They walked in silence, the Circle shrinking behind them. Branches wove a tight canopy overhead, choking the light. Even the birds had grown quiet—as if the trees themselves had shushed them.
Allan noticed it first.
"That root," he said, stopping short. "That twisted one."
Canya squinted. It curled like a coiled snake, half-buried in moss, unmistakable.
"We've seen it," she said. "Hours ago."
Henry caught up, panting. "Can't be. I marked the turn back near the euphorbia—"
He approached a tree and pushed aside a veil of leaves. Three identical symbols carved into separate trunks stared back at him—his sigil, repeated with unsettling precision.
Canya stepped back. "That's not possible."
"Nor is forgetting the sun's direction," Allan muttered. "It was behind us. Now it's over there."
All three looked up. The light dappled from the wrong angle, stretching shadows east when they should have stretched west. It wasn't darker—but it wasn't right.
Then a scent hit them—sharp and out of place. Not decay, not moss. Ink. Parchment. Something dry, preserved, older than words. Henry closed his eyes, inhaling deep.
"I know that smell," he whispered. "My mentor's deck, his scroll room—burned down decades ago."
Before anyone could respond, a breeze stirred. It sang. Faintly, barely audible, like bone flutes played underwater. It didn't come from a direction but from within. The sound vibrated through trunks, hummed in their very bones. Canya stiffened.
"I heard that tune… when I was a child," she said slowly. "My mother used to hum it in her sleep."
Allan looked around, hand on his blade hilt. "We're not alone."
They pressed forward, trying to find new paths. But the forest reshaped itself with each step. A grove of twisted elms appeared where there'd been pines. Stones now littered the trail, smooth and clean, as if only just placed.
Then Allan stopped again. "No."
He pointed.
A stream babbled quietly ahead—gentle, shallow, familiar. "That's my father's creek. From when I was a boy. I remember that curve, that bend in the bark. This isn't real."
He crouched beside the bank, dipping fingers into the water. It felt cold—but not wet. When he lifted his hand, nothing clung to it.
Canya stood still, her eyes glassy. Her lips moved, whispering. It took a moment before Allan noticed it wasn't a language he knew.
Henry knelt beside her. "Canya, what are you saying?"
She blinked out of the trance. "I… I don't know."
"It sounded like—" he hesitated, "—Kiyu."
Canya frowned. "I don't speak Kiyu."
"You do now," Henry muttered.
Allan glanced behind them. "Three sets of prints," he said, then paused. "No. Four."
The fourth trail was fainter, barefoot. Smaller. Following.
Henry turned pale. "It's copying us."
A silence fell like dust.
Then, from deep within the forest, someone called Henry's name.
Not shouted. Whispered. Gentle. Loving.
"Who is that?" Allan asked.
"No one," Henry said too quickly. "I heard nothing."
But his face had gone slack, eyes moist. "My mentor used to say my name like that," he whispered. "After a discovery. Just like that…"
Canya grabbed his sleeve. "You said this place had no power."
"I was wrong."
By twilight—if that's what the strange hue above could be called—they had found a clearing. Not the Circle, but a crooked cousin, a warped mirror of it.
The trees here leaned inward. They were not white-barked but black-veined, as if ash had soaked them from within. In the center, a single stone stood—a narrow pillar, carved with script none of them could read. At its base, a ring of mushrooms pulsed faintly blue.
Henry was drawn to it like a moth. He dropped to his knees, sketching furiously in his journal. "I've seen this symbol before. In Twelve-Form Magic Litany. It's a doorway."
Allan stepped closer. "To what?"
Henry looked up. "Memory. Or maybe something worse."
Canya reached toward the pillar but stopped. "There's something inside it," she murmured. "Not in the stone—in the moment. Like the air is holding its breath."
Something moved in the woods.
They all turned.
Nothing. But the air had thickened. Trees no longer swayed. Leaves were still. Even the mushrooms dimmed, as if hiding.
"We should go," Canya said.
They turned to leave—and found the path gone.
Not overgrown. Not hidden.
Gone.
Just trees.
And between two trunks, a figure.
Small. Plump. Barefoot. Dressed in Henry's old academy robes—robes he had not worn in thirty years.
It stared at them, unmoving.
Then it smiled.