The next morning arrived quietly, wrapped in the soft gold of early sunlight, yet Lucy felt far from rested. No matter how many times she blinked the sleep from her eyes or tried to distract herself with small morning chores, the memory from the previous day clung to her like a shadow. She kept trying to convince herself it had been nothing more than a trick of the light—sunbeams bending strangely through water, or her imagination stitching shapes out of drifting reflections. Maybe she had simply been tired. Maybe her mind had played games with her.
But deep down she knew she was lying to herself.
The Evergreen never lied. It never showed something by mistake.
And that same Evergreen, steady and ancient as it was, refused to be ignored.
Later in the day, while she helped her grandmother weave mats on the wooden veranda, Lucy found her thoughts drifting back to the lake again and again. She tried focusing on the weaving pattern—over, under, tighten, repeat—but her hands moved automatically while her mind twisted restlessly around the memory of the strange familiarity she had felt, the pull in her chest when she saw the carved symbols at the riverbank.
Her grandmother's hands suddenly stilled.
Lucy looked up.
The older woman, usually so composed and gentle in her movements, paused mid-weave, her head turning slightly as if she were listening to something just outside the reach of ordinary ears. A small crease formed between her brows—an expression Lucy had rarely seen her wear. Her grandmother, who always seemed to understand the moods of the forest better than anyone, never frowned without reason.
"Grandma?" Lucy asked softly, sensing the tension in the air.
Her grandmother blinked and returned her gaze to the mat, but the shift was subtle; her fingers moved slower now, more cautious, as though each strand of dried reed had suddenly become delicate enough to break under the wrong touch.
"The winds feel different," the old woman murmured, her voice low, almost as if she didn't want the trees around them to hear her too clearly. "The forest speaks when it wants to be heard."
Something in the way she said it made Lucy's skin prickle with a faint, unwelcome chill. Her grandmother wasn't one to speak in riddles. If she felt the forest was speaking, then something truly had changed.
Lucy parted her lips, wanting to ask what exactly the forest was trying to say, but her grandmother didn't offer anything else. The moment simply sank into a heavy silence that stretched between them, quiet yet charged. It felt as though they were both tiptoeing around something neither of them fully understood but could sense pressing closer by the hour.
As the afternoon rolled in, the strange feeling returned—stronger than before.
Lucy was in the backyard washing clothes beneath the shade of a mango tree, her sleeves rolled to her elbows, when the air seemed to shift again. It thickened around her, pressing lightly against her chest in a way that felt unnatural, like the world itself had paused for a breath it wasn't sure it wanted to release.
She froze, the wet cloth dripping suds back into the basin.
Her eyes drifted instinctively toward the line of trees behind the house. Usually, even on calm days, the Evergreen carried a living sound—birds chattering, insects trilling, leaves whispering against one another. But now…
Nothing moved.
The quiet wasn't peaceful. It wasn't the kind of stillness that lulled the village into afternoon naps or comforted travelers returning home. It was the kind that made the hair at the back of her neck rise—a tense, waiting quiet, heavy like the charged air before a storm breaks open.
Lucy swallowed, her breath thinner than usual.
She tried to steady herself, forcing a slow inhale.
Just as her heartbeat began to slow—
She heard it.
A faint crunch of dried leaves.
Once.
Then a second time, closer, deliberate.
Her entire body stiffened.
Someone—
or something—
was moving behind the outer trees.
Lucy set the wet cloth aside without realizing it, her hands trembling slightly. The footsteps stopped, but the silence that followed was somehow louder, almost as if the forest itself held its breath with her.
Every instinct screamed at her to call out, to shout for her father or her mother, but another, much deeper instinct—one she couldn't explain—warned her sharply not to.
Drawing attention to herself, she felt, would be a mistake.
Instead, she took a small step backward toward the house. Her feet moved quietly, careful not to disturb the ground. She didn't break eye contact with the tree line.
Then, just as she shifted her weight for another step—
A figure moved.
Not fully visible.
Just a blur of motion—dark brown skin, wild unkempt hair tangled like vines, and the quick flash of something metallic catching a shard of sunlight.
Lucy sucked in a sharp breath.
The figure disappeared behind the thick undergrowth almost instantly, as fast as a bird darting between branches.
But she had seen enough to know it wasn't an animal.
It was a person.
Someone who knew how to move quietly, how to vanish in a heartbeat. Someone who had been watching.
Her pulse raced painfully against her ribs. The air felt colder suddenly, though the sun still hung bright and warm overhead.
And in that moment—deep in her bones, deeper than logic—she understood that this was connected to what she had felt the previous evening near the riverbank. The unease. The strange energy. The sense of being observed. The similarity between the carved symbols and the ones in her father's old books. All of it tangled together in a way she could no longer ignore.
Her first instinct was to run inside and tell her parents everything. She even turned slightly toward the back door, ready to bolt—
But then the faintest sound drifted through the trees.
A short, sharp whistle.
It wasn't birdsong.
It wasn't a child playing.
It wasn't an accident.
It was a signal.
Something meant for someone else. Someone hidden.
Lucy froze, every muscle tight with fear and curiosity fighting inside her. The whistle echoed once more, very softly, then faded as if swallowed by the dark shade of the Evergreen.
She took another step back. Her heart hammered so loudly in her chest she felt certain whoever—or whatever—was hiding out there could hear it.
Whatever was happening in the Evergreen wasn't a coincidence.
It wasn't random.
It wasn't harmless.
Strangers—silent, swift strangers—had begun moving around the edges of the village. Watching. Listening. Waiting.
And Lucy realized with a sudden, unsettling certainty that the forest she had grown up loving was no longer the same.
Something had awakened inside it.
And it was drawing closer.
I