The Witch And The Alpha
The creature stood calmly at the center of it all, arms lowered now, watching the widening crack as though greeting something it had waited a long time to see again.
“You always return violently,” it said softly.
The forest shuddered in response.
Then the thing beneath the world pushed harder.
The crack split fully open.
And the roots lifted.
They did not break. They rose.
Entire sections of forest floor peeled upward in slow, impossible layers as though gravity had reversed itself beneath the clearing. Trees bent sideways as their roots pulled free from the earth, suspended for a moment in midair before shifting upward toward the opening below.
I stumbled backward, barely keeping my footing