Control
The ancient trees twisted into a labyrinth of gnarled roots and moss-covered branches, their leaves blotting out the sky as a luminescent mist seeped through the undergrowth, swallowing the moonlight whole. Every rustle of foliage hissed with unseen movement—a skitter of claws, the snap of brittle bones, the wet drag of something heavy over damp soil—yet the air hung thick with silence, choking even the faintest echo of life. Whispers slithered between the trunks, half-formed words in tongues long forgotten, their voices cold as rotting earth, while shadows pooled deeper than darkness should allow, shifting at the edge of vision like predators circling prey. The path coiled forward, narrow and crumbling, as if the forest itself reshaped its bones to lead wanderers astray, and the unspoken rule hummed in every traveler’s veins: *never stray from the trail, never answer the calls that mimic familiar voices, never look too long at the shapes watching from the trees*. But the forest thrived on hunger, and rules, in the end, were made to be broken.
description
The air hung thick, heavy with the scent of damp earth and pine resin. Moonlight filtered through the canopy in fractured beams, casting silver pools on a forest floor teeming with bioluminescent fungi that pulsed like dormant stars. Shadows shifted where no wind stirred—a rustle of leaves here, the snap of a twig there—movements too deliberate for woodland creatures. Ancient oaks stood sentinel, bark etched with spiraling grooves that glimmered faintly when observed sidelong, as though the trees themselves tracked intruders. A low hum permeated the woods, resonating in molars and sternums, neither insect nor machinery but something older, something that predated the first human tongue giving names to wild things. Travelers spoke of paths that rearranged themselves, of compass needles spinning like drunk dancers. Those who lingered past dusk told of half-seen figures weaving between trunks, their forms flickering between human and not, of voices that called in languages forgotten by history but remembered by the marrow of bones. The forest breathed. It watched. And beneath layers of rotting leaves and myth, something vast uncoiled.
