Chapter 6 #2
My parents’ laughter.
“Helena!” my mother called, her voice bright and lilting, echoing through the trees. “Come along, little star!”
My heart jolted. I turned toward the sound, squinting through the dappled sunlight until I caught sight of two familiar figures just ahead on the path.
“Wait!” I called, breaking into a run. “Wait for me!”
They didn’t stop, only moved deeper into the forest, their laughter weaving through the rustling leaves. Sunlight spilled around them, too bright to look at directly. I pushed through the ferns, heart pounding, petals and pollen clinging to my legs.
“Mother!” I tried again, breathless now. “Father, please—”
They finally stopped walking and turned.
For a heartbeat, they were still the parents I remembered. Then the light shifted.
My mother’s smile stretched too wide, the corners of her mouth splitting to reveal thorns where teeth should have been.
My father’s hand reached for me, and I saw the vines coiling through his flesh, blooming from beneath his skin.
Roses burst open along his arm, red and wet, dripping petals that looked far too much like blood.
The air grew cold. The forest’s colors darkened, every blossom suddenly withering away. The laughter hadn’t stopped—it just wasn’t theirs anymore. It came from everywhere at once, a rustling chorus that shivered through the leaves.
I stumbled back, heart clawing at my ribs.
A thorn-covered vine brushed my ankle, curling gentle as a caress. Then it tightened.
I screamed and tore myself free, but more vines were already reaching through the flowers, green turning to black as they slithered toward me, snapping around my ankles as I stumbled forward. Blood slicked my leg, warm and sticky, but I didn’t stop—I ran.
The forest spun around me, the trees twisting, trunks veined with something that pulsed.
Behind me, the voices chased.
“Helena,” my father called, soft and crooning, his voice shaped exactly like memory—but it was wrong. All wrong.
“Come back to us,” my mother sobbed, her voice syrup-thick and rotting-sweet, the sound of comfort turned to poison.
“No!” I shouted. “Stop—stop talking! You’re not real! Go away!”
My knees gave out and I crashed to the ground, palms slamming into dirt and stone.
The impact jarred up through my elbows, rattling my skull.
Rocks tore into my skin, breath punching from my lungs in a ragged gasp.
I tried to scramble up, but the world spun sideways, and the forest floor pressed hard against my cheek, cold and unyielding.
Everything went silent. There was neither wind nor whispering. Just a thick, unnatural stillness pressing down on everything.
My eyes flicked open.
I was curled beneath a tree, bark digging into my spine, dirt packed beneath my nails.
Something wet pressed against my back, and I glanced up, my eyes widening as I watched the bark pulse with a slow, sick heartbeat.
My stomach turned and I shifted and reached back for balance.
I brushed the bark and immediately jerked my hand back, staring at it in disbelief.
Red streaked my fingers, clinging to the lines in my skin. Frowning, I rubbed my fingers together. It wasn’t sap. It felt too warm, too wet. Almost like … blood.
My head snapped toward the tree.
Crimson was seeping from the grooves in the bark, winding through the ridges like veins, dripping in macabre tears to the forest floor. A thick droplet welled where I’d touched, rolling down the gnarled trunk. It hit the ground with a soft pat.
Then another formed. And another. Steady and endless, like it had wounds I couldn’t see.
I skittered back from the tree in horror, my heart vaulting into my throat—
A rustle cut through the stillness.
Dense air slammed inward, like the world had sucked in a breath and forgotten how to let it go. Pressure clamped around me, humming through every nerve. My ears buzzed. The hairs on my arms lifted.
Vines slithered over dirt and stone, tendrils that whispered across the ground.
Not rushing.
Hunting.
“Helena …”
My name stretched across the wind, pulled apart by too many voices trying to wear the same mouth.
Shoulders clenched tight, I lurched upright, my feet slipping in the dirt as I spun around with wild eyes, searching the shadows.
Was I going to die here? Standing on blood-soaked roots and broken hope, beside a tree that bled for me?
I squeezed my eyes shut, my breath catching, breaking, stuck halfway between a sob and a prayer.
A roar suddenly ripped through the forest.
It thundered through the trees like a fault line splitting open, the ground trembling beneath me. A sound so vast, so furious, it could fell mountains.
A sound that could have brought the gods to their knees.
My eyes snapped open.
Something immense burst from the shadows.
It wasn’t beast … or man. It was some terrible fusion of both.
It unfolded from the darkness in pieces, first a limb, then another, joints bending the wrong way, like it had only recently learned the shape of a body.
Its skin was a patchwork of blackened bark and cracked stone, veined with something wet and glistening beneath the surface.
Spines jutted from its back in crooked rows, twitching with every breath.
Its hands scraped the ground, each tipped in claws that clicked against the earth like impatient drumbeats.
Blue, glacial eyes that burned with a cold, endless fire, cut through the dark and found me.
They didn’t blink or waver. They just stared, like judgment made flesh.
It charged.
The vines shrieked, their voices fracturing as they dissolved into the trees like mist fleeing the sun. The forest itself recoiled. Roots twisted backward. Branches pulled high, as if trying to escape.
The creature slowed.
Its massive head turned.
And then those burning blue eyes locked on me.
The air vanished from my lungs as it inhaled, shoulders rising as silver-blue flame coiled behind its teeth—
And it smiled.