All Chapters of A Night at Wildwood: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

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

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

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

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

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. ⸻