The wooden door didn't creak; it swallowed them. One moment they stood in the ashen arena, the next they were plunged into a twilight world. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and rotting leaves. Giant, twisted trees with bark like obsidian clawed at a sickly green sky, their canopies so dense they snuffed out any real light. Whispers seemed to drift from the shadows between the trunks, just on the edge of hearing.
"Okay," Maro breathed, his hand still tightly gripping Yara's. "Not a five-star hotel."
Yara's Aegis of Dawn flickered instinctively around them, casting a soft, protective glow that pushed back the oppressive gloom. "Which way?"
There was no path. Just the endless, malevolent forest. The disembodied voice did not greet them here. This trial, it seemed, was theirs to navigate blindly.
They moved carefully, the squelch of the damp ground under their feet the only sound they made. The whispers grew louder the deeper they went, forming words in a language they didn't know, yet somehow understood. Trespassers... Fools... Stay...
"Ignore it," Maro muttered, his own Umbral Shroud coiling restlessly around his free hand like smoke.
A branch snapped to their left. They spun, ready. But it wasn't a monster. A man stumbled out from behind a tree, his clothes torn, eyes wild with panic. He saw their powered forms and scrambled back.
"Please! Don't hurt me!" he begged.
Yara immediately lowered her hands, the light around her dimming. "We won't. We're just like you."
The man, who introduced himself as Leo, had been an accountant on Earth. His sin? Cooking the books for a major corporation. He'd been here for three trials, surviving by hiding. "The doors... they don't always lead to a fight. Sometimes they lead to places like this. But the monsters find you eventually."
As if on cue, the whispers coalesced. The shadows under the trees deepened, pulling together into sleek, panther-like forms. But these creatures were made of solidified silence, their bodies absorbing the little light there was. They had no eyes, only smooth, dark heads that seemed to drink in the sight of their prey. They were Shades.
Leo cried out and tried to run. A Shade glided in front of him, its mere presence making the air freeze.
"Yara, now!" Maro yelled.
Yara thrust her hands forward. "Aegis of Dawn!" A dome of light erupted around the three of them. The Shades recoiled, hissing silently, but unlike the Ember beasts, they didn't burn. They circled, patient, waiting for the light to falter.
Maro didn't wait. He pushed his will into the shadows at the feet of the closest Shade. But his Umbral Shroud slid right off. It was like trying to grasp water with more water. They're made of the same stuff I'm trying to use, he realized with a jolt of fear.
"We can't fight them head-on!" he shouted. "My shadows are useless!"
"Then we run!" Yara countered, her voice strained from maintaining the barrier.
"Follow me!" Leo yelled, pointing towards a faint, phosphorescent glow in the distance. "I saw it earlier! It might be a way out!"
It was a gamble. Trust a terrified stranger or be worn down by these silent hunters. Maro met Yara's eyes. She gave a sharp nod.
Yara dropped the dome and instead created a blazing path of light ahead of them, a temporary road that forced the Shades to part. They ran, the Shades flowing after them like a dark tide.
The glow led them to a shallow, bubbling river of what looked like liquid sulfur. Spanning it was a bridge made of woven, petrified roots. And on the other side, stood a single, simple door made of ancient, gray stone.
"The exit!" Leo sobbed.
But as they reached the bridge, the Shades stopped at the river's edge, unwilling to cross. It was too easy. The whispers in the forest rose to a crescendo. The price... the price...
The roots of the bridge began to writhe. It wasn't a bridge; it was a nest. From the sulfurous water, a massive creature rose. It was a grotesque, worm-like beast with a circular maw of overlapping, stone-like teeth. A Grave Maw.
Leo, in his desperation, was two steps onto the "bridge" before he realized it was moving. The maw snapped up, and with a sickening crunch, he was gone.
Maro and Yara stared, horrified. The door was right there, but the monster was between them and it.
"New plan," Maro said, his voice cold. The shock of Leo's death crystallized his focus. "It's not shadow. It's substance. I need to make my darkness solid."
He remembered the feeling of the lighter in his hand, the spark that ended their lives. He focused on that memory of ignition, of creating something from nothing. He poured that intent into his Umbral Shroud, not to entrap, but to forge.
A blade of pure, solidified darkness formed in his hand. It was cold enough to make the air around it crackle.
"Yara," he called out. "Light me a path to its head."
Yara, understanding instantly, created a series of brilliant, floating platforms of light leading up and over the chomping maw. "Don't miss!"
Maro ran, leaping from one platform to the next. The Grave Maw sensed him and reared up. He jumped, his obsidian blade held high. With a yell that was pure defiance, he brought the blade down, plunging it deep into the creature's stone-like head.
The beast shuddered, let out a guttural roar that echoed through the forest, and then crumbled apart, dissolving into the sulfuric river.
They landed panting on the other side, before the stone door.
No voice congratulated them. The forest was silent, the whispers gone. The door simply stood, an invitation.
Maro looked at the weapon in his hand, which was already dissipating back into smoke. He had grown. They both had.
Yara touched his arm. "We don't have a choice, do we?"
Maro shook his head. "We chose our path at the iron door."
Together, they opened the stone door and stepped through, leaving the Forest of Whispers behind, ready for whatever hell awaited next.