The plains behind them faded into a distant smear of gray as they walked, leaving behind the second cave as quietly as they had entered it. The wind pushed softly across the land in long, slow breaths, brushing past the tall grass and scattering dust in uneven patterns.
The world felt tired. Even the sky seemed duller than the night before, as if the sun itself was hesitating to rise any higher.
The ground changed slowly, almost without them noticing—patches of dark soil thickening beneath their boots, thin roots appearing between cracks of faded stone. A faint smell of old bark drifted through the air.
Sky slowed.
"We're close."
Tervain looked forward. "The forest?"
Verrith didn't speak.
His eyes were fixed on the horizon, watching how it shifted—watching how the shadows grew before they even reached them.
The trees rose before them not like a forest, but like a wall. Towering pillars, with the smallest one being eighty meters high, their bark blackened and cracked, the branches stretching upward in long brittle claws that scraped at the sky.
The Dark Woods.
Sky felt his heartbeat ease into a slower rhythm. Not calm—just controlled. He stepped forward. The moment he crossed the invisible line where plains ended and the forest began, the sound of the world collapsed.
The wind died behind him like someone had closed a door. His shadow stiffened for a moment, then settled; even it seemed to dislike this place.
Verrith inhaled sharply but tried not to show it.
Tervain only tilted his head, as though the silence was a memory rather than a threat.
They walked.
The dirt softened under their boots, damp despite the dry climate outside. Every step felt muffled, swallowed by the thick loam. The air smelled old—like something wooden and ancient had been rotting for far too long without ever decaying.
It should have been peaceful.
It wasn't.
Sky's eyes darted left. A tree's bark rippled. Not from the wind. Not from movement. Like it was breathing.
He didn't say anything.
Tervain whispered, "Alive?"
"Everything here is," Sky replied quietly. "In its own way."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Verrith asked.
"Well you know how plants are alive? Now imagine that but they sometimes move and act more." Sky replied.
"What does that even mean? But I'm invested, tell me about it" Tervain said, his empty eyes behind his helmet shining up.
"…" Sky stayed quiet, refusing to answer Tervain this time.
The canopy above blocked the light so completely that the world shifted into a dim navy shade.
Their footsteps were the only sound. No birds. No insects.
Not even the faint hum of mana that usually lingered in large natural places. It felt as though something was suppressing it.
Or absorbing it.
Verrith slowed for a moment, staring at the roots snaking across the ground like veins. "These aren't natural."
"Yeah. That's right, this only happens when the trees absorb a massive amount of nutrients which happens if a lot of things die and decompose or if something odd is happening." Sky said.
"And what exactly is the odd thing?" Tervain asked
"I don't know" Sky replied
But as they were speaking, something interrupted them.
Far behind them, something clicked—soft, uneven, like teeth tapping together.
They froze.
Sky didn't turn. He didn't need to. His shadow and his body strained, listening.
Tervain's voice was no louder than a breath as he put a hand on his helmet as an expression to stay quiet, "Foul worms?"
"No." Sky exhaled slowly. "If it was a foul worm, we wouldn't hear it before it was right beside us."
That didn't make any of them feel better.
Foul worms were nearly fiends—tall humanoid silhouettes with five mouths, pure black skin, and limbs too long to be comfortable. They were hunters that didn't need tricks, though they could change color if they wanted but never did. One of them stalking silently was normal.
One was making noise.
Verrith's fingers twitched toward the hilt of his blade, then stopped. Sky shook his head. Not yet.
They kept walking.
The forest darkened further as the trunks grew closer together. Sky felt the pressure—the same kind of pressure he had felt in places where the world wasn't stable, where the edges of existence were too thin. The same pressure that reminded him of the World's Throat.
This forest wasn't that, but… it remembered something of it. The stillness. The weight. The cold, forced quiet as if existence was waiting for permission to continue.
Tervain sniffed the air. "Old blood," he murmured.
Sky paused. "Where?"
"Everywhere," Tervain said. "In the roots."
Sky knelt, brushing bark with his fingers. The texture was wrong—soft yet firm, like skin stretched over bone. There were faint grooves like scars spiraling around the trunk.
Verrith didn't look directly at the tree. "If the trees are feeding, what are they feeding on?"
Sky didn't answer. He already knew. There were stories about the Dark Woods—stories people ignored because ignoring them made life easier in a world already breaking under its own weight, or people genuinely didn't care of learning anything else about this world.
Behind them, something walked.
Not toward them. Parallel.
Mimicking their pace.
Sky tensed up. Verrith's hand drifted toward his blade again. Tervain only turned his head slightly, eyes dull but alert.
A faint whistle echoed through the trees.
Then another.
Then another.
Birdsong?
No.
Sky exhaled sharply. "Don't react."
The whistling shifted—exactly matching the pattern of their footsteps moments earlier. Not mocking. Copying.
Verrith whispered, "Sound mimic."
Tervain's jaw clenched. "It's close."
The forest held its breath.
The sound mimic continued imitating them for several seconds, then paused abruptly—as if confused that its prey wasn't responding. A low vibration passed through the soil.
Something big moved deeper inside the woods.
But it didn't approach.
Sky didn't know if that was luck or the forest choosing to spare them—for now.
They moved again, slower this time. The trees grew taller the deeper they went, their trunks twisting in unnatural spirals. Some bent in angles that would break normal wood.
Others split into hollow cavities, like mouths silently gaping open.
Verrith stared at one of them for too long.
"Stop," Sky said softly.
Verrith blinked and stepped back. The hollow split closed slightly, as if disappointed.
Sky took the knife and threw them all except for one and holding the black string in his right, he manipulated the string to arrange the knives in such a way that the light would constantly and perfectly be reflected into the knife he was holding.
This trick shocked Tervain and Verrith and as they were about to comment, Sky stopped them and continued to walk weaving between the massive columns of dark bark.
The ground was no longer flat—roots rose like ridges, some tall enough that they had to climb over them. Every touch left Sky feeling like something pulsed beneath the wood.
Hours passed with the sunlight almost gone and now Sky's method to check their surroundings was basically useless as he didn't have enough sunlight.
Every now and then, something clicked or scraped in the distance.
Sky never turned toward it.
Anything behind them could get closer if they acknowledged it. That was the nature of certain forest predators—awareness gave them strength.
They rested in a small clearing where the trees formed a natural ring. The soil here was oddly smooth, no roots rising to trip them.
Tervain crouched. "Safe?"
"No," Sky replied. "But safer."
Verrith sat against a trunk, his breathing steady, though the tension in his jaw never eased.
Sky stood, scanning the forest. His shadow followed his movements, quiet and alert. It couldn't see anything he didn't—but it felt the shifts in the world differently, like how it sensed mana being stripped from the air and absorbed by the soil.
Verrith opened his eyes. "Someone's watching."
Sky didn't move. "Where?"
Verrith didn't point. He simply nodded toward the space between two trees where the darkness looked thicker.
Sky looked—and for a moment, it felt like something inside the shadows looked back.
A shape tall enough to brush the branches, too thin, too stretched. A foul worm?
No. The silhouette was taller, with limbs longer than even their kind.
It took a single step backward and faded into the trees without a sound.
Tervain frowned. "New kind?"
Sky shook his head. "An old kind."
The forest let them pass not because they were strong, but because it was waiting for something. Or someone.
As they prepared to move again, Sky felt a tremor under his boot. Not an earthquake—something crawling beneath the surface, digging through the soil with too many limbs.
A foul worm this time.
But it didn't rise.
It just followed.
They pressed onward, deeper and deeper, until even their own breath sounded foreign.
The air cooled to a point where Sky could see the fog of his exhale despite the warmth outside.
His lungs felt heavier. Verrith's hands trembled once before he steadied them. Tervain seemed unaffected—undead bodies didn't need to negotiate with cold.
Then the forest changed again.
The trees bent inward, forming a tunnel—the kind that looked natural if someone refused to think too hard, but Sky knew it wasn't. Something had shaped this path deliberately.
Sky exhaled. "We're nearing the center."
Tervain sniffed the air again. "The blood smell is stronger."
Verrith's hand tightened around his sword. "Good or bad?"
"Could be either," Sky replied.
They entered the tunnel of trees.
Inside, the darkness didn't feel like the absence of light—it felt thick, like a physical thing brushing against their skin. The trees here were different. Their bark was glossy, wet, like they had been recently fed. Sky didn't want to think about what they fed on.
Light flickered ahead.
Not warm. Not natural.
Blue.
Pale.
Faintly pulsing.
The heartbeat of something sleeping.
Sky stepped forward carefully, raising a hand to stop the others when the roots beneath them shifted ever so slightly—as if warning them not to step too hard.
A clearing opened before them, filled with bioluminescent flowers glowing dimly at the forest's center. Their petals were long strands of pale blue light, swaying in a breeze that didn't exist.
But that wasn't what caught Sky's attention.
There was something hanging from one of the trees. Not a body. Not a creature.
A cocoon.
Tall.
Humanoid.
Pulsing faintly.
Verrith stared, unable to look away. "Is it… alive?"
Sky didn't answer immediately.
He stepped closer, examining the threads—thin strands of bark woven with afterglow unnaturally tight. Whatever was inside was being kept alive deliberately.
The forest didn't kill or decompose everything it caught, in fact it often let the beings do whatever it wanted but the forest was an odd thing.
Sometimes it waited. Sometimes it raises something. Sometimes it changes.
Sky lifted a hand toward the cocoon and the forest shifted. All the trees surrounding them leaned inwards, creaking so softly it almost sounded like breathing.
Behind them, all the distant noises stopped.
Everything watched.
Everything waited.
Sky slowly lowered his hand.
"We shouldn't touch it."
Verrith swallowed. "Why?"
Sky stared at the cocoon. "Because whatever this is… the forest is protecting it."
Tervain blinked slowly, his voice flat. "Should we leave?"
"Yes" Sky replied instantly as he moved and the rest followed them and they set camp for the night.