Frost clung to everything that morning— the trees, the moss, even the air. Each breath drifted out in pale ribbons, curling and vanishing before I could track them. I followed the faint indentations I’d left yesterday, the ghost of my passage through the snow, until I reached the clearing.
The place was empty. Too empty. No body. No blood. No drag marks. Just silence—and the scent of iron and something too clean for this forest. Where he had lain, the ground looked untouched, except for the tree.
A crescent I recognized. Mine. Beside it, another mark I had seen only once before.
The crescent moon with three tiny stars—my mark. Next to it, a closed crescent turned inward, crossed by a single binding line. Cut deeper. Older. Not mine. More deliberate. My mother’s.
Both symbols were carved deep, their edges still smoking faintly. Sap had glassed over from the heat. Fine gray ash clung to the grooves like something had been burned from the inside out.
I did not touch it.
I did not need to.
The air around it felt wrong.
But it wasn’t mine.
I hadn’t touched this tree. I hadn’t drawn these marks.
The bark was warmer than it should be.
I dropped to one knee, my gloved fingers hovering above it. The air tasted like a storm about to break—ozone and pine sap, sharp and sweet.
“Don’t,” I told myself softly. “Walk away.” Like I should have before.
But I didn’t. I pressed my fingers to the burned lines.
The bark hummed under my touch. My skin flared pale beneath the glove, a shimmer like moonlight caught beneath water. The sigil pulsed once—alive. Acknowledging.
I yanked my hand back. The glow fled instantly, but the warmth lingered, a memory beneath my skin. It wasn’t pain, not exactly. It was wrong.
And that terrified me more than any wound could have.
At the base of the tree lay a single black petal. Glossy as ink and oil. The same kind I’d found before. I did not like patterns I hadn’t chosen.
Especially ones that chose me back.
I stared at it, jaw tight. Something was watching. Waiting. And I was done picking up things that seemed to whisper of death and prophecy.
“Not this time.” I muttered. I left the petal where it lay.
I told myself I’d move camp that night. That I’d reset the wards, run the perimeter and make sure the woods didn’t own me as much as I thought I owned them.
I lied.
I knew I wouldn’t.
That night, exhaustion came for me fast, a thief’s blow behind the skull. I hadn’t meant to sleep but my eyes closed and the forest fell away.
Silver-fire burst from my hands—wild, uncontained.
It spilled in arcs, carving through trees, slicing the night itself. The sound wasn’t flame—it was something deeper, a vibration that shuddered through the bone. Rings of light exploded outward, splitting trunks, breaking stones.
Trees cracked and fell. Through the blaze, I saw her.
My mother’s storm-blue eyes—calm in the chaos. Her mouth moved—but no sound reached me. The smell: iron and smoke and blood; burned the back of my throat.
“Mother!”
The silver-fire bent toward me. It coiled around my arms, bright and sentient, as though it knew me. Heat seared through me.
The fire swallowed me whole.
And I let it.
I woke choking on my own breath—like I’d drowned in it.
The air in the cave was frigid, sweat slicked my skin, freezing almost instantly. I’d clawed my palms again; half-moon cuts dug deep.
My hands shook. I forced them into the stream outside, into water black with night. The cold devoured everything; the pain, the tremor, the memory.
“You don’t get to name me.” I whispered to the reflection trembling in the water.
The water distorted the sound.
For a long time, I stayed there, listening to the forest breathe. The stream murmured. The trees whispered in languages older than mortals.
Then, through it all, another sound. Not wind. Not animal.
Footfalls.
Measured. Controlled.
Not the stumbling tread of villagers. Too even. Too quiet.
Every instinct in me went still—prey pretending to be stone.
I stayed crouched by the water’s edge, bow within reach, breath shallow. The forest leaned in with me, listening.
The steps paused just beyond the ridge, close enough that I could feel the air shift, but it didn’t approach. Like they knew I was listening.
Then, nothing.
The woods exhaled. I didn’t.
That was the night I stopped pretending the forest was mine.
It never had been.
It had always belonged to something else.
And it had decided to notice me.