"When a man steps away from the circle,
the forest does not welcome him.
It swallows his name,
and leaves behind only echoes that never belonged to him."
Kabir walked away.
The firelight behind him flickered like a dying star, each step stealing him further from the warmth of voices, arguments, and fragile alliances. His chest burned with pride and defiance—they didn't deserve him anyway.
But as the darkness pressed in, something strange happened. The night did not feel like night anymore. Trees bent in directions he had never seen before. Roots twisted like veins beneath his feet. The air tasted… wrong.
Kabir paused. The forest smelled of rust and old blood, though no wound had opened.
He touched his arm—perfectly fine. He inhaled again—the copper stench grew stronger.
Somewhere between his steps, the ground lost its shape. He could not tell if he was walking forward, or if the forest had turned itself to meet him. The trees seemed to whisper his name—though not in his voice, not in his tone.
"Kabir… Kabir…"
He froze. The whispers layered on top of one another, like dozens of mouths calling from the hollow inside the trunks.
He looked back.
The camp was gone.
No firelight. No voices. No trace.
Only black.
And then—he heard footsteps. Not his own.
Slow. Wet. Slapping against the roots and mud.
Kabir tried to speak, but his throat was full of silence. He couldn't even hear his own breath.
Something moved behind a tree. A shape… wrong in its proportions. It leaned when he leaned. It turned when he turned.
Then, it smiled. He couldn't see a mouth, but he felt the smile—like a knife scraping the inside of his skull.
He ran.
But the strange thing was, no matter how far he ran, the forest never changed. The same bent tree. The same roots. The same whisper:
"Kabir… why did you leave them? Why did you leave… yourself?"
His hands shook. He scratched his arm. This time, blood poured out—black, not red.
The forest laughed.
The sound echoed in infinite directions, until Kabir himself began to laugh with it. His laugh wasn't his own. It was hollow, metallic, drenched in mud.
He collapsed to his knees.
And from the soil, hands began to crawl out. Pale hands, mud-caked, clawing at his legs, his chest, his face. They weren't strangers.
He knew them.
Rohit's hands. Saanvi's hands. Yashpal's hands. Priya's hands. Meghna's hands. Diya's hands. Even Abhay's hands—digging into him.
"Stay with us… stay forever."
Kabir screamed. But the forest had already swallowed his voice.
"The forest does not kill.
It remembers.
And in remembering, it unravels those
who thought they could walk alone."