31. Torin
31
TORIN
The forest is alive in a way that makes my new chaos magick feel like a child’s sparkler compared to a supernova. It pulses and breathes around us, testing our defences and probing for weaknesses. I can feel it pressing against my mental shields, trying to find a way in.
“Stop,” Ivy suddenly murmurs, throwing out an arm to halt our progress. Ahead of us, the path splits into three identical routes, each disappearing into impenetrable darkness.
“Well, that’s not ominous at all,” Tate mutters.
I reach out with my magick, trying to sense which path might be safest, but the forest’s energy interferes, sending feedback that makes my head throb. “I can’t get a read on any of them.”
“Look,” Bram points to where moss grows on the trees. “It’s different on each path.”
He’s right. The left path’s trees are covered in phosphorescent blue moss that pulses like a heartbeat. The middle path’s moss glows a deep, bloody red. The right path’s moss is pure white, almost painfully bright.
“Red for blood, white for bone, blue for soul,” I recite.
“Huh?” Bram mutters.
I shake my head. “The candles that burn. It’s an old vampire coven thing.”
“Nicely done,” Tate says, slapping me on the back.
Ivy nods slowly. “Blue. We take the blue path.”
“Are you sure?” Tate asks, eyeing the pulsing moss warily.
“No,” she admits. “But it’s left, and I think... I think the forest is trying to help. In its own way.”
“Well, only one way to find out,” I state and lead the way,
We’re barely fifty feet down the blue path when I hear it - my mother’s voice, calling my name. I freeze, knowing it can’t be real. I fucking hope, anyway.
“Torin?” Ivy squeezes my hand. “What do you hear?”
“Nothing,” I lie, forcing myself forward. “Just the wind.”
“Whatever you’re hearing, it’s the forest using your fears against you.”
“It’s my mum. She’s calling to me,” I admit, grudgingly.
“She’s not here,” Ivy says, looking around.
“Can you be so sure? She is Life’s minion.”
Ivy’s eyes narrow as my mother’s voice echoes through the trees again.
“Can you hear it this time?” I ask.
She nods. “Ignore it. Your mother isn’t here. She wouldn’t get her expensive shoes muddy in the forest.” She smirks to try to lighten the mood, and it works.
“Well, I can’t argue with that.”
“Torin, sweetheart,” the forest version of my mother calls, her voice dripping with false warmth that the real vicious bitch would never use. “Don’t you want to make your mother proud?”
“That’s definitely not her,” Bram snorts.
“The forest is really bad at impersonations,” Tate adds dryly.
Their casual dismissal helps. They’re right - my mother would never use that sugary tone. She’s all ice and sharp edges. This poor imitation just proves it’s the forest playing tricks.
Another snap, closer. My mother’s voice shifts, becoming colder, but still not quite right. “You could have joined us. You still can. All that new power, wasted.”
“Oh, shut up,” Ivy snarls suddenly. “You aren’t real, and even if you were, Torin has chosen his side, and it’s not yours.”
The air grows heavy with tension, like two powerful forces testing each other. For a moment, I think the forest might retaliate, but then the pressure eases, and it goes silent.
“Well, that was irritating,” I grit out.
“The forest isn’t evil,” Ivy says thoughtfully. “It’s testing us. But we have to set boundaries.”
“Respect for each other,” Tate murmurs.
She nods. “Exactly. We show respect, but we don’t submit. We don’t let it?—”
A scream cuts through the night - Lila’s scream. Ivy’s head whips around, her whole body tensing.
“Don’t,” I warn. “It’s not real. It can’t be real.”
Ivy’s jaw clenches, but she doesn’t move toward the sound. Smart girl. Instead, she grips my hand. “We keep moving.”
But the forest isn’t done with us. The screams multiply. Tate makes a choked sound that suggests he’s hearing his own personal demons.
“Close ranks,” I order, pulling our group into a tighter formation. My chaos magick swirls protectively around us, responding to my need to shield rather than attack. “Whatever you hear, whatever you see, remember that the forest is trying to separate us.”
The path ahead shimmers, like heat waves rising from hot pavement. Through the distortion, I see figures moving. They look like us, but wrong somehow. They are darker versions, twisted versions.
“Oh, that’s new,” Bram mutters, his shadows rising up, ready to attack. “Never seen a forest do that before.”
Our doppelgangers step forward, and I have to admit, these are better copies than the voice mimicry. The other-me grins, chaos magick crackling around him with an intensity that makes my skin crawl. His eyes are completely black.
“This is what you could be,” he says. “What you will be, once you stop fighting your true nature.”
“Bullshit,” I snap. “My nature isn’t yours to define.”
The other-Ivy laughs, the sound sharp and cruel. “Such conviction. Such delicious denial. You all cling to your manufactured morality while power beyond imagination waits for you to embrace it.”
“They’re not real,” Ivy reminds us firmly. “They’re just the forest trying to…”
She trails off as the figures suddenly blur, merging and shifting until we’re facing Life herself, looking exactly like Lila again.
“Fuck this,” Tate growls. “We don’t have time for mind games.”
Before any of us can stop him, he launches a blast of pure energy at the apparition. It passes right through, but the impact seems to shatter something. The path warps and twists, and suddenly, we’re somewhere else entirely.
The air is thicker here, heavy with magick that tastes like copper on my tongue. The moss-lit trees have given way to ancient stone pillars, crumbling but still standing, covered in symbols that hurt my eyes if I look at them too long.
“Well, that’s not good,” I mutter, noting how my magick reacts to this place, coiling and writhing like it’s found something familiar. Something dangerous.
“Where are we?” Tate asks, his power fluctuating wildly.
“Still in the forest,” Ivy answers, though she sounds uncertain. “But deeper, maybe? Those pillars look like they belong in the Hollowed Grounds Blackthorn mentioned.”
Bram’s shadows are acting strange, stretching toward the pillars like they’re being pulled. “Something’s wrong here. The shadows are not behaving normally. Even less so than before.”
“Define normally,” I say, watching as one of his shadows actually breaks away, dissipating into the darkness between two pillars.
“That,” he says tersely. “That’s not normal. I can’t control them properly here.”
A low humming starts, seeming to come from the pillars themselves. It resonates with my magick in a way that makes me nauseous. The symbols glow with a sickly green light.
“Move,” I bark, shoving Ivy forward as one of the pillars suddenly crumbles, stone fragments floating upward instead of falling.
We run, weaving between the pillars as more of them start to collapse—or maybe reconstruct themselves. It’s hard to tell when gravity seems optional. The humming grows louder, becoming a physical pressure that makes my ears pop.
“The path!” Ivy points ahead where the ground drops away into absolute darkness. “We need to find another?—”
The words die as we all see it. A bridge of pure light spans the void, leading to what looks like a temple in the distance. It pulses with the same green as the symbols.
“Please tell me we’re not actually considering crossing that,” Tate says.
Another pillar explodes behind us, fragments swirling like a tornado.
“You got a better idea?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“We cross,” Ivy decides, her voice steady despite everything.
The bridge forces us into a single file. It shakes beneath our feet as we step onto it. There is ancient power here, raw and untamed, exactly the kind of thing Life would want to harness.
As we cross, the humming reaches a fever pitch, and I catch glimpses of things moving in the ravine below—massive shapes that shouldn’t exist, eyes that shouldn’t see. But we keep moving, one foot in front of the other, while behind us, the pillars continue their impossible dance of destruction and reconstruction.
We’re almost to the other side when I hear my mother’s voice one final time, closer than ever.
“You can’t save them all, Torin. In the end, you’ll have to choose.”
I ignore it. The forest can try all it wants to get in my head. But I know who I am, who I choose to be.
We reach the temple steps just as the bridge dissolves behind us. Through the massive doorway, I can see more paths splitting off into darkness.
“Well,” I say, trying to sound lighter than I feel, “that was fun. Who’s ready for more?”
But when I look at Tate, I can see he’s not hearing me. His eyes are fixed on something - or someone - only he can see, and the colour has drained from his face.