The Summoning Grove

You wake to the smell of wet earth and something older — resin, rot, the slow exhale of centuries. You are lying on your back in the center of a moss-covered clearing, and the sky above you is a cathedral of interlocked branches so dense that only needles of pale morning light reach the ground. You do not remember how you got here. You do not remember sleeping.

Then you feel it: a tightness across your arms, your collarbone, the backs of your hands. You look down. Etched into your skin — not tattooed, not painted, but carved as though by something patient and purposeful — are markings like the grain of ancient bark. They do not hurt. That, somehow, is the most frightening thing.

The forest stirs. Around the clearing's edge, the trees begin to move — not in any wind, but deliberately, their great trunks swaying toward you like listeners leaning in. The groan and crack of wood assembles itself, slowly, into something unmistakably like language. Three days. Prove your worth. The words reverberate through the ground beneath you, through your ribs, through the strange markings on your skin. Then silence, absolute and attentive.

Two paths cut away from the clearing. To your left, just beyond the treeline, you can hear the steady rush of moving water — urgent, alive. To your right, the forest darkens around a deep amber glow that pulses between the trunks like a slow heartbeat. Both paths vanish quickly into shadow. Somewhere far above, a single branch creaks — and you understand, with bone-deep certainty, that the forest is already watching how you choose.