Further south, in the Vinean woods another group traveled.

  Dante stopped bleeding miles ago, but now the wounds festered. Drawing insects to him. Xander tried shaking them off a few times, but nearly threw Dante off of his back. So he endured.

  Behind them, the curse crept forward like ink spilled across fragile parchment. It moved slowly, yet with a terrible inevitability, alive in a way no ink should be.

  Even beneath the full blaze of the noonday sun, the shadows thickened unnaturally. They clung to the trunks like rot, stretching long fingers across gnarled roots with a patience that defied nature.

  The trees, once proud and ancient, now bowed beneath a burden they had no words for. Leaves curled in on themselves, still clinging to their branches as though afraid to fall. Bark split in silence, no cry of pain, just the quiet tearing of something sacred.

  The air hung heavy with dread, too still to be real. Where once birds chirped and insects sang, there was only silence. No rustle of wings, no hum of life.

  Even the wind, which had been their steady companion since dawn, abandoned them. It did not stir the branches. It did not kiss their cheeks. It simply... refused.

  Nature had already surrendered.

  Somewhere ahead, the Norren Mountains still loomed. Not distant now, but veiled. This morning they had stood clear on the horizon, jagged and commanding. Now the cursed forest pressed thick around them, its crooked canopy swallowing light and warping direction.

  Kaiya could no longer see the peaks, but she felt their pull. Not like spotting a landmark, but like following a scent that memory refuses to forget.

  She wasn’t guiding them directly toward the mountains. Not exactly. But their weight, once visible now only imagined, kept her path from unraveling.

  Xander had tried to take the lead more than once. Each time, Kaiya corrected their course. Not because she was certain, but because someone had to be.

  Dante hung motionless, tied to Xander’s back like a lifeless bundle. His limbs swayed with each step, catching on vines and low-hanging branches. Leaves slapped his cheeks, and twigs scratched across his skin.

  He groaned now and then, soft and pained. That was something. He was alive. Kaiya clung to that truth like a lifeline.

  But in sleep, Dante found no peace.

  He stood barefoot in a place of sterile cold. The stone beneath him was polished to an unnatural sheen. Walls stretched too tall, too clean, too white. The silence was wrong. Too absolute. It hummed like an absence.

  He remembered this place.

  A cell without bars. A room with no door. He remembered it. He did not remember leaving.

  Then, the lights flickered. Fluorescent white stuttering in rhythm with something unseen. He opened his mouth to scream, but not even his breath responded. He heard nothing. Not even his own heartbeat.

  The forest trail dissolved completely within the hour. Where once there had been overgrown paths and half-worn animal trails, now there was only wildness. Roots twisted like knots across uneven soil, and ferns crowded each step.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  By the second hour, even the illusion of direction was gone.

  Angel stopped pretending not to notice.

  She watched Kaiya closely. Her gaze wasn’t accusing. It wasn’t angry. But it was sharp. Calculating. She was paying attention in a way that left no room for lies.

  They walked in silence until Angel came to a halt, planting her feet and squinting at the trees.

  “I’ve seen that tree before,” she muttered, eyes scanning the forest canopy.

  Valerik exhaled a tired sigh. “It’s a tree.”

  “No,” Angel said, her tone clipped. “Really. I’ve seen it twice now.”

  She turned slowly, her fingers tensing around her new staff. Then she stopped. Her breath caught in her throat.

  Around them, the forest had fractured.

  Every tree bore the same warped signature. A jagged trunk that twisted like a broken spine. A single gnarled branch curled downward, pointing like an accusing finger. They were surrounded. Not by trees, but by copies of one. Dozens. Hundreds. Each one, the same.

  A forest of mirrors. But only one reflection.

  “What the fu..” Angel and Valerik began to say, voices overlapping.

  Then Dante screamed.

  It was not a whimper or a groan. It was a scream that clawed its way out of his throat like something alive and desperate to escape.

  The world broke open.

  Reality fractured around them in silent violence.

  Space twisted in ways the mind was never meant to witness. Some patches folded inward like crumpled parchment wet with rain. Others stretched outward, pulling the horizon into impossible loops. And some recoiled, as if time itself had flinched away from them.

  Trees bent in directions that rejected nature and logic. Leaves multiplied mid-air, splitting into glassy shards that refracted light without making shadows. Fractals bloomed across the canopy, growing and splitting in endless spirals that had no true center.

  Angel stepped back before her heel caught on stones. She looked down, stunned. The rocks were duplicating themselves, breaking into smaller versions without truly losing size. The copies shook faintly, humming like they contained a trapped vibration.

  The air changed. It pressed against their skin as though it were thickened water, slick and cool, carrying a metallic taste that coated the back of the tongue. Hair lifted from scalps in slow motion. Arms drifted upward with no intent to move.

  Gravity loosened its grip.

  Their feet still touched the ground, but their stomachs lurched, reacting to a descent that never began.

  Except for Xander. His ears twitched in sharp, startled flicks. Then panic overtook him.

  His hooves scraped uselessly against the earth. He tipped sideways in an agonizingly slow rotation, as if rolling on invisible waves. His legs kicked at nothing.

  Sound began to fall apart. Voices echoed wrongly. Not in answer to sound, but delayed, a heartbeat too late, a breath misplaced. Even the rhythm of their breathing came back to them off-beat, as though the air no longer remembered what to do.

  They stood in the eye of a storm that was not wind or thunder, but perception itself unspooling. The trees repeated in warped geometry. A loop with no pattern. A spiral with no origin.

  And at the center of that hesitation, Dante blinked.

  Not with his eyes. With his mind.

  From beyond the veil, where the glass of reality cracked between dimensions, something looked in. A head, but not a face. A shadow with intent. Suggestion without substance.

  “Reality,” it whispered, the voice velvet dragged over rusted razors. “Is only a cage of perception.”

  The words clung to his soul like smoke in a closed room.

  Then, as suddenly as it began, the vision unraveled. An unseen hand tugged the thread holding the dream together.

  It fell apart.

  One blink. One breath. And they were back.

  The forest was whole again. No bending space. No kaleidoscopic tricks. The canopy swayed faintly, leaves rustling as if nothing had ever happened. Yet the air still held the faint metallic tang, and the ground still felt just a little too soft beneath their boots.

  Dante stirred.

  A breath escaped his lips, quiet, almost fragile, like a weight had been pried away but left an imprint behind.

  Kaiya stood very still. She glanced toward Xander, who remained half-turned as if he had been listening to something far away. His hooves were planted again, but his tail flicked in restless, uneven arcs. She looked away, ashamed, and said nothing.

  “What the hell was that?” Angel broke the silence, her voice shaking. She scanned the forest like something might still be hiding there.

  Valerik moved in a slow, guarded circle, daggers drawn, eyes scanning for shapes that might not be real.

  When they moved again, she did not lead.

  Xander did.

  He tilted his head, ears flicking sharply as though catching faint instructions. Then he walked. Not cautiously. Not blindly. But with the same surety as a creature following a scent only it could smell. Once, he stopped, angled his head toward the veiled sky, and shifted their path by a hair’s breadth. He gave no explanation.

  Kaiya followed, silent behind him. Her gaze stayed low, tracking the ground as though it might change underfoot. Eventually, she muttered to herself, too quiet for the others.

  “I’m still a hunter. Maybe not a tracker.”

  The forest changed around them, shedding its skin again.

  Green faded. The underbrush took on hues of lavender and dusky teal. Shadows softened into pale fogs that clung low to the ground. The air shimmered faintly, like heat rising from summer stone, though no warmth came with it. It pressed against their skin, thick with something unseen. Something old.

  The trees grew smoother. No longer splintered and rough, they now bore a sheen like river-polished rock. Light caught on their bark and danced faintly, hinting at colors that didn’t belong to this world.

  Sigils appeared. Glimpsed only at the edges of sight. Faint, flickering symbols etched into trunks, glowing softly, disappearing if stared at too long. They danced across flat stones and whispered through patches of moss. Not letters. Not words. Something older. Something remembered.

  Stones gathered like gatherings of the devout. Triads. Crescents. Circles of impossible age. Some were no bigger than a palm, buried in the dirt. Others towered like sleeping beasts, unmoved for centuries. Too deliberate to be random. Too scattered to be explained.