“Yes,” Syndra said briskly.“Get your pack.”
He opened his mouth.Closed it.“Okay, but if it swallows us, I reserve the right to say I told you so.”
“Duly noted,” she said.
They stamped out the last of the fire and gathered what little they’d unpacked.The clearing seemed to lean in around them, shadows thickening at the edges as if the woods themselves were listening.
Syndra stepped to the tree line and laid her palm against the nearest trunk.The bark was cool and damp, rough under her fingers.
“We’re not your enemies,” she murmured in the forest tongue.“We’re trying to keep the seam from tearing open.”
A thrum of response vibrated under her skin–not words, exactly.More like a feeling.Already thin,it seemed to say.She swallowed.“Then let us pass.Let us reach them before your precious balance destroys them.”
The tree did not move.Trees rarely did on command.But the magic running through its veins shifted.The resistance eased by a fraction, like a door chain loosening but not yet removed.
Oakley came to stand at her shoulder.“You’re certain?”
“Of what?”she asked.
“That we are not walking straight into a snare we cannot see.”
“Absolutely not,” she said.“But if we stay here, we definitely won’t reach them, and I like that option even less.”
He inclined his head.“Then we walk.”
They stepped beneath the trees together, Syndra first, then Oakley, Tamsin bringing up the rear.The light dimmed immediately, the canopy swallowing the weak dawn.The air was cooler here, heavy with moss and loam and the sharp tang of old magic.As Syndra’s eyes roamed over the ancient woods, she felt as if time simply stood still, though their feet moved forward.
After a while, Oakley cleared his throat.“Does anyone else feel like we’ve been walking for an hour and gone absolutely nowhere?”
Syndra glanced around.
The trees did look ...familiar.
Too familiar.
Same bent branch.Same cluster of mushrooms at the base of a stump.Same fallen log marked with a spiral of pale fungus.
She stopped.“Well.That’s rude.”
Tamsin came to a halt beside her, eyes narrowing.“It’s looping us.”
Oakley spun, pointing accusingly at a tree.“I knew it.We’re being forested.”
“That is not a word,” Syndra said absently.
He shrugged, “It is now.”
She took a breath, reaching out with her magic, not the neat, disciplined strands of a practiced spell, but the old instinct that came from centuries of living with this land.The forest pressed against her awareness, dense and insistent, nudging them away from a direction she could not quite name.
Away from where the girls would be.
“Of course,” she muttered.“It’s not just ignoring us.It’s actively trying to send us in circles.”
Oakley scrubbed a hand over his face.“So how do we un-loop?”
“Normally?”Syndra said.“You stop and ask nicely.”
“And now?”
