Chapter 67: No Other Way

Two minutes, maybe less. That was all it took before the ground reminded us this place wasn’t going to make anything easy.

A hill rose ahead of us. It was neither tall nor wide. But strange enough that my eyes kept snagging on it anyway. At its crown stood a single tree, branches dark as charcoal, leaves a stark, snowy white that had no business existing anywhere in this crimson-and-black nightmare of a world.

’That thing looks like someone forgot to color it in. Pfft, what the hell am I even thinking.’

"We should head that way," Theodore said, jerking his chin toward it. "Might find a beast up there. Something we can actually cook."

’Not a dumb suggestion. After all we do need something...’

Nobody argued. After everything else this place had already thrown at us, a weird glowing tree barely registered as a red flag anymore. I was the first to nod, mostly because of the small notification still sitting quietly in the corner of my vision.

[Threat Grade: 3]

’I wish we don’t encounter too much of a shit.’

Below the cliff at our backs, the forest stretched out dark and endless, patient the way only something ancient and hungry could afford to be.

Shadows moved between the trunks down there, shapes too large and too quiet to be anything friendly. Every so often, something deeper in that darkness let out a low, rattling call, and the sound alone was enough to make the hair on my arms stand straight up.

Even from up here I could feel it, faint but constant, like standing too close to a fire you couldn’t quite see. None of us were ready to walk into that yet. Not this early. Not without a plan. Ahead sat the hill instead, the tree waiting at its top like it already knew we were coming.

Between us and it ran a narrow, curving path cut into the slope. It looked simple yet it was deceiving. A person if careless could probably fall from it.

Good thing we didn’t have to find out.

"Hang on," Arthur said looking at us.

A vine shot out from his palm before I could ask what exactly he meant by that, arcing high and slamming into the hilltop with a wet, solid thud. His hand closed around my shoulder.

Then the ground just wasn’t there anymore.

We swung.

Wind tore past my face, the forest and the curving path smearing together into a blur of black and red far below.

"Waaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!"

My stomach dropped somewhere south of my knees, and for one stupid, terrifying second, I got it.

I finally understood why Arthur always looked far too pleased with himself whenever he got the chance to do this.

There was something almost obscene about how much he was enjoying himself while my life flashed in front of my eyes.

We hit the hilltop hard. My knees nearly buckled. Arthur was already pulling the vine back in, grinning like a man who hadn’t just launched the both of us over a hundred-foot drop using plant matter and confidence alone.

"A warning would be nice," I muttered, still catching my breath.

"Where’s the fun in that."

He went back for the others one at a time, Mary, then Theodore, then Sera, each landing cleaner than I had, which did absolutely nothing for my ego.

By the time all five of us stood together at the top, I finally got a proper look at the place.

The ground here was composed of dark wood, smooth in patches while rough in others, moss and thin green shoots pushing up through the cracks.

And then there was the tree.

Closer up, it was even stranger. The white leaves seemed to glow from somewhere inside themselves, a pale, quiet light that tugged at something in my chest the longer I stared at it.

Longing, maybe. I didn’t have a better word for it.

The dark wood of the trunk only made the glow sharper by contrast, black against white like the tree hadn’t decided what it wanted to be.

I was easily Twenty feet tall. Branches spread wide, and completely still, even though wind was moving through everything else up here.

Part of me wanted to walk over and touch it. Just to see if it was as cold as it looked or as warm as it felt.

None of us did it though...

Something about the way it sat there, glowing and doing absolutely nothing, made all five of us hang back without needing to say a word about it.

Mary’s eyes narrowed the way they did whenever something didn’t add up. Theodore, for once, didn’t try to crack his cringe jokes.

We circled around to the far side of the hill instead, where the ground dropped away again into open space.

A mountain sat in the distance, maybe a kilometer off, with nothing but flat black earth stretching between here and there, empty enough that it felt less like a gap and more like something deliberately left blank.

"So what now," Sera said, arms crossed, studying the gap. "We’ve got no choice but to walk through the forest."

I nodded slowly, already turning the thought over, and somehow found my feet carrying me back toward the tree without asking permission first. I wasn’t even sure what I meant to do once I got there. Ask it something, maybe. Touch it. Neither idea made much sense, but my legs had apparently already voted.

"Edmund, wait!"

Arthur’s voice cracked out behind me. I froze mid-step.

The tree noticed before I could explain myself. Branches shifted, slowly and deliberately, curling in our direction like something half-waking up just long enough to check what we were doing.

Then they settled back into place.

I took a step back, heart hammering somewhere behind my ribs.

"We have to go through the forest," I said, steadier than I felt. "There’s no other way."

Nobody argued this time either. One by one, they nodded, and together we turned our backs on the glowing branches and faced the long, dark stretch of forest waiting for us below.