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Below the surface
Last Updated:
2025-05-02 06:00:51
Latest chapter
A Night at Wildwood The seed of the forgotten
The Growing Eye The sound of cracking bark filled the air, sharp and unmistakable. Clara stood frozen, watching as the seed Lucas had carried for so long began to grow, twisting upward like a vine of obsidian. The small eye-shaped object, which had once been merely an eerie symbol in his hands, now pulsed with an unnatural light, sending ripples of shadow across the forest floor. Lucas had dropped to his knees, staring at the vine as it stretched higher, the eye at its core now wide open, gleaming with an almost sentient awareness. “What the hell is that?” Ashani whispered, her hand gripping her blade, eyes darting between the seed’s growth and the surrounding trees. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.” Emily’s breath came in short gasps, her hands trembling. The fire within her flickered in response to the dark energy that was rising, but it was no longer the comforting warmth she’d once known. It burned her, pulling at her insides. “I don’t know,” Clara said, stepping forward, vo
A Night at Wildwood The weight of silence
The Aftermath Days passed like a slow, steady march, each one blending into the next until time seemed meaningless in WildWood’s stillness. It was no longer screaming in pain, but it wasn’t healed either. Clara woke every morning before dawn, drawn to the edge of Hollow Hill like a moth to the flame. She would stand there, eyes tracing the horizon where the first roots had split open. The sky had returned to its usual pale blue, untroubled by the strange storms and unnatural darkness that had once clouded the land. But the ground beneath her feet had not forgotten. Her grandmother’s journal, filled with sketches and cryptic notes, lay heavy in her bag. The final pages had been torn away, but the warning remained: What was sealed will rise again. Clara had no doubt that it was true. It wasn’t the first time WildWood had fallen silent. The elders, the Daughters of Yanuwah, had all known that peace was fleeting — a brief respite between storms. But this time felt… different. ⸻
A Night at Wildwood The quiet between
Six Weeks Later The trees were still. Not dead — but still. Sunlight filtered through the canopy in golden strands, dancing across moss-covered roots and the broken stone where the entrance to the Hollow had once been. WildWood was no longer screaming. No longer shifting. It slept. And for a time, so did its survivors. ⸻ Clara Clara stood at the edge of Hollow Hill, where the forest opened like a wound that had finally begun to scab over. The air here was clearer. She held her grandmother’s journal in one hand and the charm — now burned black and cold — in the other. She had tried going home, back to the quiet cottage outside Terrell. It didn’t feel like home anymore. Now she walked WildWood’s edges every morning, noting what grew and what didn’t. Some places had begun to heal. Others remained scorched. No birds nested in the northern grove, and no new moss returned to the place where the First Root had split open. Something was watching still. Something waiting. ⸻
A Night at Wildwood The root and the flame
The cavern shuddered. Emily staggered back from the stone circle, her hands aflame, barely suppressing the wave of power that surged beneath the pulsing root. “It’s starting,” she whispered, voice raw. “The bindings are failing.” Clara clutched the charm in one hand and Ashani’s wrist in the other. “We don’t have time. The lock needs blood—all four names.” Ashani looked around, face grim. “Then we’re missing someone.” A beat of silence passed. Then… Footsteps. From the far archway carved in rot and bone, someone emerged — limping, bleeding, wide-eyed with firelight etched into his skin. “Lucas,” Clara breathed. He didn’t speak. Just crossed the threshold and stepped beside them like he’d always belonged there. The mark on his wrist — the spiral-root sigil — glowed. The others answered it. Ashani moved first, drawing a small knife from her belt. Without hesitation, she sliced her palm and let her blood drip into the basin beside the lock-circle. Clara followed, then Emily
A Night at Wildwood The hollow gate
Lucas didn’t remember falling asleep, but he remembered waking. The air was colder. Denser. Everything around him pulsed faintly in shades of gray-green and red — not from his lantern, which had long since sputtered out, but from the walls themselves. Bioluminescent growths spread across the passage like veins beneath skin, lighting the narrow corridor as he pressed on. The silence was different here. Less like quiet — more like anticipation. He’d descended for what felt like hours, through winding stone and living bark, past skeletons wrapped in vines and roots that pulsed when touched. Some of the bones had markings — symbols. Ritual cuts. Tattoos. Some bore resemblance to Ashani’s people. Others… to his own. Lucas felt that tug in his chest again. Not the totem — it had broken when he entered. But something older. Something in his blood. ⸻ The Gate of Teeth He stepped into a chamber shaped like a ribcage — massive roots woven into arching spires above, and at the far en
A Night at Wildwood The root below all things
The tunnel pulsed like a throat, slick and warm, lit only by the glow from Ashani’s blade and the flickering fire that still smoldered from Emily’s hands. Each step they took echoed like a drumbeat inside a living, dying god. Clara led. Emily followed, slower now, her strength waning even though her eyes still glowed with ancestral fire. Ashani watched them both in silence, every breath measured. “We’re close,” she said. “Too close. The air—it doesn’t breathe right down here.” They passed murals formed not from paint or carvings, but from growths — bark and sap frozen in shapes that hinted at stories. One showed a great tree, upside down, its roots devouring the world below. Another showed figures in flame, casting something ancient into the dark earth. And another—almost erased—showed three women standing at the edge of a hole, each bleeding from the eyes. Clara stopped. Her fingers brushed the final mural. “I’ve seen this in the journals,” she whispered. “The Daughters of
A Night at Wildwood Among the hollow
The path had long since vanished. Lucas moved through the trees with only instinct and the faint, pulsing tug of Ashani’s totem guiding him. Every few steps, it throbbed like a heartbeat in his palm, pulling toward the old quarry entrance — now swallowed by overgrowth and warded stone. The forest was quieter than it had any right to be. No birds. No insects. Just the creak of wood and the low groan of roots moving beneath the ground like tectonic plates. He passed the place where Devon had vanished — just a patch of dirt now, but he could still see his friend’s hand reaching up through the bramble in that last, horrible second. The vines had pulled him under like water. Lucas didn’t linger. He pressed on. And then the forest spoke. “Lucas.” A voice he hadn’t heard in years. He turned sharply — hand at his side where he’d tucked a broken hatchet — and saw someone standing just beyond the trees. A woman. Familiar. Long hair. Pale blue dress. Eyes like frost and winter wat
A Night at Wildwood Before the storm
The sky above WildWood was no longer a sky. It was a bruise. Dark clouds churned in unnatural spirals, greenish-black, pulsing like something diseased. Lightning arced across the horizon without sound, and the wind didn’t howl — it whispered. Lucas stood at the tree line, his hands deep in his jacket pockets, staring out over the forest that had already taken so much. His breath fogged in the sudden cold, though it was April. Behind him, the cabin groaned. Its wards still pulsed faintly — sigils burned into the wood, clay, and old bone — placed by Ashani before she left with Clara. Lucas hadn’t slept. Couldn’t. Too much of him was still down there. Buried in that rotting earth with Emily. With Clara. With everything he’d run from once. The forest whispered. Not loud. Not forceful. Just enough. She’s gone, you know. They all are. Like Devon. Like the rest. You’re the only one left. Again. He gritted his teeth and turned away. But the memory of Devon’s face—that flicker
A Night at Wildwood The memory that bleeds
The tunnel pulsed around her like a living throat. Each breath Emily took felt like inhaling ash and sorrow. But she moved now—not dragged, not bound—her feet pressing into the Root’s spongy flesh as she descended deeper. The ember inside her burned steady. She was more than herself now. A vessel, yes—but one of defiance, not submission. The whispers tried to claw back in. She left you. They all left you. You belong to the forest now. But they didn’t have the same weight anymore. Emily touched her chest, feeling the heat beneath her sternum, where the memory of her grandmother still lingered like a ghost’s touch. And then she heard footsteps. Not behind her—ahead. She slowed. Something shifted in the path before her. The walls bulged outward, and from them stepped a figure. A girl. Blonde hair. Slender frame. Dressed in the same hoodie she’d died in. Emily’s heart stopped. “Marla…?” The girl turned. Her face was wrong. It was Marla—but warped. The eyes were black pi
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