They left at dawn, or something close to it.
The sun had not risen so much as it had emerged a faint, sickle-shaped glow behind veils of shifting mist. The light didn't warm them. It barely touched anything at all. The forest remained cold, wet, and watchful, as though it had only pretended to sleep through the night.
Søren adjusted the strap of his satchel and glanced back once. The cabin was already out of sight, swallowed by the trees and the mist that always seemed one breath away from becoming solid.
He wondered if it would still be there should he return, or if it had already been absorbed back into whatever dream it had crawled out of.
Bryony walked ahead with silent steps, their coat brushing against damp undergrowth. Feran trailed behind with a loose gait, humming something tuneless and strange, like the memory of a song never written down.
Søren walked between them, feeling like a thread strung between two anchors that shouldn't have existed in the same world.
The silence of the forest was unnatural. Not peaceful hollow. As though sound had been carved out of the space between trees. Even their footsteps didn't echo.
Søren broke the silence first. "We don't even know where this city is."
Bryony didn't turn around. "That doesn't matter."
Søren frowned. "How can it not matter? You can't just set out for somewhere if you don't know where it is."
Feran chuckled behind him. "You sound like someone who still thinks places are real."
Søren turned slightly. "What does that mean?"
Bryony slowed, coming to a stop beneath the long, twisted boughs of an ancient tree. Moss dripped from its limbs like old hair.
They turned, their voice low and steady, like it had seeped out of the bark itself. "You're thinking in the old ways. The ways that made sense. Roads, signs, maps, destinations."
They gestured vaguely to the woods. "But this path doesn't lead to a place. It leads to a memory that no longer belongs to anyone."
Feran leaned on a crooked tree, arms crossed. "The city has no borders, no coordinates. No nation remembers it. Even if you walked through it, you wouldn't know. Unless it wanted you to."
Bryony nodded. "That's the truth of ■■■■■■. The name was the last thing that remained. Now even that's gone."
Søren reached into his coat and pulled out the letter again. It was still damp. The ink had faded more, curling around itself in spiral patterns that threatened to vanish if he looked away. "But the letter told us to go there. It wants us to find it."
"Or it wants to find us," Feran said, tilting his head. "Could be it's not a city at all anymore. Could be it's a wound, wearing the memory of a city like a coat."
Søren looked from Feran to Bryony. "Then how do we find it?"
"We don't," Bryony said simply. "We walk. If we are meant to arrive, we will."
Feran tapped the side of his head. "The pull's already started, hasn't it? You've felt it."
Søren hesitated.
He had. He just hadn't known what it was. A weight in his chest, a quiet tug behind his sternum, like something buried in his lungs had started to lean forward. Not painful. Not even urgent. But persistent. Like gravity... inverted.
Bryony took a step forward. "Don't think of this like a journey. Think of it like remembering something you've never lived. You're not going to the city. You're remembering how to get back there."
"That makes no sense."
"Exactly, now you're starting to get it." Feran said cheerfully.
They walked again, deeper into the folds of the forest.
There were no roads. No markers. Just the subtle curve of the earth and the occasional crack of root beneath their feet. The trees here were different, taller, more twisted, as though they'd grown under the weight of dreams. Some of them leaned together like conspirators. Others stood apart in solemn watch.
The mist thickened as they went. Time began to bend. Hours stretched thin, like wet paper. At some point, Søren asked how long they'd been walking.
They passed a ring of stones at one point, old, cracked, and half-sunken into the earth. None of them spoke as they passed it, but Søren noticed Bryony's eyes lingered on it too long, and Feran's tail flicked in irritation.
When they stopped to rest beneath a leaning pine, Søren sat with his back against a cold rock and looked up through the shifting canopy.
"How will we know when we're close?" he asked.
Bryony sat cross-legged a few paces away, eyes closed. "You'll start to forget why you were walking."
Feran was laying in the moss, arms folded behind his head. "And you'll feel like you've been there before, even though you haven't."
Søren looked down at his hand. The veins in his wrist seemed darker now. Or maybe the skin was thinner. He couldn't tell.
The wind shifted. The mist seemed to lean in.
Far ahead, between the trees, Søren saw something. A flicker. A corner of something that should not have had corners.
It vanished the moment he blinked.
The road had begun. Or maybe it never stopped.
***
They had only just begun moving again when the air shifted.
It was subtle at first, just a stillness, deeper than before. The kind of stillness that didn't feel like absence, but anticipation. The trees no longer creaked. The mist thickened into a wall, cloaking every direction in blinding white. Even the light began to dim unnaturally, as though the sun had blinked.
Søren stopped walking.
"So... this isn't normal, right?" he asked, voice hushed.
Feran raised his nose and sniffed once, tail going rigid. Bryony placed a hand on the mossy ground and closed their eyes.
Then Bryony spoke, voice flat. "Something's here."
Søren took a step back instinctively. "What is it?"
Before either of them could answer, the trees ahead shuddered, not from wind, but as though something enormous had brushed past them from beneath the soil. Roots cracked. Bark peeled. Something moved in the mist.
Then, from the white fog, a Ka'thul stepped forward.
It had once been human. You could see it just barely in the way it stood, as if still trying to remember what a spine was for. Its limbs were elongated, jagged at the joints, the flesh slick and torn like something scraped from the ocean floor.
Its face was a tangle of flayed skin and twitching mouths, and from its back grew bones, sharp, curved, like someone had broken antlers and shoved them beneath the skin.
It gurgled a sound that didn't belong in any throat. A voice made of phlegm and memory.
Søren took another step back, heart hammering. "That's-"
"Ka'thul," Bryony said, already rising. "Recent one, by the look of it. Still remembering pain."
Feran cracked his knuckles and stepped forward with casual confidence. "I've got this one."
The creature lunged, but Feran was already in motion.
He dashed forward, fast. Faster than Søren thought possible. His hoofed feet struck the ground with thunder, and he leapt into a spiraling kick that collided with the Ka'thul's chest. The sound of impact was wet and hollow like kicking a rotten tree trunk.
The Ka'thul staggered, screeching.
Feran grinned wildly. "Come on then, show me what you've got."
The monster lunged again, all limbs and shrieking mouths, but Feran ducked low and drove a brutal elbow into its side, followed by a spinning heel that sent the thing crashing through a patch of fungus-ridden undergrowth.
It tried to rise but vines lashed up from the soil, binding its arms.
Bryony stood with their arms slightly raised, fingers spread like a conductor in command of some ancient orchestra. From every patch of moss, root, and weed, plants obeyed, twisting and tightening, wrapping around the Ka'thul's limbs with precise cruelty.
"Finish it," Bryony said calmly.
Feran didn't hesitate. With a sharp leap, he came down hard, his leg snapping out in one brutal arc, hoof slamming into the creature's distorted skull with bone-breaking force.
It crumpled.
The plants loosened. The forest exhaled.
The mist began to retreat, curling back into the trees like breath being drawn away.
Søren stood frozen.
He had not moved once during the fight. He hadn't helped. He hadn't known how.
His hands were shaking. Not from fear, but something more hollow, helplessness.
Feran dusted his hands, looking annoyed more than concerned. "Not a smart one. They're worse when they've been twisted longer. Less human. More... hungry."