The silence of the forest is a lie.
A thin, fragile veneer stretched taut over a screaming void.
Hours pass, and the sun begins its slow descent, painting the western sky in strokes of bruised purple and angry orange. The light filters through the dense canopy in elongated, distorted shafts, casting long, dancing shadows that twist and writhe like living things. With every passing minute, the world around us becomes more menacing, the comforting greens and browns of the forest day giving way to the treacherous blacks and grays of the encroaching night.
I can feel it in my bones.
The Gloom is coming.
I don't know how I know. There's no sign, no smear of pale goo, no broken branch, no distant shriek. But the air itself feels different. Heavier. Colder. It carries a charge, a malevolent static that raises the fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck. It's the same feeling I had back on the beach, the one that made me so uneasy before the attack, but magnified a thousand times. A primal, instinctive alarm blaring in a language I'm only just beginning to understand.
"We need to find shelter," I say, my voice sounding harsh and loud in the unnatural quiet.
Flynn, who has been walking just ahead of me, turns. His face is etched with a deep-seated weariness, but there's a flicker of something else in his eyes now. A readiness. He's been feeling it too. "The old man said we keep moving. We're almost there."
"We're not almost there," Amelia contradicts, her voice tight with tension. She's been scanning the perimeter, her illusionist senses on high alert. "He said it would take two days. We've been walking for less than one."
"We can't stop out here," Michael insists from further back in the group. "The wards of the Order, what little were left, kept the worst of them at bay. Out here, in the open..."
He doesn't need to finish. We all know what happens out here at night. We've all read the stories, seen the illustrations of hikers and travelers found soul-drained, their bodies contorted in silent, permanent screams.
The forest itself seems to be holding its breath. The birds that had been already mostly silent all day are gone. No insects chirp. No small creatures scurry in the undergrowth. The world feels empty, evacuated. A ghost town of trees.
A loud crack echoes through the woods.
Not a twig snapping underfoot. The sharp, clean crack of wood breaking under pressure.
Everyone freezes.
"Thomson," Flynn's voice is a low growl. He points towards a ridge to our left. "There."
Peering through the gloom, I see it. A shape. Large and misshapen, moving with an unnerving, jerky gait against the darkening sky. It's silhouetted against the last vestiges of the sunset, and for a moment, I can't make out what it is.
Then it takes another step, and the silhouette resolves into something horrifyingly familiar.
A Spidergloom. But it's wrong. The ones I've seen in texts, even the one from the island, were gangly, almost fragile-looking things. This one is massive, its body bloated and grotesque, its legs thick as tree trunks. And it's not alone.
More shapes emerge from the shadows behind it. Smaller, faster, skittering on all fours. Feral Dwellers, their forms vaguely lupine, their movements disturbingly fluid and unnatural. They circle us, their forms blurring at the edges, as if they can't quite hold their shape in the dying light.
"Move!" Thomson's voice is a crack of thunder in the night, loud where he had been silent. "Whatever you do you must not allow them to surround us and cut off the road!" He lifts a hand, causing a flash of light that leaves an afterimage in my eyes and briefly causes the beasts to stumble. "Today you are no longer students. You are Full Exorcists." He says as he draws a silver shortsword from its sheathe. "Now run!" The last words are a command that shatters the spell of our paralysis.
The group breaks. A panicked, desperate scramble.
Flynn roars, a sound of pure fury and defiance, and charges the leading Spidergloom. His fists, wreathed in a faint, golden glow, slam into the creature's bloated abdomen with a sickening crunch. The beast shrieks, a piercing, chittering sound that grates on the soul, and staggers back, black ichor gushing from the wound.
"Amelia! Illusions! Now!" I find myself shouting, the words ripped from my throat by sheer instinct. I don't know why I'm ordering her around. I'm not a leader. I'm a lazy slacker who'd rather be anywhere else. But the words come out anyway.
But she's already moving. She doesn't need my command. Her Exorcist Candle flares, and the air around us shimmers. The forest floor erupts into a maze of phantom trees, the paths twisting and overlapping. One of the lupine Dwellers leaps at a phantom, passing straight through it and crashing into a real oak with a confused yelp.
It's a brilliant, desperate strategy. It buys us precious seconds.
"Keep moving!" Thomson yells, his blade a silver arc as he deflects a strand of Gloom fired by the Spidergloom. "We must be free of this forest before they are upon us!" He's trying to hold the main creature back, but three more lupine Dwellers are circling him, their forms shifting and wavering in the twilight.
We're still going to be overwhelmed. Flynn can maybe handle one, maybe two of the smaller ones. Thomson is fighting the biggest. That leaves the others. There are too many of them. They're flanking us, moving with a coordination that's unnerving, almost intelligent. The pack of wolves is working as one.
Leah screams as one of them lunges, its jaws snapping shut an inch from her face. Archie shoves her behind him, raising a trembling Exorcist Candle that glows with the faintest of lights. It's not enough. The Dweller ignores the weak glow, its silver eyes—no, not silver, a muddy, common gray—locked onto the boy.
And I know, with a certainty that freezes the blood in my veins, that if I don't do something, that boy is dead. The others will follow. We'll all be torn apart and our souls consumed out here in the dark, forgotten. My friends. The only people in this world who've ever bothered to look at me and not just see the 'tainted blood' label.
The Exorcist Lantern is a useless weight on my back. I don't have light. I don't have a spirit gift. Not a real one.
I have the Gloom.
A wave of revulsion washes over me. It's a perversion. A blasphemy. But the boy is going to die.
I don't even think about it. I just act.
I rip the lantern from my shoulder and hurl it not at the Dweller, but at the ground in front of it. The metal clatters against the rocks, a meaningless sound in the chaos. A useless gesture.
It distracts the beast. For a half-second, its muddy-gray eyes flick toward the source of the noise.
And in that half-second, I reach.