Ariane:
The woods changed after dusk.
Even with the coffee warming my hands, I was freezing—skin chilled, heart hammering against my ribs.
The trees had long since thinned, but the silence grew thicker between us.
It pressed into the hollows of my chest, curled into the grooves of my bones as fog slithered around my boots like a living thing.
When we reached the edge of the boundaries, I saw them, the bone trees.
Their trunks were white as milk, and their bark was etched with sigils I couldn't read but could feel—screaming, warning, whispering, telling us to turn back, for what was trapped beneath was not good company.
Varek handed me a knife.
"If you were to need it, use it. Should one of us tell you to run, run," he said again, his voice flat and devoid of anything human.
Kaele
