The morning mist clung to the trees like spiderwebs.
Except it wasn't morning.
Elara's watch read 2:17 PM, but the sun hadn't risen above the canopy since she woke. Time had started to behave like everything else—wrongly. The forest felt older, twisted, like it had forgotten its own name.
The excavation site was gone.
Not disturbed. Not collapsed. Erased.
The terrain where the vault had been was now smooth, solid earth—undisturbed for centuries. Her shovel struck nothing but thick roots and cold rock.
She tried walking in wider circles, marking trees with chalk, leaving breadcrumbs of thread and torn fabric. But after three rotations outward from her original camp…
> Every path curved back to the same spot.
A clearing with one massive, crooked pine in the center.
And nailed to that tree: a photograph.
Of her.
Not as she was now, but as a child—no older than 7. In a white coat. Standing in front of a locked gate. Behind the gate, something black and shapeless leered through iron bars.
She'd never seen the photo before.
And she didn't remember ever being near that gate.
Her hands trembled as she turned the photo over. A single line was written in red ink:
> "You returned. Just like we knew you would."
---
Elara wandered for hours before she noticed the sounds.
Not birds. Not animals. Something deeper. A wet clicking, like bones tapping against stone underwater. The whispers were louder now too—not inside her head, but from the trees. As if the forest had grown mouths.
And then she saw the door.
Not in a hill. Not in a ruin. Just a door.
Standing alone in the woods.
Six feet tall. Solid oak. Spiral carvings burned into its surface.
It had no frame. No walls.
Just a door.
She stepped closer, every instinct screaming not to. But she was beyond instinct now.
The journal in her backpack heated against her spine.
She placed her hand on the knob.
For a moment, the forest went completely still.
Then the door opened by itself.
Not outward.
Inward.
Into darkness.
And something on the other side said softly:
> "Welcome home, Elara."