The group left at noon. Or what passed for noon in a place without a sun.
Forty-three became nine.
The ones who stayed behind watched from the edge of camp, their faces blank walls. I didn't blame them. I didn't wave. Neither did Peko.
Hana walked beside me. Her cat hung from one hand, dragging its torn ear through the mud.
She hadn't spoken since the camp.
Yoshi followed at the back.
He was the one I'd beaten. The one who hadn't been screaming.
Truth be told, I do feel guilty for hitting him. But I just needed a punching bag to release my anger on after all this.
His face was still swollen, one eye nearly closed, lip split in two places. He didn't look at me.
Didn't look at anyone.
Just walked, head down, footsteps careful.
I didn't apologize. There was nothing to apologize for. Regardless of my reasons, my action actually motivated him to act.
That's a win.
We kept walking.
The trees started immediately. Not like a forest border.
One moment we were in the scrub at the edge of camp. The next, the canopy swallowed the gray sky and the light turned the color of old bruises. The path was barely a path, just a space between trunks where nothing had grown yet.
Peko raised a hand. The group stopped.
"From here," he said quietly, "we stay close. No one wanders. If you see something, you say something. If you hear something, you say nothing."
The feathered woman...I learned her name was Kaya....frowned. "Why nothing?"
"Because the things here," Peko glanced at the trees, "they listen."
She looked at him, then gulped.
I didn't bother reacting.
We moved.
---
The first hour was uneventful.
I like how that meant I could relax, and hated how I have to force myself to not relax.
No birds. No insects.
Just the soft squelch of boots in mud and the occasional crack of a branch underfoot. The trees pressed close on both sides, their trunks too smooth, their bark too pale.
They looked like bones. Like something had grown around the skeleton of something else and forgotten to add the flesh.
Hana's hand found the back of my shirt.
"The cat," I said without turning. "He got a name?"
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Tama."
"Tama," I repeated. "That's a good name for a cat."
"My dad named him."
"You said your dad named you, too. He was good at names."
She didn't answer. But her grip on my shirt tightened.
The path curved. The trees got closer.
---
The first sign of wrong came an hour in.
A branch moved.
Not in wind...there was no wind. It just... shifted. Turned slightly toward us as we passed, like an eye tracking movement.
I stopped. Stared at it. It didn't move again.
Peko followed my gaze. "You saw it?"
"Yeah."
"Keep walking. They do that."
"They?"
He didn't answer.
I seriously needed an answer.
---
The sounds started in the second hour.
Nothing natural at all.
Whirring. Like gears turning somewhere beneath the soil. Clicking. Like something counting. The pulse I'd felt in the house, in the shore, was stronger here. It vibrated in my chest, syncopated with my heartbeat for a few beats, then fell out of rhythm.
Yoshi stumbled behind me. I heard him catch himself, curse under his breath.
"You okay back there?" someone asked. Not me. One of the others.
"Fine," Yoshi muttered. "Just... roots."
I glanced back. He was staring at the ground. At roots that hadn't been there a moment ago.
We kept moving.
Faster this time.
---
The scout was in a clearing.
We found him because the trees stopped. Just opened up, like someone had drawn a circle on the ground and told the forest it wasn't allowed inside. The grass here was dead—not brown, but gray, like it had been bleached of color.
He was kneeling in the center.
His clothes were the same as the ones the scouts had worn—makeshift armor, woven reeds, a bandolier of scavenged tools. But his skin was wrong. It had texture now, grooves running along his arms and neck, branching like roots.
His eyes were open but they didn't see. They glowed faintly green.
Kaya gasped. Someone behind her started praying.
"He's alive," Peko said. His voice was barely a whisper.
I stepped forward.
"Nobita—" Peko's hand on my arm.
"I know."
I walked to the kneeling man. The grass crunched under my boots—dry, brittle, dead.
The pulse was loud here. Coming from him? From under him? I couldn't tell.
I crouched down.
His lips were moving.
".....watching...." The words were slow, stretched, like he was speaking through water. ".....always been watching...."
"Who's watching?" I asked, leaning closer to his mouth.
His eyes didn't move. But his head tilted. Just slightly. Toward me.
"—you know him...." The glow in his eyes flickered.
"I don't."
"Then.....you will"
I sighed, getting a bit away.
"Yeah, no shit." I whispered.
His mouth kept moving but the words stopped. His body went rigid. Then, slowly, he began to sink. Not into the ground—the ground was solid. He just... compressed. Folded into himself.
His arms twisted, his legs bent at angles that shouldn't have been possible, and then he was gone.
Just a pile of clothes. And the roots that had been growing from his skin, now lying flat on the dead grass.
No one spoke.
Hana's face was buried in her doll. I could feel her shaking.
Peko's hand was on his locket. His knuckles were white.
I picked a cloth, then stood up.
"We keep moving," I said.
No one argued.
---