Stepping beyond the boundary was like slipping between worlds.

  A feeling Melissa was growing familiar with.

  One moment the air was breathable, the ground solid beneath her feet. The next, the weight of the Mirrorwood pressed against them— thick and unmoving, like the heavy stillness before a storm that would never come. It wasn’t just pressure. It wasn’t just silence. It was a presence— a waiting thing.

  The trees stood where trees should be, but they were wrong. Their bark was too dark, streaked with veins as though they had been burned from the inside out. Their limbs twisted unnaturally— some stretching skyward like skeletal hands, others bending toward the earth as if reaching for something unseen. And the leaves—they didn’t move.

  No wind stirred them. No shift in the air disturbed their stillness. Even as the group passed beneath their canopy, they did not rustle, did not tremble. It was as though the trees weren't reacting to the world. They were watching it.

  And beneath them, there was no sound.

  No birds. No insects. No distant scuffle of hidden creatures in the brush. Not even the murmur of wind slipping through branches. Just a hollow, breathless stillness.

  A silence that didn’t belong in a living place.

  Melissa’s grip tightened around her dagger. “Everyone still breathing?”

  Brandon’s gaze flickered over the darkened forest before setting on Annemarie. “For now.”

  She hadn’t spoken since they stepped beyond the threshold, but something in her had shifted. Not fear. Not exactly. But something close to recognition.

  Like she had been here before. Like the weight of the Mirrorwood was familiar.

  “It’s pulling me harder now,” she murmured, as if speaking too loudly would break something fragile in the air. “Like I’m already a part of it.”

  Brenna adjusted the bracelet at her wrist, worried the charm at her throat. Her voice was light, but the words hung heavy. “You probably are. If Callista survived this, she isn’t normal anymore. And you’re tied to her.”

  No one liked that answer. No one argued with it, either.

  They kept moving, horses moving deliberately as they followed the narrow, ruined road to Moorpond.

  They smelled the lake before they saw it. Wet earth, stagnant water— but beneath it lurked something sharper. Metallic. Sour. Like rusted iron sinking into something that should have rotted but hadn’t.

  Brandon squinted ahead. “That’s water, right?”

  It was. Mostly.

  The lake that had once made Moorpond thrive still stretched out before them, still as glass beneath a sky painted in unmoving shades of gray. But its surface was wrong. Water should ripple. It should catch the sky, reflect the light, shimmer with movement. This didn’t. It was too dark, too thick, as though something oily had seeped into its depths, warping its clarity. And its reflection—

  It twisted. Not with the water. Not with the world. The shapes it held stretched at impossible angles, bending in ways that did not match the landscape around it. Sometimes, the lake reflected trees that weren’t there. Sometimes, their own reflections flickered, slightly delayed, slightly off.

  And beyond that, along the shoreline, stood Moorpond. Or what was left of it.

  The buildings remained— some half-collapsed, others eerily whole, frozen as they had been the day the Mirrorwood took them. Stone had darkened, laced with sickly green veins, as though the corruption of the land had sunk into its foundation. Wooden beams had twisted and warped, some curving at unnatural angles, others too smooth— untouched by time.

  The streets were empty. The windows were hollow. The city had been lost to the Mirrorwood for twenty-three years, and it had never let go.

  “Saints,” Julia whispered, gripping her reins tighter. “It’s still standing.”

  Brenna exhaled, low and grim. “It’s not standing.” She scanned the silent city, the weight of unseen eyes pressing against them. “It’s waiting.”

  Moorpond did not breathe.

  It was not merely abandoned, not left to decay like any other forgotten ruin. It was held, suspended in silence so deep it pressed against their skin. No wind stirred the surface of the lake. No birds wheeled overhead. No insects chirped beneath the shattered cobblestones.

  Nothing lived here. Nothing could.

  As they moved deeper into the city, the air itself thickened, pressing in around them with the weight of deep water. Their limbs dragged, but it was not exhaustion. It was resistance.

  The buildings still stood— some whole, others half-collapsed, their walls twisted and warped as though time had not simply eroded but rewritten them. The stone had darkened, shot through with something that pulsed beneath the surface and stretched through old carvings like creeping roots. Some doors hung open, yawning into darkness. Others remained shut, untouched, preserved— as if the people inside had simply vanished before they could flee.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  But the windows were the worst. Gaping hollows, gaping into the streets like vacant eyes. Staring. Waiting.

  Time had stopped here, but it had not let go.

  Brandon saw it first. “Stop.” His voice barely rose above the silence, but the weight in it made everyone obey. The horses shifted uneasily beneath them, ears twitching, muscles tense, sensing something just beyond their riders’ understanding.

  The others followed his gaze.

  A man stood in the center of the street. Or, what had been a man.

  His clothes were faded but whole, stiffened by time rather than rot. His boots were planted firmly on the cobblestones, his posture unnaturally rigid, frozen mid-step. Wisps of thin, gray hair clung to his scalp.

  But his face—

  His mouth hung open, lips stretched wide in a silent scream. His eyes, dull and dry, still there but not, stared blankly ahead, fixed on something long gone. His hands had curled into claws, fingers rigid, reaching for something— grasping at a moment just before— before what?

  Julia dismounted first. Her boots crunched softly against the ground as she moved forward, slow and deliberate, breath measured. “Is he—” She didn’t finish.

  The man was not breathing. And he was not alone.

  As their eyes adjusted to the dim light, the city shifted— not in movement, but in recognition.

  Figures stood in the doorways. In the alleys. Along the sidewalks, caught mid-motion, locked in fragments of a life that no longer belonged to them. A woman at a market stall, her hands raised as if gesturing to unseen customers. A child on the steps of a house, staring at something just beyond sight. A man in a doorway,his arms wrapped around nothing as though he had been holding someone who had disappeared.

  Dozens of them. Hundreds. Frozen and watching.

  Annemarie stepped forward, her breath shallow, her gaze locked on a young woman near the square.

  She looked barely older then Annemarie herself— her clothes plain but clean, untouched by decay, stiff with time. Her hands were clasped before her chest, fingers intertwined, as though in prayer. Her posture was gentle, almost peaceful— almost— but something was wrong.

  The tension in her arms. The slight parting of her lips. The wide, unblinking stillness of her glassy eyes.

  She had been afraid.

  Not in the way the man in the street had been, terror wrenched across his features. This was something deeper. Quieter.

  Like she had known exactly what was coming.

  And though her lips remained locked in silence, Annemarie heard her.

  Not in the air. Not in the space between them. In her own bones.

  The whisper curled beneath her skin, a thread of sound vibrating through her ribs, slipping into the cracks between thought and instinct. A voice— faint, familiar, distant.

  You should not be here.

  Annemarie’s breath hitched. She knew exactly whose voice it was:

  Callista.

  The air thickened, pressing against Annemarie’s skin like the weight of unseen hands. She forced herself to step back, her breath shallow, her pulse an unsteady rhythm against her ribs.

  The frozen girl remained still. Unseeing. Unbreathing.

  Black veins curled along her throat, stark against pale, unblemished skin, twisting like the roots of something buried too deep to be pulled free. This isn’t just death.

  Annemarie clenched her jaw, resisting the urge to reach out— to touch, to confirm, to see if anything was left inside that rigid body. But the whisper still hummed through her bones, a lingering thread of Callista’s voice.

  You should not be here.

  Annemarie wasn’t sure if it was a warning or a regret.

  “Okay,” Melissa said, shifting her stance, her eyes flicking between the motionless figures. “I’m officially done with this place. This whole town? Worst vibes imaginable. Can we go?”

  Brenna, standing slightly apart from the others, exhaled slowly. “We could,” she said mildly. “But I’m starting to realize that whatever did this might not want us to leave.”

  Melissa let out a sharp, strained laugh. “Why would you say that?”

  Brenna only smirked, but her shoulders were tense now. Her weight shifted like she was bracing for something unseen.

  Annemarie turned, sweeping her gaze over the empty square. The warped buildings loomed, their twisted beams reaching out like grasping fingers. The alleyways between them stretched deeper into the ruins, yawning into shadow.

  The pull westward remained— constant. Urging.

  Callista was out there, but something else was too. Something that had never let go of Moorpond.

  Julia adjusted her grip on the reins, her voice measured, carefully even. “Alright. We keep moving. No splitting up. No stopping unless we have to. We get through this place fast.”

  No one argued.

  Annemarie inhaled, steadying herself. And pressed forward, deeper into the waiting city.

  “Did you see that?” Julia’s voice cut through the silence, sharp as the snap of a bowstring.

  Annemarie’s breath caught.

  Brandon was at her side in an instant, his hand hovering near her arm but not quite touching. “Hey— what was that?”

  She didn’t answer. Something was moving.

  At first, she thought it was just the shadows shifting— the strange, unnatural light reflecting off the blackened lake, playing tricks on her mind. The entire town felt unsteady, like reality itself was twisting at the edges, unraveling in slow, delicate threads.

  Maybe it was nothing. Maybe she had only imagined—

  Then it stepped into view.

  A figure. Tall. Twisted. Almost human. But not quite.

  Its limbs were too long, its arms hanging past its knees. Its spine bent at an unnatural angle, its head tilting in a way that made Annemarie’s own neck ache in sympathy. The edges of it blurred and flickered, as if it was trying— and failing— to exist in a space where it did not belong.

  It shouldn’t be able to stand. And yet it did.

  Melissa’s dagger was already in her hand, her stance shifting into something ready. “Okay, so they’re not all frozen.”

  The thing shuddered. Not like something waking up— like something jerked into motion. A deep, unnatural convulsion, its joints twitching like a marionette pulled by an unsteady hand. Its shoulders rolled forward, adjusting, remembering how to move.

  Then slowly— it turned toward them.

  Its head snapped into place with a wet, grinding pop.

  And then it started walking.