Chapter Seventeen – The Forest Chooses
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The world had gone quiet after the storm inside Alex.
The silence wasn't peace—it was exhaustion disguised as calm.
The trio kept moving through the forest, pretending the air wasn't trembling, pretending Alex's eyes weren't red. Raymond walked slightly ahead, clearing the path with the heel of his boot, while Anna trailed behind, her gaze flicking between Alex's face and the trail, as if afraid either might vanish if she blinked too long.
Alex tried to focus on the exam. On the map in her hand. On the absurd little microphone clipped to her shirt—Gabriel's voice occasionally crackling through to check progress. It all felt strangely distant now, like the forest had swallowed sound and given them back only echoes.
"You okay?" Raymond asked quietly without looking at her.
"Define okay," Alex muttered. Her laugh was thin, a ghost of one.
"Still breathing. Still moving. Still pretending I didn't just completely lose it."
Anna's voice softened from behind. "You didn't lose it."
"Sure," Alex said, voice sharp but not unkind. "And trees don't have roots."
The air fell still again. None of them pushed it further. They just kept walking.
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The path dipped into a narrow gorge where the light fractured through the trees like shards of broken glass. Every sound—the crunch of leaves, the flap of a bird—felt amplified. The forest wasn't just quiet; it was listening.
Alex felt it first.
That crawling pressure in her chest.
Like being watched by something that wasn't supposed to exist.
"Feels like someone's breathing down my neck," Raymond muttered, scanning the treeline.
Anna crouched, touching the soil. It pulsed faintly under her fingertips. "There's… resonance," she whispered. "Like static."
"Static?" Alex snorted, partly amused, partly unnerved. "What, the forest's picking up Wi-Fi now?"
But her joke didn't land, because even as she said it, the ground under her boot thumped. Not a tremor—a heartbeat.
Anna's head snapped up. Raymond took a step back, instinctively placing himself between them and the shadows. "Okay," he said, voice low, steady. "We move. Now."
But the forest had other plans.
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The second heartbeat came louder—like thunder trapped underground. The trees shook, branches groaning. Alex clutched her head, teeth gritted as the pulse synced with her own heart. Each thud inside her chest was answered by one beneath the earth.
"Ray," Anna's voice cracked, "it's—"
A third pulse hit, and the forest came alive.
Leaves suspended midair. Wind froze. Even their own breathing stuttered. The forest had inhaled and refused to exhale.
Then—light.
It started with Alex.
Her mark blazed to life at the back of her neck, white and gold threads searing through her veins. She dropped to her knees, choking on air, fingers clawing at her collar as if she could peel the burning away.
"Alex!" Anna lunged toward her, but the air around Alex shimmered like a heat mirage, warping everything. Her hair lifted in the unseen wind, her eyes glowing faintly—not with power, but with pain.
Raymond grabbed her shoulders, trying to steady her. "Stay with us! Come on, Lex, breathe!"
Her answer was a strangled sound as a blinding symbol erupted beneath her skin—circular, shifting, almost alive. The mark's pulse synchronized with the forest's heartbeat. Each beat scorched, but she couldn't scream anymore.
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Then Raymond's shoulder flared.
He staggered back, a hiss escaping between his teeth as something carved itself into him—lines of molten light spiraling out in the shape of a bear's head. It glowed fiercely, fierce and primal, its eyes alive with untamed rage.
He fell to one knee, panting. "What the—what's happening to us?"
Anna reached for him, but before she could touch, the air howled.
Her own mark—the wolf that had slept dormant on her neck since the start—stirred. The silver lines under her skin rippled, glowing faintly. A spectral wolf, translucent and ghostly, rose behind her like smoke given shape. It threw back its head and howled—a sound not heard but felt, deep and low, vibrating in bone.
Then the wolf vanished, leaving her gasping.
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The forest answered in kind.
The ground heaved, not with destruction but awakening. Roots shifted, trees bent. A low hum—almost a chant—rolled through the earth. It was language without words, memory without thought.
Alex lifted her head weakly—and the world split open.
Images flooded her mind. Not dreams. Remembrance.
A forest younger, purer, glowing with golden sap.
A figure cloaked in vines and sorrow—Dizer—kneeling before a great tree whose bark shimmered with veins of light.
A whisper through ages: "Protect them. Even from themselves."
Then screams. Fire. A seal being forged in blood and ash.
She clutched her head, tears streaming silently. "Make it stop—please—make it stop!"
Anna was sobbing too, not from fear but from pain that didn't belong to her. The memories tore through all three, branding them with something ancient.
Raymond, through gritted teeth, managed, "It's showing us—its past."
And then came the light.
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A pulse erupted from the forest's heart, expanding in all directions like a living wave. The trees bowed as it passed. Animals fled in a blur of movement. Every student scattered across the test field froze—each one feeling a crushing weight press down on their chest.
Some screamed.
Some fainted.
Some fell to their knees without knowing why.
The air glowed faintly green for a moment, then bled into gold.
Miles away, at the forest's boundary, Gabriel and Claire stared into the shifting horizon. The forest was pulsing—alive in a way it hadn't been in years.
Claire's knuckles whitened around the communicator. "It's happening again."
Gabriel's voice was quiet, steady—but the edge in it was unmistakable. "No. It's choosing."
Claire turned toward him, horrified. "But they're just—"
"Children?" Gabriel finished, eyes hard. "So were we."
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Back inside the forest, the trio lay on the ground, breathing unevenly, the light still spilling faintly from their skin. Around them, the ground had blackened in a perfect circle, the soil branded with runes that shimmered faintly before vanishing like ash.
The forest exhaled at last. The wind returned. The birds called again.
But everything felt… different.
Anna stirred first, lifting her head weakly. "Ray… Alex…"
Raymond grunted, sitting up, clutching his shoulder where the bear mark still pulsed faintly. "Still here," he rasped.
Alex blinked, staring at her trembling hands. Her mark on her neck had faded into a faint glow—but the echo of the pain lingered, pulsing quietly like a second heartbeat.
She whispered, "What did we just do?"
Anna's voice was small. "I don't think it was us."
From somewhere deep in the forest, the trees rustled—not with wind, but with something like a sigh.
And if one listened closely, if one really listened, a single word seemed to breathe through the leaves:
> "Chosen."
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