The trees grew backward here.
I noticed it first in the way leaves curled into buds, how branches reached down instead of up, roots breaking free of earth to taste air they'd never known. This forest was older than language, older than the names we gave to growing things. And after what we'd done at the Moonwell—after reality had cracked and bled—this place no longer remembered what it was supposed to be.
"Mama, the trees are sad," Ashara murmured from her perch on Dorian's back. She'd been humming softly since we'd entered the wood, a tune that seemed to soothe the wrongness around us.
"Why do you think they're sad?" I asked, keeping my voice light despite the crawling sensation under my skin.
She reached out, small fingers brushing bark that peeled away in patterns I almost recognized. Script of some kind, but in no tongue meant for human understanding. The moment her skin made contact, she went rigid.
"This used to be a person."
The words came flat, certain, terrible. Dorian stopped walking, his hand moving instinctively to his blade—though what use steel would be against trees that had forgotten their nature, I couldn't say.
"What do you mean, little star?" he asked carefully.
But Ashara had already withdrawn her hand, returning to her humming as if she'd said nothing of consequence. The bark where she'd touched now showed clear letters, still in that alien script but somehow more defined. Like her recognition had given them focus.
We pressed on because stopping felt worse than moving. The path behind us didn't vanish—it simply ceased, as if it had never existed once we'd passed. No birds sang. No insects buzzed. The only sounds were our footsteps and Ashara's endless melody, weaving through air that tasted of forgotten names.
"Travelers."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. We spun, weapons drawn, to find a woman standing between two trees that hadn't been there moments before. She wore simple clothes, carried a basket of mushrooms that glowed faintly in the perpetual twilight. Normal, except for how she never quite faced us directly—her profile shifting so we only ever saw her from angles, like a reflection without a mirror.
"You'll want shelter before the forgetting hours," she said, voice warm with concern that felt practiced. "The woods are unkind to those who sleep exposed."
"We're fine," I said quickly.
"Are you?" She tilted her head—or seemed to; the motion was hard to track. "The child sounds tired. I have stew, warm blankets, and..." She paused, then sang a few bars of a lullaby. "Songs for the little one."
My blood chilled. That melody—my mother had sung it. Only my mother, who'd died when I was twelve, who'd never written it down or taught it to another soul.
"How do you know that song?"
"I know many songs," the woman replied, already walking away. "Come or don't. But the forgetting hours approach, and even gods' daughters need their names kept safe."
Against my better judgment, we followed. Her cottage appeared between one step and the next, smoke already rising from a chimney that looked too solid for a structure that hadn't existed moments ago. Inside was warm, comfortable, exactly what weary travelers would hope to find.
Too exact. The blankets were the shade of blue I'd always loved. The stew smelled of herbs from my childhood garden. Even the crackling of the fire matched the rhythm I found most soothing.
"This place feeds on memory," I whispered to Dorian while the woman bustled about, never quite showing her face.
"Then we don't sleep," he replied.
But exhaustion was a weight we'd carried too long. Despite our vigilance, dreams claimed us.
I stood in my childhood home, but the mirrors were empty. Not reflecting nothing—actively empty, as if they'd swallowed what should have been there. I tried to picture my own face and found only smooth blankness where features should be.
Ashara's scream woke us all.
"She's trying to rename me!" Our daughter thrashed in Dorian's arms, silver eyes wide with terror. "She's taking the old me and putting in a new one!"
The mirror-woman stood in the doorway, still angled away, still wrong. "Children have such vivid dreams," she said mildly. "Perhaps another lullaby?"
"No." I pulled Ashara close, feeling her trembling. "We're leaving."
"If you wish." No argument, which worried me more than resistance would have. "Though the forest is hungry at night. It's been so long since it remembered what it was. Now it makes do with remembering what passes through."
Understanding hit cold and certain. "This place feeds on identity. That's why the trees grow backward. Why paths disappear. It's forgotten its own nature and survives by stealing the nature of others."
The woman might have smiled—her profile suggested it. "Clever. But knowing doesn't protect you. Already, can you remember the color of your mother's eyes? The sound of your first laugh? The weight of your name on your own tongue?"
She was right. Memories felt slippery, uncertain. I looked at Dorian and saw him struggling to focus on my face, as if the details kept sliding away.
"Run," I said.
We fled into woods that had grown stranger in our absence. Trees whispered fragments—not words but pieces of sound that might have been my name, scattered and rearranged. The path writhed beneath our feet, trying to lead us in circles, back to forgetting, back to feeding this place that had lost itself and now survived on the selves of others.
"Aria," I whispered, clutching Ashara tight. "My name is Aria. Aria Nightbloom. Mother of Ashara. Partner to Dorian. My name is Aria."
Repetition as shield. Identity as weapon. But the forest pressed closer, murmuring half-remembered truths, trying to convince me that perhaps I'd been someone else all along.
Dorian stumbled, eyes going vacant. For a heartbeat, I saw him looking at me without recognition—just another stranger in a strange wood. Then his gaze found mine, locked on, held.
"You're the one who chose," he said, wonder in his voice as if remembering something precious. "Chose her. Chose us. Chose to stay human when heaven offered more."
"Yes." The word anchored us both. "And I choose still."
We ran through woods that forgot themselves with every step, past trees that might have been people once, over ground that couldn't remember if it was earth or ash or bone. Behind us, the forest whispered promises: rest here, forget the weight of names, become nothing and everything and free.
But we were already free. Free to be ourselves, to carry our names like burdens and blessings both.
When we finally broke through the tree line into normal woods—woods that grew up, that remembered their purpose—the transition was so abrupt we all fell to our knees. Behind us, the Forest That Forgot Its Name stood like a wall of wrongness, branches reaching but unable to follow.
From its depths came a voice that might have been the mirror-woman or might have been the forest itself: "If you forget yourself, we will remember you instead."
"No thank you," I gasped, pulling my family close. "We'll carry our own names. Even when they're heavy. Especially then."
The forest sighed—disappointment or relief, impossible to say. Then it turned away, returning to its slow self-consumption, feeding on its own forgotten nature until the next travelers wandered too close.
We didn't look back. Some hungers were too patient to fight.
Some forgettings too complete to risk.
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