The forest had a name once.
Older townspeople still called it Silent Hollow , though no one could remember why. It stretched beyond the ridge where the town ended, thick with pines and shadows that didn't quite belong to anything living.
Eli refused to go there.
But Mira and Luka went anyway.
They left after school, backpacks slung over their shoulders, map tucked safely inside Luka's jacket. Mira carried her sketchpad like it was part of her—because sometimes, she said, it was . Sometimes the drawings came before she even touched the page.
Luka followed without question.
He trusted silence better than most people trusted words.
The trees swallowed them whole.
Once they passed the first line of oaks, the world changed. The wind stopped. Birds fell quiet. Even the ground felt different underfoot—as if it remembered footsteps from long ago.
Mira paused often, fingers brushing the bark of trees that looked too old for this place. She sketched quickly when something caught her attention: a broken lantern hanging from a branch, its glass cracked; a stone marker half-buried in moss, etched with symbols neither of them recognized.
Luka watched her closely, noting how her breath hitched whenever they passed certain spots.
"You feel it too," he said softly.
She nodded without looking up.
Then she drew again—a house that wasn't really a house. More like a shape hidden between trees. A structure barely visible through fog that hadn't formed yet.
Luka frowned. "Is it real?"
She pointed ahead.
He turned.
And there it was.
Not exactly a house. More like the remains of one. A collapsed porch. Rotted beams. A single window still intact, reflecting the sky like a mirror holding its breath.
Neither of them spoke.
They just walked toward it.
Inside, time had forgotten to move forward.
Dust floated in the air like snowflakes frozen mid-fall. A table stood untouched, plates still set as if someone had left in the middle of a meal. A child's shoe sat beneath a chair.
Mira stepped carefully around the debris, her fingers trailing along the wall. Suddenly, she stopped.
Her eyes widened.
She reached out and pressed her palm against the wallpaper.
A moment later, she gasped.
Luka caught her before she fell.
"What happened?" he asked, steadying her.
She pulled away from the wall, trembling slightly. Then she flipped open her sketchpad and began drawing furiously.
It took only seconds for the image to appear.
A woman standing in the center of the room, back turned. Her hands were raised, palms outward, as if trying to hold something at bay. Behind her, shadows curled like smoke, reaching but never touching.
Mira tapped the edge of the drawing twice.
Then she signed:
She was trying to keep it out.
Luka swallowed hard. "Keep what out?"
She didn't answer. Just pointed to the floor beneath them.
He looked down.
The boards creaked—but not with their weight.
Something else moved underneath.
Outside, the wind returned.
Not gently. Not naturally.
It howled.
Luka grabbed Mira's hand. "We should go."
She hesitated, then nodded.
As they stepped outside, the house behind them seemed to shrink—its outline blurring into the trees, as if it had never been there at all.
Mira turned back once.
Then she drew a final thing in her sketchbook.
A door. Hidden beneath roots. Marked by a spiral carved into the wood.
Luka saw it and whispered, "That's the same symbol from my notebook."
She met his gaze.
Then she signed:
We're not the first.
He exhaled slowly. "No. I don't think we are."
Back in town, the storm broke.
Rain pounded the rooftops like drums echoing from another world. Eli waited for them at the apartment, arms crossed, face tight with worry.
"Where have you two been?" he demanded.
Mira handed him her sketchpad without a word.
He flipped through the pages—slowly at first, then faster. His expression darkened with each drawing.
When he reached the last one—the door beneath the roots—he closed the book.
"No more," he said quietly. "You're staying away from that forest."
Mira looked at him, unblinking.
Then she signed:
It's already found us.
Eli's jaw tightened.
And somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled—not like rain, but like something waking up.