The woods are wrong.I know they’re wrong because I recognize them. Silver Moon territory, the birch grove near the eastern border where the trees grow too close together and the light comes through in thin, silver slices. I haven’t been here in six years, but my body knows the path. My feet remember the roots. My lungs remember the air, cold, green, heavy with pine and something else. Something that smells distinctly like iron.I’m running.Not jogging. Not for exercise. This is the kind of running that comes from the oldest, most primal part of my brain the part that existed before language, before the invention of telling myself it’s fine, everything is fine. The kind of running that means whatever is behind me has teeth.I can hear it. Paws. Heavy. Rhythmic. Gaining. Something large, patient, and unhurried, because it already knows exactly how this ends.I run faster. The birches blur into a white wall. Branches whip across my face; I feel them, but they don’t hurt, because nothin
Read more