The sun was lower now, brushing golden light along the treetops. The forest had gone quiet again—but not the eerie kind. This was the quiet of something large turning its attention elsewhere.
The group made their way back to the school building.
The school had changed.
Not completely—its bones were still there, the shape of old corridors and rusted lockers barely visible beneath layers of creeping ivy and moss—but it didn't feel like a building anymore. It felt like something grown. Like the forest hadn't taken over so much as claimed it, fusing with it rather than breaking it down.
But none of that slowed the group as they stepped through the arched entryway and into what used to be the cafeteria.
