There is a trail in the Grove that should not exist.
It moves.
Not like a serpent, nor a stream, but like a decision changing its mind.
No map marks its course. No moss grows the same way twice along its edge. It is called the Path Where Names Are Broken—and only those who are ready to shatter their titles beneath their own feet ever find its first stone.
And this is where the story stirs now.
A figure walks it—not with grace, not with certainty, but with momentum born of refusal.
Their name, once whispered with pride, clings to their shoulders like wet cloth. Too tight. Too loud. Too small.
With each step, the name frays.
—Not all at once.
At first, it pulls at the seams. Letters drift behind like torn feathers.
The Grove watches.
It does not intervene.
But around this figure, the trees lean slightly inward—not to bar the way, but to listen. As if they, too, remember what it is to be called something that never truly fit.
Suddenly: a snap underfoot.
