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The wards and the whispering
最終更新日:
2025-04-30 23:09:11
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A Night at Wildwood Roots of the forgotten
The Hollow Tree groaned. It wasn’t the wind. It was breathing. Emily stood at the threshold of its rotting mouth, her hand still wrapped around Halloway’s ID badge. Behind her, Lucas and Devon watched the storm twist above them, the clouds moving against time, back and forward like some broken reel of film. “This thing’s alive,” Emily whispered. Devon nodded grimly. “It’s always been.” He stepped forward, brushing away the thick vines inside the hollow. Beneath them, a rusted metal door was embedded in the tree’s inner trunk — circular, like an airlock. A faded symbol was etched into the rust: a serpent swallowing its own tail, wrapped around a human skull. “This wasn’t built by nature,” Emily said. “No,” Devon muttered. “This was built beneath it.” He turned the wheel slowly. The door creaked open, and the three descended into the catacombs beneath the hospital — ruins no modern blueprint ever acknowledged. This was older. Not just a forgotten wing, but a foundation of somet
最終更新日 : 2025-04-30A Night at Wildwood The binding rite
Beneath the Hollow Tree — 3:02 a.m. The forest pulsed above them, its heartbeat echoing through stone and soil. The roots quivered in the ceiling like veins. The old surgical theater had become a temple once more, and the altar waited — hungry, eager. Marla stood before it, vines braided through her arms, her breath misting in the air despite the heat radiating from the walls. Emily tightened her grip on the badge, her knuckles white. “How do we do this?” Marla’s voice was calm — too calm. “The Binding must be mirrored. Blood for roots. Memory for bark. One must enter willingly… while the others bear witness.” Lucas adjusted his camera, already filming. “So the forest thinks it’s getting fed.” “No,” Marla corrected. “It is getting fed. But not the way it wants. The sacrifice has to bend the tree’s will. Turn its gaze inward.” Devon stepped forward. “And what happens to the one who enters?” Marla looked at him with eyes like dead water. “They become part of it. But if their wil
最終更新日 : 2025-04-30A Night at Wildwood Echoes in the soil
Six months later- Lucas hadn’t touched the footage. Not once. It sat on the hard drive in his desk drawer, beneath old receipts and two half-smoked packs of cigarettes he never meant to finish. It pulsed at the back of his mind like a heartbeat he couldn’t silence. WildWood hadn’t followed him. It had stayed. That’s what he told himself. But every night, when he closed his eyes, he could still hear the trees whispering Emily’s name. Devon hadn’t spoken to anyone about what happened in the ruins. He’d returned to the city, tried to pick up his life — classes, coffee shops, meaningless conversations. But something had broken loose in his mind. He couldn’t sleep in buildings taller than trees. He couldn’t eat anything that came from soil. And worst of all — he could still see her. Emily, in flashes. Reflected in car windows, standing just at the edge of streetlamps, her eyes black, her skin laced with bark. At first, he thought it was trauma. But then she started talking.
最終更新日 : 2025-04-30A Night at Wildwood Beneath the binding
Lucas’s Apartment – 2:14 a.m. The footage had changed. Lucas knew the files. He’d watched them so many times he could quote every soundless scream, every flicker of green fire. But this… this wasn’t there before. He sat frozen on his couch, bare feet cold against the floor. The monitor pulsed in front of him — not with static, but with a new frame. A still image. A single moment he had not recorded. Emily. But not the Emily they had lost. She stood in the ritual chamber, vines hanging like curtains around her. Her body was thinner, unnaturally elongated, as if stretched by invisible hands. Her eyes were twin voids, bleeding sap. And behind her… something shifted. Not the forest. Not Halloway’s ghosts. Something older. Something with wings made of bark and bone. Devon hadn’t slept. For the third night in a row, he found his hands raw and bloodied, black dirt under every fingernail. His sketchpad was full again, page after page of impossible things: circles of antlers, spira
最終更新日 : 2025-04-30A Night at Wildwood The thread between
Terrell, Present Day — Three Days After the Descent Lucas hadn’t returned to his apartment. He couldn’t. The moment he crossed the town line again, everything felt off — like the world had been nudged slightly out of tune. Streetlights flickered when he passed. His reflection no longer blinked in sync. He swore he saw bark growing beneath his fingernails, if only for a moment. He stayed in Devon’s garage apartment. Devon had stopped drawing, but only because the dreams had replaced the need. Now he saw without sleep. Every day, they planned. Every night, they listened — to the hum beneath their feet, the pulse in the trees. The Binding was weakening. And Emily was bleeding through. Emily — Beneath the Roots She had no body now. Not fully. Her limbs were both hers and not hers — stretched across wood, fused into the veins of the ancient chamber. Her voice echoed only in thought. But her will held. Just barely. She could feel the Rootless Ones gathering. Stirring. These wer
最終更新日 : 2025-04-30A Night at Wildwood The earthen throat
Dusk — The Abandoned Mill, Eastern Edge of WildWood The air near the river felt wrong — too still, too heavy. The mill had long since collapsed, a rusted skeleton of twisted beams and ivy-choked gears. It leaned into the slope like it was trying to disappear, to sink back into the earth that loathed it. This land had been cursed long before the first foundations were poured. Lucas stepped carefully across the rotted threshold, flashlight beam sweeping through debris. Clara followed, clutching the leather satchel of her great-aunt’s belongings. Devon came last, his eyes glazed, as if half-dreaming. “It should be beneath the old grinding floor,” Clara whispered. “There’s a stone door. A seal.” Lucas pushed aside charred planks and saw it: a circular slab of black stone, veined with gold. The same material from the underground chamber. The same markings from Devon’s dreams. Etched across it, barely visible through grime, was a phrase in First Tongue — a language none of them spoke,
最終更新日 : 2025-04-30A Night at Wildwood The seed of return
Below the Throne of Roots The priest did not move. It didn’t breathe, but the chamber pulsed with its rhythm. Around the twisted tree-throne, roots stirred, growing slowly toward the group like veins seeking a heartbeat. Clara stepped forward, clutching her satchel, her voice trembling. “You said one must stay. A sacrifice. Like Emily.” The priest’s amber eyes glowed faintly. Its mouth, still stitched shut with fine silver wire, did not move, but its voice came just the same — too close, too inside. “That was the old way.” “The forest is changing. Vareth’kaal is not satisfied with offerings. He wants a vessel.” Lucas stiffened. “Emily isn’t enough?” “She is strong. Too strong. She resists. But her blood only opened the rift.” The priest turned its gaze — slowly, reverently — toward Clara. “Yours is the blood that seals.” Clara felt her knees weaken. “No,” she whispered. “I’m not part of this. I only found those papers. I didn’t— I’m not—” “You are.” The priest reached ou
最終更新日 : 2025-04-30A Night at Wildwood The seed chamber
The Root Path — Beneath WildWood The tunnel narrowed as they descended, the air thick with a heady scent — not rot, but something older. Earth and blood. Salt and memory. The walls were pulsing gently with light now, not amber, but a deep green glow that seemed to recognize Clara as she passed. She didn’t speak. None of them did. Even Devon’s usual quips had died, buried beneath the sense that they were walking not just into the earth — but into something’s mind. And then… the passage opened. The Seed Chamber. It wasn’t a room in any normal sense. It was a living space, carved out not by hand or machine, but by will. A giant tree root coiled through the center of the space like a great serpent, petrified over centuries. Embedded within it were faces — faint outlines, ghostlike expressions in the bark. Hundreds of them. Some twisted in agony, others in peace. Clara stepped forward, her heartbeat syncing to a pulse within the chamber. Devon whispered, “What is this place?” Lu
最終更新日 : 2025-04-30
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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
A Night at Wildwood What lies beneath
Beyond the Bone Gate The moment Clara stepped through, the forest changed. The air turned thick, like soup. The heat pressed against her skin with oily fingers. The path was no longer dirt or stone — it was flesh, soft and slightly pulsing, covered in moss and bone fragments. The walls around them weren’t carved or eroded — they were grown. It wasn’t a cave. It was a womb. Ashani kept her blade unsheathed, its obsidian edge humming faintly with the spiritwork bound to it. She moved slower now, more deliberate. “It’s not just a root system,” she whispered. “It’s alive. Like a brain stretched through the earth.” Clara shuddered. “And we’re inside it.” Their lanterns barely pierced the thick dark. Shapes slithered just at the edge of sight — twitching limbs, eyes that blinked and vanished, small mouths set into the walls like tumors. It watched them. Every step. Clara’s heart pounded harder, but the ember inside her gave her strength. It pulsed in time with the deeper rhythms
A Night at Wildwood Beneath the root, beyond the flesh
There was no sky. There was no air. Only the pulse. Emily floated somewhere between memory and bone, her body a marionette strung in a cradle of roots. Her skin was pale, faintly glowing, threaded through with black vines that pulsed like veins. The pain had dulled long ago. The hunger — the longing to give in — that remained. But something else had begun to stir. Something that wasn’t the Root. A distant tremor in her bones, a flicker of something lost. It had started as a whisper. Not the cruel seduction of Varethkaal, the Root’s ancient voice, but something older. Warmer. Familiar. “You remember the river?” Emily’s eyes flicked open. The whisper had come from the dark — and yet it was inside her mind. She recognized that voice. Not from the hospital, or the forest, but from her childhood. She saw it in flashes. A fire. A drum. The scent of cedar and smoke. A woman’s face, painted with ash and ochre, cradling her hands and placing a glowing stone on her forehead. Her gra
