
A fragment surfaced.
Gold armor. A crown? No—antlers. Silver eyes.
But then it was gone, yanked back into the fog of her fractured past like a fish slipping the hook.
"You're doing it again," Fig said, voice soft but close to her ear. "Wandering into your own head."
She blinked. The forest returned. The dark branches. The clawed roots reaching across the path like fingers. The silence that pressed like a wet cloth.
"I'm trying to remember," she murmured.
Fig landed gently on her shoulder. "I know. But the forest isn't the safest place to go digging through trauma."
She sighed. "I thought if I came far enough… if I got away from people, noise, the Court, him… maybe I'd be able to piece it all together."
He was quiet for a moment. Then:
"Do you want to remember?"
She stopped walking.
The question hung between them like the chill in the air.
"Yes," she said after a long pause. "And no. But mostly yes."
"Because of Kayden?"
"No," she lied. Then exhaled. "Yes. Not just him. That day… I wasn't just killed. I was betrayed. I felt it, Fig. The moment before the spear, there was someone behind me. Someone who should've stopped it."
She closed her eyes and tried again. Tried to call the memories back.
But the forest didn't allow clarity. It allowed unease. Something crept beneath her skin — not fear, exactly, but a prickle of being seen. Watched. Measured.
She opened her eyes and looked around.
"Do you feel that?" she whispered.
"Yes," Fig answered instantly. "Have for the last half-hour."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"I was hoping it was just your brooding presence attracting tree spirits. But now even I'm uncomfortable."
The path narrowed ahead, trees pressing inward like ribs in a dying beast. The bark here was darker. Striated with patterns that looked suspiciously like glyphs.
Eyes peered at them from the shadows.
Not human eyes.
Amber. Pale green. Silver. Some blinked vertically.
"Keep walking," Elara murmured.
"Walking where?" Fig hissed. "We're marching into the mouth of something ancient and extremely unfriendly!"
"I don't see another path."
"Why do you mortals always say that like it's a good reason to continue into danger?"
They moved forward, the path winding like a coiled vine. The air thickened. It smelled of rot and old magic. Of moss that never died.
Elara's grip on her staff tightened.
Then something snapped behind them.
She whirled — staff raised.
Nothing.
Just leaves. Stillness. And an old stone altar half-swallowed by ivy.
"Are we being followed?" she asked.
"No," Fig said. "We're being hunted."
The moment he said it, a shadow moved across the path ahead.
Elara dropped low, heart in her throat.
But it didn't attack. It merely stood. Watching. Then vanished between the trees like smoke.
She rose again, moving more quickly.
"What was it?" she whispered.
"Forestborn," Fig said, his glow barely a shimmer. "A warden. Or worse. They usually only show up when you're not supposed to be here."
"Oh good," she muttered. "I thought we'd earned this cursed stroll."
They walked for another hour, though it felt longer. Every step, every breath, every movement made the forest press closer.
Elara's thoughts swirled like leaves in a current.
Why had Kayden been there that day? Why had he fought beside her — and then pulled away just before the fatal blow?
Why had the man with silver eyes not struck?
Why had she been left to die alone?
She stumbled over a root, catching herself on a tree.
"Elara," Fig said suddenly, serious. "You need to stop."
She turned to him.
But he wasn't looking at her.
He was looking ahead.
Where the forest opened into a clearing that shouldn't have existed.
The trees parted into a perfect circle — too perfect. Grass too green. Flowers too still. Light poured in from no visible sky, bathing the area in gold.
A trap.
She stepped forward anyway.
In the center stood a mirror.
An old one, tall and silver-rimmed, planted into the earth like a monument. Runes curled across its frame. Its glass shimmered with smoke.
"What is that?" she breathed.
"Memory mirror," Fig whispered. "But… corrupted."
She stared at it.
And it stared back.
Her reflection was wrong — not a trick of angle or light. Wrong. She was thinner. Pale. Her eyes glowed faintly gold.
The mirror-Elara reached out.
And smiled.
Fig darted in front of her, wings flaring. "Don't touch it."
"I wasn't going to."
"Yes, you were."
She turned away.
"I need to get out of this forest."
"I've been saying that since we got in."
But as they left the clearing, she didn't feel relief.
She felt… known.
Like the mirror had seen too much.
They camped that night beneath an overhang of roots from a toppled giant tree. Elara didn't light a fire.
Fig curled near her, still on high alert.
"Do you think the mirror was showing me… another version of me?" she asked softly.
"No," Fig said. "I think it was showing you the you that you buried. The one who died."
She swallowed.
"And it's still in there?"
He looked at her with eyes older than the stars. "Elara… I think that version of you didn't die completely."
She turned her face to the trees, heart hollow and aching.
The forest no longer whispered.
It waited.