Chapter 14: When Madness Calls

The voice should not have been real.

And yet, it was.

Aedric's breath hitched as the whisper slithered through the trees, curling around him like invisible fingers. His name, spoken not in a scream, nor in a call, but in a knowing murmur—as though whatever lurked beyond the firelight had always known him, had always been waiting.

He took a step back. The key in his pocket burned against his skin, pulsing like a second heartbeat.

"You heard it too," Rhea said. It was not a question.

Elias was already moving. "We leave. Now."

Osric stood without a word, checking his blade, his movements careful but swift. The fire crackled, its dying embers casting long, twisting shadows against the trees. For a brief moment, Aedric swore those shadows moved in ways they shouldn't.

Something was shifting.

Something had woken up.

The forest closed in around them as they moved, the undergrowth thick, the path uneven beneath their boots. The air was different here—denser, heavier, as though the very world was resisting them.

The whispers did not stop.

They did not come from behind, nor ahead, nor even above. They came from within.

Aedric gritted his teeth, shaking his head as if the motion could cast them away. "What is this?" he demanded. "What's happening?"

Elias's jaw was tight. "The cycle is breaking. Reality is unraveling. We were never meant to get this far."

Aedric's fingers curled into fists. "So what happens now?"

Rhea, ahead of them, stopped walking. She turned her head slightly, eyes scanning the trees. "Something is wrong."

Aedric felt it before he saw it. The space between the trees was shifting. At first, it seemed like a trick of the dim light, the flickering remnants of the fire playing tricks on his vision.

Then he blinked.

And the trees weren't trees anymore.

They were tall, thin figures, standing impossibly still. Faceless. Formless. Waiting.

His stomach lurched. "Tell me you see that."

Elias nodded once. "We do."

Rhea reached for her blade. Osric muttered a curse under his breath.

Aedric forced himself to breathe, to think. The figures—if that's what they were—did not move. They did not need to. Their presence alone pressed against the air, bending it, warping it, making it harder to think, harder to breathe.

Then, all at once, the whispers stopped.

The silence was worse.

For a moment, nothing happened. The group stood frozen, their hearts hammering, their muscles tense, their breaths shallow.

Then, without warning, one of the figures lurched forward.

Not stepped. Not walked. Lurched. Like something being pulled by invisible strings.

Aedric's body moved before his mind could catch up. He shoved Elias back, twisting as something cold sliced through the air where his head had been a moment before. A shape—not a hand, not a limb, but something in between—had reached for him. Not to strike. To take.

Rhea moved first, her dagger flashing. The blade sank in but met no flesh. The figure did not bleed. Did not recoil.

It only shifted.

And then it reached for her, too.

"RUN!" Elias's voice cut through the madness.

Aedric turned and ran, his breath sharp, his heart pounding. The forest blurred around him, the trees twisting, bending, their branches clawing at the sky like skeletal fingers. The figures did not chase them in the way a predator might—they did not need to. The world around them was changing. Shaping itself to their presence.

Aedric could feel it, could sense it in his bones—the unraveling had already begun.

And they were already too deep inside it.