Night was no longer a place Aron Vale willingly entered. Sleep came to him like a thief — swift, unwanted, and with something sharp in its hand. When it arrived, it dragged him through the same landscape every time: a forest drenched in the color of old blood.
Tonight, he stood beneath the canopy of twisted branches, just as he always did. The leaves were deep red, it seemed, as if autumn had come and never left. The earth beneath his bare feet was warm-too warm-like flesh that hadn't yet cooled. A scent hung in the air, metallic and damp, like the ground itself was breathing.
A whisper was released among the trees, not in words but in rhythm — as if something very old was calling him by memory rather than language.
Kael.
He did not know the name. Yet his bones answered it.
Aron tried to speak. The air was too heavy, thick as syrup. A tremor ran through the boles of the trees; something was moving far off - tall, man-shaped, but not. Its limbs were too long, the joints flexed just a little the wrong way, as if it were mimicking a man from memory, rather than life.
He couldn't see its face. He never could.
But it always lifted its head when it sensed him.
And tonight, it turned fully toward him.
Aron's breath caught. The shape raised a hand in greeting — or beckoning — each possibility equally terrible. The forest hummed, the color red deepening until the world was drowned in it.
Then—
He woke.
Aron was sitting upright in bed, throat raw, air burning. The apartment was dark except for the faint orange glow bleeding in from the streetlights outside. He pressed the heel of his hand into his eyes until color sparks burst behind them. His heart hammered against his ribs like something trying to get out.
The clock on the nightstand read 3:12 AM.
Always.
Always that time.
He stood and crossed to the sink to drink water. His reflection in the mirror above it looked wrong — not frightening, just misaligned, as though it had been sketched from memory but the artist had never seen him up close.
Dark circles bruised the skin beneath eyes too sharp for someone so tired. He leaned closer. That faint birthmark under his left eye — a crescent-shaped shadow — had darkened again. He exhaled through his teeth.
"Just exhaustion," he told nobody.
But exhaustion didn't explain the dirt under his fingernails.
He stared at it. Reddish-brown. Grainy. The same color as the soil in his dreams.
His stomach twisted.
He hadn't left the apartment.
He hadn't, right?
The next morning, Aron walked briskly across the university courtyard, his head down, his coat collar pulled tight against a weak wind. The Anthropology Building was an old brick structure; ivy crawled up its south wall. He entered through the basement archives, where fluorescent lights flickered in uneasy rhythm and dust collected in corners like forgotten time.
He was supposed to meet with someone today, someone who had requested him.
Dr. Elias Raine.
Aron didn't know him personally, just by reputation. Raine was a scholar specializing in abandoned settlements and rural occult practices. The kind of work most academics dismissed as sensationalism.
But Raine's results were impeccable. Too specific to be coincidence. Too well-sourced to be folklore.
The door leading to the archive was ajar. Aron hesitated, then pushed it open.
Inside, Dr. Elias Raine sat at the long table, a stack of aged photographs set out before him. He was older than Aron expected — early forties, maybe — with black hair flecked lightly with silver, glasses perched low on his nose. His posture was precise, every movement economical. He looked like a man who had never wasted a single gesture in his life.
"Mr. Vale," Raine said without looking up. His voice was calm — almost overly so. "You're punctual. That's good."
Aron didn't remember agreeing on any time. He didn't like that.
"You summoned me?" Aron said.
Raine nodded and finally looked up. His eyes were sharp — not unkind, just uncomfortably discerning.
"I've been going over genealogical records connected with your family name," Raine said. "Your surname is not common. Not originally. Vale is an adoption of the original name, changed three generations ago.
Aron frowned. "I know. My great-grandfather shortened it. The original was… Valém, or something like that."
Raine's lips twitched, not quite a smile.
"Valém," he repeated. "You pronounce it correctly. Most cannot. It comes from an old dialect spoken in a settlement that no longer exists." He slid one of the photographs across the table. "Do you recognize this man?"
Aron looked.
His lungs stopped working.
Standing beside a wooden post, the man in the picture wore sleeves rolled up and dirt-stained hands. The photograph was dated 1891.
But the face—
The face was his.
Not just similar. Identical. Same jawline. Same brow. Same eyes.
Same birthmark beneath the left eye.
The world seemed to tilt behind Aron's eyes.
"That's—" He swallowed. "Is this a manipulation? AI? Someone's idea of a joke?
Raine didn't blink. "It's an albumen print, Mr. Vale. Original. Verified. Developed long before digital alteration existed."
Aron stared at the man in the photograph.
His name, in handwriting below it: Kael Valém.
His pulse stuttered.
Kael.
The name from the forest.
Raine studied him. Not with sympathy. Not with pity.
With interest.
"As I suspected," Raine muttered, "you've dreamed of him."
Aron's mouth went dry.
"I didn't say—"
"You didn't have to." Raine folded his hands. "The Valém lineage is known for recurring ancestral memory phenomena. It usually begins between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-seven years old.
Aron sat down without meaning to.
Raine went on, tone of a man discussing weather patterns rather than madness:
"The village where the Valém family lived was called Redwood Hollow. It disappeared in 1901. Records say that the settlement dissolved due to famine. But it was not famine. There was something else, something that ended the bloodline, or tried to."
Aron forced his voice to work. "Ended it how?"
Raine leaned forward.
"Con un rito que jamás se completó.
The room felt smaller.
Raine tapped the photograph once. "I believe you are the final inheritor of that unfinished rite."
Aron's skin prickled, cold crawling up his spine like insects.
He stood. Too fast. His chair legs scratched the floor.
"That's enough. I'm done. I'm not here for this."
Raine didn't stop him. Didn't raise his voice. He simply said:
"Check your hands."
Aron froze.
He looked.
The reddish-brown dirt was back — packed beneath his nails.
He hadn't touched anything.
Not today.
Not last night.
Not in waking life.
Raine's face did not reveal her emotions, neither triumphant nor sympathetic.
"Sleepwalking is the first stage," he said in a hushed tone. "Then memory bleed. Then identity disalignment. The dreams aren't dreams. They're return."
Aron's breath broke.
"What do you want from me?"
Raine finally looked — really looked — at him.
"Not to save you," he said. "To observe what happens when the blood remembers."
That night, Aron did not mean to sleep. He brewed coffee until his hands shook and lights stung his eyes. He paced the apartment. Sat. Stood. Drank more. Opened windows. Closed them. His mind was stretched taut, pulsating like a nerve exposed to open air.
But exhaustion is older than resistance.
He was unconscious by 4:02 AM.
He stood in the forest again.
But this time, he was not alone.
Kael stood across from him.
Same face. Same eyes. Same mark.
But the flesh around Kael's jaw was split, as though the roots had grown beneath the skin and broken outward. His veins pulsed red, like something alive was moving inside them.
Kael lifted his hand.
And when he spoke, Aron's voice came out of his mouth.
"Come home," Kael said.
Aron tried to scream—
—
Seafood is included, but meat is not.
He woke standing outside his apartment building.
Feet bare.
Pajama pants soaked in dew.
And under his nails and in every fold of his hands and skin:
Red earth.
Not from anywhere in a thousand miles around the city.
He realized then —
He hadn't been sleepwalking.
He had been returning.
To somewhere that wanted him back.
To something that remembered his name.
For something that had been waiting.
For him.
For a century
Aron didn't go back to sleep.
He stood on the sidewalk in the cold dawn air and stared at the reddish grains under his fingernails. The streets were still empty-no voices, no engines, only the soft hum of street lamps about to shut off. His breathing was uneven, faint clouds drifting away like pieces of him dissolving.
All of it-the world-didn't feel real.
Or he didn't.
He walked back inside his apartment building. The lights in the lobby flickered-once, then twice-the old fluorescent tubes struggling to wake. The hum sounded too steady. Rhythmic. Familiar.
Like the pulsing heartbeat of the red forest.
He took the elevator up, hands shoved into his pockets so tightly his knuckles ached. The doors slid open with a sigh that reminded him of the whispering in his dreams. He stepped into his apartment and shut the door behind him, pressing his back against it as though something might try to follow.
He stood there for a moment, his chest rising and falling too quickly.
This is fine, he told himself.
He'd sleepwalked. That was all. People sleepwalked.
Except sleepwalkers didn't cross locked doors. He checked — the security chain was still drawn. The lock still set. The windows still latched from the inside.
So either:
He unlocked everything in his sleep.
or
He hadn't gone anywhere physically at all.
He preferred option one.
At least that one made him human.
At noon, Aron sat at his small dining table, his laptop open in front of him and several dusty books laid out around him. He typed mechanically: keywords, genealogy records, archival entries, satellite images of forests in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The name Redwood Hollow returned almost nothing.
No articles. No historical census records. No casualty lists. No logging reports. It was as if the village had been erased deliberately.
But he found something — one single reference in a journal article from 1948:
"…and the Hollow was abandoned after what local legend refers to as the Night of the Root-Splitter, though no surviving documents clarify the event.
Night of the Root-Splitter.
Aron's heartbeat thudded once, slow and heavy, like something responding.
He closed the laptop, pushing away from the table and rubbing at his temples. A headache pulsed behind his eyes, sharp and mean. The kind that felt like pressure building. Like something pressing from inside trying to get out.
He turned towards the sink to splash water on his face.
But he stopped.
The mirror above the sink was fogging.
Just as if someone had just breathed on it.
Except he had not.
The apartment was cold.
Aron stared.
The fog shifted.
Shapes formed.
Not words - roots. Long, branching root-like streaks in condensation. They spread outward like veins beneath skin.
His skin.
For a moment, Aron couldn't breathe.
His knees nearly gave.
Then —
A knock.
Sharp. Three taps.
He flinched so hard his shoulder hit the counter.
He moved to the door slowly, as if stepping through water, every sound widened and echoing. He opened it.
Before them stood Dr. Elias Raine.
Nice coat. Hands clasped behind his back. As though he'd simply been waiting for Aron to answer, not for hours — but for exactly the correct second.
Aron's voice was raw: "How did you find where I live?"
Raine's expression did not change. "Your academic profile lists your residential district. It was a short process of elimination.
Of course.
Of course he'd know.
Aron stepped aside, too tired to resist.
Raine entered without hesitation-not in a rude manner, but in the manner of one who had already concluded the threshold belonged to him.
He scanned the room once.
Not judging.
Just cataloging.
"You saw something," Raine said finally. It wasn't a question.
Aron didn't answer for several seconds.
He wanted to lie.
He didn't.
"The mirror," Aron said. "There were… shapes. Roots. Like something alive."
Raine's eyes sharpened by a fraction. The closest thing to reaction Aron had seen from him.
"Describe them."
Aron shook his head. "No. I don't want to make it real by talking about it."
Raine stepped closer, but not invasive-just uncomfortably certain.
"It is real," Raine said. "Whether you acknowledge it or not. The Valém bloodline was bound through ritual. To break the curse, you must understand the rite that placed it."
"I didn't ask for this," Aron whispered.
"No one ever asks for inheritance," Raine said. "But we carry it just the same."
Something inside Aron snapped - a quiet thing, but sharp.
He slammed his hand against the table.
"What do you want from me? Why me? Why this? I am not some- some artifact for you to examine!"
The silence that followed was thick.
Raine didn't look offended.
He looked intrigued.
"I want to witness a truth that has not been witnessed in one hundred and thirty-three years," Raine said softly.
Cold began to spread through Aron.
"You want to watch me fall apart."
"No," Raine said. "I want to watch what comes after you fall apart."
The room felt wrong again.
Like the walls were leaning closer.
Like the air was thickening,
Like there were roots under the floor.
Aron swallowed. Hard.
"What happened in Redwood Hollow," Aron asked. "The Night of the Root-Splitter… what was it?"
Raine hesitated — very slightly — and that was somehow worse than any answer.
"It was the night the villagers tried to bring their god fully into flesh," he said. "They needed a vessel. A body with a bloodline shaped to hold it."
Aron didn't move.
Raine stepped closer.
"You look exactly like Kael Valém," he said, voice quiet and precise. "Because you are not his descendant. You are his continuation."
Aron felt the floor sway.
Air vanished.
The room pulsed — red, then darker, then red again.
His fingers tingled.
His vision blurred at the edges.
Raine's voice was distant now - not fading, but moving away in a tunnel of sound.
"The blood remembers," Raine said, "and it is remembering now."
Aron heard something then.
Not outside.
Not inside.
Through.
A whisper — the same cadence as before.
But this time, it spoke clearly.
Kael.
His knees buckled.
The darkness welled up like water.
He collapsed.
He dreamed again.
But there was no forest.
There was earth-close, pressing, swallowing. Soil against his cheeks, packed around his legs, his arms pinned, his ribs crushed.
He was buried.
No - rooted
Something moved beneath his skin.
Not worms.
Roots.
Burrowing upward.
Trying to bloom.
He screamed-
He woke on the floor.
Raine stood over him, expression unreadable.
"You're improving faster than anticipated," he said. Aron's throat burned. "Progressing to what?" Raine crouched, eyes level with his. "To the truth of what you are," Raine said, his voice soft. "And what has been waiting for you." Aron's breath trembled. "What's waiting?" Raine didn't blink.
"Yourself."