"She should have never been born."

"You were always too soft."

"Not a spark to your name. Why would he ever choose you over the others?"

They were like words being spoken in the wind. Quiet, soft. Fiona felt them tug at the edges of her mind, but not hard enough to hold on, slipping in like cold water under a locked door. They sounded more like a song than anything... if the contents weren't so hostile.

Fiona thought Wyford was slightly joking about the whole whispers everywhere part. That it was merely the wind playing tricks on him. But she wasn't laughing now.

Her boots sank slightly in the mossy soil as she paused again, breath catching. The words didn't make her freeze because they hurt—though they did—but because they were familiar. Word-for-word. Things her father had said before. Not in passing. Not once. Many times.

How was that possible? Was there some kind of illusion spell at work? Or worse—was the forest alive in ways no one understood? Wyford did say the disappearances happened just recently, and perhaps the voices as well. That place was always called the Whispering Forest on the maps, only because the Lindell area had a lot of wind. With the common gust of wind through the leaves and bushes, it was natural to assume the forest itself whispered. Maybe it was more than that.

"Is anyone else hearing quiet voices all around?" Fiona asked.

Reo picked at his ear. "All I hear is the wind; no words or voices."

"Me neither," Tyrus said. "Just the wind and some buzzing."

Fiona looked over at Igneal for confirmation. Throughout their journey, the Lockhart boy had been uncharacteristically quiet other than that one time yesterday. Still, he noticed everyone staring at him and shrugged.

"I hear them," Igneal said, voice tight. "Been hearing them since before we entered."

That silenced the group. Even Reo stopped fiddling with his ear and gave Igneal a side glance.

"What do they say?" Tyrus asked, trying to sound casual.

Igneal didn't answer right away. His gaze landed on Fiona at first, and then drifted forward, toward the thickest part of the fog where the trees grew denser, almost black in the fading light. Tyrus frowned, looking at them. Grant opened his mouth, thought better of it, and stayed silent.

"Okay, this is getting annoying," Reo growled. "I've been putting off on asking you what exactly happened between you two since it's none of my business and all, but something clearly happened between you and your brother. You two are usually at odds with one another, but this different. You're barely talking. And when you do, it's like someone's about to set the forest on fire. Back me up here, Grant."

Grant frowned. "While you are right, I do not believe now is the time to speak of this. Now is a time to focus."

"Yeah, I know," Reo said, ruffling his hair. "Once we save this Mitha person and get out of here, I'm having you tell us what the problem is. A dysfunctional group will only slow us down in the long run. It would be better to work out the problem now before it gets ugly. Wouldn't you agree, oh great leader of ours?"

Fiona glared at Reo. "Sarcastically referring to me as 'great leader' is not helping here. But, Grant is right. Getting sidetracked now would be nothing short of stupid. We need to find Mitha as quickly but as safely as possible. Thankfully the Whispering Forest isn't as large as the Wasteful Wetlands, so there's no need to split up to cover ground."

"Splitting up in a foggy forest that snatches up people one by one? Yeah, let's not do that," Reo muttered.

"We stay in a tight formation and keep marking our trail," Fiona said, glancing over her shoulder as she raised the pouch of white powder again. "If the fog thickens, we'll use the rope to link us together. No one strays from the group. Got it?"

A chorus of affirmatives followed. Even Reo muttered something like, "Yeah, yeah," while scratching at the back of his neck. Fiona made a mark with white powder against a nearby tree and turned, intending to hand the pouch to Wyford for the next stretch of the trail. But he wasn't there.

Her heart began to pound. "What the... Where did Wyford go? He was just here a minute ago!"

"We've barely moved from this spot," Grant added, already scanning the nearby trees. "He didn't wander ahead. If he had, we all would have noticed."

Tyrus sniffed the air, cupping his ears like he was trying to catch the faintest of noises. "No crunch of leaves. No shift in the wind. I don't hear footsteps. It's like he blinked out of existence."

"Do you think whatever is nabbing up the Lindell people got to Wyford while we weren't looking?" Reo asked, scooting a bit closer to Grant.

Fiona gnawed at her fingernails, deep in thought. It should've been impossible for the man to disappear out of nowhere, especially when they were close together. Not only that, but Tyrus was the closest one to Wyford, and even his own Beastfolk senses failed to catch a thing. No heartbeat, no footfalls, not even the ripple of breath in the mist. It made little sense.

She should've noticed sooner. A talkative guy like Wyford had gone too quiet for too long. No side comments. No glances back. Going by how long she'd known him, that wasn't like him. Not at all. And she—she should've caught it. How had she let her focus waver?

Her grip tightened around the pouch of white powder. The fog pushed in around her ankles, brushing the hem of her coat. She barely noticed it now. Not because it had stopped being eerie—but because her dread had reached a new, colder depth.

He didn't wander off. He was taken. And it happened right under our noses.

Fiona closed her eyes for a brief moment, then reached into her pack with a sudden sense of urgency and pulled out the rope she'd stored inside. She turned sharply toward the others.

"Tie this around your waist," she ordered, voice sharper than before. "Everyone."

Reo blinked. "What?"

"The rope. Now. I don't care if it feels stupid or awkward. We're not losing anyone else. We stay tethered. One line. One group. I thought sticking as close as a shadow to a body would be good enough, but clearly, that was wrong. I am not not making the same mistake twice."

They all stared for a heartbeat, and then silently obeyed. Grant took the first length, looping it around his waist and passing it down the line. Tyrus accepted the rope next and cinched it without a word. Reo looped his in seconds. Igneal didn't say anything either, though Fiona noticed he tugged the knot twice, testing its strength. Fiona took the last inch of rope and made her way down the line. When she was done, the rope was stressed.

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"No more vanishing," she said, forcing her voice into the kind of steadiness she didn't quite feel. "If someone so much as trips, we'll feel it. If the fog tries to take another one of us, it's taking the whole damn line. We stay together."

"Nice speech," Reo mumbled, adjusting his rope again. "Very comforting. Super optimistic."

"I'm not trying to be optimistic," she replied. "I'm trying to keep us alive. Grant, direct us back toward the forest entrance. Let's see if Wyford is waiting for us there."

Grant held his torch ahead and set off without another word. The rope between them pulled taut as they moved again, slow and cautious, one foot after the other. Fiona marked each tree carefully with her white powder; one additional tally for each tree. The whispers hadn't come back—yet—but she knew better than to think the danger was over.

Fiona kept her eyes peeled, recognizing the bends of trees and twisted roots they had seen before. It had only been minutes since Wyford vanished—they had to be close. But time passed. A quarter hour. Then more.

"Shouldn't we have reached the entrance by now?" Tyrus asked, voice low. "It didn't feel this long on the way down."

"It wasn't," Fiona said, glancing at the treetops—though they were mostly shrouded in haze. "We were on higher ground, and the slope wasn't steep. We should've seen it by now."

Grant slowed to a stop, waving torchlight around the area. Fiona stepped up beside him, scanning the area. Then she saw it—three faint white marks on the bark of a broad, gnarled tree. The same pattern she'd left behind nearly half an hour ago.

"I marked this one," she muttered. "We've been here before."

Reo's boots thudded a little faster as he came up behind them. "No way. That's not possible. We've been walking forward this whole time, haven't we?"

"We have," said Tyrus. "I've been tracking which way the wind has been blowing. We never doubled back."

"But we did," Fiona said. "Or… no. Not us. The forest must be shifting things. Redirecting us. Going by what happened to Wyford, it's trying to confuse us into doing the same and divide us."

"Is it the forest itself or the work of a sorcerer?" Tyrus said. "This place wasn't always like this, or else Wyford would've told us."

Fiona whipped around almost too quickly. "Have we ever asked how Wyford escaped in the first place? He only told us that Mitha was taken. That he got out. But how?"

Reo scratched his chin. "He did kinda gloss over that, didn't he? Just said he made it out and needed help. I thought he was being dramatic. Y'know, trauma and all."

"No," Fiona said, pacing slightly. "He wasn't panicked when he talked about it. Urgent, sure, but too calm for my liking. Joking around with us as probably the most important person in his life was dying, or already dead."

"You're thinking he omitted information from us?" Grant asked.

"I'm thinking we missed something. Maybe he didn't get out on his own. Maybe someone or something let him go. We should move under the assumption that a sorcerer or a magical beast is the culprit. We need to stop thinking like we're walking through a forest and start thinking like we're walking through a trap."

Fiona turned back to the marked tree again, staring at the powder smudges like they might offer a clue. "Tyrus, are you able to use that nose of yours and locate Wyford's scent? Finding him might lead us directly to Mitha."

Tyrus shook his head. "I tried earlier, right after he vanished. It's like the scent just ends. Not faded or washed out—just gone."

They all fell silent. Then, almost as if to mock Fiona, the wind brushed through the trees again—carrying another soft voice:

"You will never appease him, no matter the achievement."

"Shut up..." Fiona growled under her breath. "Do you guys seriously not hear that?"

Reo, Grant, and Tyrus exchanged a glance, shaking their heads, though Igneal nodded. For whatever reason, only she and he could hear it. For what it was worth, that did not bode well.

Her heart paced faster, agitation growing. Fiona gave her cheeks a firm pat and pointed deeper into the forest. "Alright, whatever! Let's move out before I go crazy about this nonsense. We need to keep our heads in the game, so focus!"

They walked in tight formation, bound by the rope looped around their waists, torchlight and pale fog shifting like ghosts around them. The further they went, the stranger the forest seemed to grow. The trees, once upright but still recognizable, now twisted into unnatural angles. Some stretched like arms across the path, others looked like they had moved slightly from where they stood just moments ago.

Fiona continued marking their progress along the trees. Her sack of powder was growing lighter periodically. There was the random chance that one of the trees previously marked snuck up on them and the group had to take a different direction.

Trees with more than five marks on the bark were a sign they were at least heading away from the entrance. When there were new trees to mark after a set period of time, that meant they were venturing through new ground—something Fiona found promising. What was not promising was the fact that there were still no signs of Wyford or Mitha anywhere, even with Tyrus's help.

What was more unsettling was the lack of animals or beasts in the vicinity. There were no chirping birds, no rustling of small creatures in the underbrush. Not even the distant howl of a predator. All that remained were the whispers and the bugs.

Every so often, urks would cling onto her garments; land urchins, as many called them. They were little balls of spikes that grew onto roots and low shrubs, latching onto passing creatures with needle-like barbs. Most were harmless—annoying, but easy enough to pluck off. Yet if they were to get their grubby little barbs on soft skin, removing them was difficult when the barbs snap and were trapped inside.

Her marks had become more diverse—sideways slashes, sometimes a circle, maybe even a square there and there. Anything to distinguish them from previous passes. She refused to admit how many trees she recognized. Or how many times she'd seen one with exactly six marks drawn across its bark.

"Have you ever wondered if your aunt regrets saving you?" another voice whispered.

"Because of your inaptitude, her role in the family had been squandered to that of a nobody," a deeper voice added, almost inaudible.

"What would Falin think of you now?"

Fiona's jaw tightened. The voices were more frequent now, slowly whittling away at the edges of her concentration, like dull knives carving grooves into her thoughts. She clenched her fists, resisting the urge to clap her hands over her ears. That wouldn't help. The voices weren't coming from a natural source.

Refusing to look left or right, Fiona kept walking. Her powder pouch was nearly empty, and her nerves frayed with every step. The fog had thickened again, unnaturally so. What had once been a light veil now pressed in on them. Torchlight barely pierced it. Trees disappeared only a few feet ahead. It felt like the world around them was shrinking.

The rope was still their only lifeline. Fiona tugged it gently every so often, checking the tension between herself and the others. Still there. Still moving forward.

Until the wind picked up.

At first, it was just a breeze. A rustle that brushed past her ears like a whisper. Then it grew. Fiercer. Unnatural. The fog didn't just swirl—it moved like a living thing, surging forward in a sudden wave. It billowed and churned, a wall of gray-white rushing toward them with terrifying speed.

"Get down!" Fiona shouted. "Everyone sit still!"

She dropped to her knees and reached out blindly. "Grab the hands of the person next to you! Hold on—don't let go!"

One hand grasped hers: small, warm, yet calloused. If she remembered correctly, the order went from Grant, Tyrus, Reo, Igneal, and her. That meant her brother was the one holding her hand.

The wind howled. The fog surged past like a sandstorm, howling and gnashing with the faint echo of voices laughing, screaming, weeping—an orchestra of madness. For a moment, Fiona squeezed her eyes shut. All she could do was hold on.

"Falin never needed you. Never wanted you."

"You're the burden she had to bear."

Fiona had enough. She raised her arm high above her and muttered , "Violent Gust!"

A stream of air exploded outward from her palm, blasting through the storm like a cannon shot. The wind bent around her spell in a violent arc, peeling away the curtain of fog in a wide radius. Leaves and dust scattered into the trees, and the whispered voices were ripped apart mid-sentence, shrieking as they vanished into the distance.

For one blissful moment, silence returned.

Fiona stood in the eye of her own storm. Her outstretched arm trembled with the force of the spell, and white light crackled faintly around her fingertips. The pressure in the air faded, revealing the ravaged forest floor around them.

Fiona stared at her hand in disbelief, then looked down.

The rope that had once connected them all lay slack on the forest floor—loops unthreaded, limp and abandoned, coiling over moss and dirt like the shed skin of something long gone. Only Igneal remained, his sword planted into the earth for support.

"No..." Fiona whispered. Her gaze flicked from the loose loops of rope to the empty spaces where three of her companions had just been. "No, no, no, no! They were just here a second ago!"

Then, the fog moved—not in a surge like before, coiling around the two of them until the trees turned to silhouettes, until even each other's outlines looked like flickering illusions. Her vision went black for a moment, and then her surroundings transformed.

Most of the fog peeled away to reveal stone—gray, damp, and familiar. The walls curved upward into a blackened dome, crowned with old iron railings and narrow walkways above. The air here was hotter, drier, like breathing in embers. Memories of the past flooded her mind.

Oh Sthito... What kind of nightmare is this!?

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