The forest was alive with a silence so profound it felt like a weight pressing on the very marrow of their bones. It wasn't the kind of stillness that calms; it was the kind that presses in, a suffocating pressure that threatened to crack something deep within.
The trees—twisted, ancient things—towered like silent witnesses to untold histories, their gnarled branches stretching not toward the sky, but toward something older, something far more imposing.
This was a place where time had forgotten itself, where the very air seemed to hum with a sense of something lurking just beyond the edge of perception, waiting, watching. The air was thick with memory—distorted, warped by the centuries—and vibrated with the pulse of something that shouldn't be. Something that shouldn't exist.
Erasmus walked at the edge of the group, eyes not fixed on the uncertain trail ahead but instead trained on Ilya. There was something off about him, something too polished, too... practiced. A calmness that wasn't just the absence of fear, but the careful construction of it.
The others might have passed him off as just another companion, another shadow in the dark woods, but Erasmus saw beyond that mask. He always did. It wasn't paranoia—it was the subtle, insistent understanding that things were never as simple as they appeared. Ilya was too smooth, too perfect in his stillness.
"We need to stop," he said, his voice not raised but slicing through the murmur of quiet footsteps, the hesitant rustle of armor and shifting weight. It was the kind of command that left no room for debate, no space for questioning, as if the very utterance of it twisted the air itself to bend in his favor. No one needed to know why they should stop—only that they had to.
A few blinked, the weight of his words washing over them like a slow tide, as if waking from a dream they couldn't remember. Others froze, caught between the command and the overwhelming sense that something far greater than Erasmus had summoned them to halt. They stood there, staring into the thick darkness of the forest, unsure whether they were obeying the man or the forest itself.
Sir Calden was the first to break the spell, stepping forward, his hand brushing the sweat from his brow as if trying to wipe away the confusion. "Stopped for what? You see something in the trees?" he grunted, his voice harsh, a knight's challenge.
Erasmus didn't so much as glance at him. His eyes remained fixed on Ilya, unwavering. "Not in the trees," he said, his voice cold, implacable. "In us. In him."
Some of the younger squires shifted uncomfortably, eyes flickering between Erasmus and Ilya, unsure whether to trust their senses or the gnawing sense of dread that had begun to settle in their stomachs. Brin, no older than seventeen and barely a child in the face of war, leaned toward a fellow squire and whispered, "He's just quiet. That doesn't make him a monster." His words were hesitant, small—a child's plea for normality.
Riven, always the steady hand, placed a hand on the hilt of his blade, though the tension in his posture betrayed his growing unease. "Erasmus, we've been walking too long," he said, his voice controlled, though beneath it simmered the unmistakable hint of frustration. "Maybe you're just seeing ghosts in the mist."
Erasmus didn't flinch. He didn't look away. His gaze never left Ilya, locked like a predator staring down its prey. "Something is watching us," he said, his voice low, heavy with certainty. "Not from the shadows. From inside."
Rei, ever the skeptic, let out a short, bitter laugh, the sound sharp with exhaustion. "From inside? What, you think he's possessed? A doppelganger? Gods, Erasmus, we're losing it. All of us." His laugh echoed, raw and edged with something like panic. His eyes darted between the others, seeking confirmation that none of them had yet slipped too far from the edge of sanity.
But Erasmus took another step forward, unyielding. The others parted as if compelled by the gravity of his certainty, and in that moment, the forest itself seemed to lean in, listening.
"You don't belong here," Erasmus said, his voice cutting through the air with the sharpness of a verdict.
Ilya, unfazed, tilted his head ever so slightly, the faintest smirk playing at the edges of his mouth. "Neither do you."
Rei's face twisted with a growing frustration, his patience unraveling with each passing moment. "Enough of this cryptic nonsense! Just say what you mean!"
Erasmus didn't flinch. He didn't pause. "He's not him," he replied, each word deliberate, almost painfully slow. "And this isn't the forest we were in. It's a memory. A mockery. A test."
And at his words, the world seemed to shift. The trees, once solid and eternal, began to tremble as if caught in a gust of wind that couldn't quite make itself known. The air thickened, pressing down on them like the weight of a thousand unseen eyes.
Rei stepped forward, his finger jabbing toward Erasmus, his voice rising in a mix of disbelief and anger. "And how would you know that, huh? Been hiding something from us, too?"
Before Erasmus could answer, a quiet voice interrupted the rising storm. Mira, one of the younger squires, her voice barely above a whisper, said, "I—I remember the tree being here," she stammered, her eyes wide with fear. "Twice. We passed it twice. I thought I was going mad." Her words hung in the air, a delicate tremor in the silence that followed.
Sir Calden glanced down at her, his face grim but unreadable. Then he turned back to Erasmus, his words heavy with a mix of concern and suspicion. "We're all cracking. You think he's the cause?"
Erasmus didn't answer right away. His gaze was fixed on Ilya, narrowing, as if willing the truth from the shadows. "Tell me," he said, his voice low but lethal, "Do you bleed?"
Ilya blinked, a soft, almost imperceptible movement. And then the world split.
There was no crash. No roar. No explosion of sound. It was a sensation—an impression, a jagged rift in the fabric of their understanding. The world seemed to bend, to crack like glass, the trees shifting at impossible angles, the forest floor trembling beneath their feet. The air thickened, becoming viscous, like they were moving through the thoughts of something ancient, something not quite alive, but not quite dead, either.
Ilya's form began to shift. Not physically, but fundamentally. Where once stood a man, now flickered something else. Something that wasn't quite him, not quite anything. The edges of his shape blurred, became jagged, incoherent. It wasn't just his appearance that changed—it was his very existence. He was out of place. Out of time.
The group gasped in unison, a collective breath held in terror.
"What is that?!" Rei screamed, his voice cracking as he stumbled backward, eyes wide with primal fear.
Riven reacted instantly, moving between the squires and the flickering figure, his sword drawn, its edge gleaming in the dim light. "Back. Now," he ordered, his voice firm, cutting through the panic.
Erasmus exhaled slowly, his mind already racing. "It's a placeholder. A construct. A memory given form, designed to tether us here," he said, his tone eerily calm amidst the chaos. His eyes remained locked on Ilya—not Ilya, but the thing wearing his shape.
The creature that had been Ilya tilted its head once more. The serene mask it wore cracked—not into fear, but into something far colder, far more dangerous. Disappointment. "You weren't supposed to notice."
And then, the forest retaliated.
It didn't scream. It didn't roar. It converged. The trees bent inward like jaws snapping shut, their roots surging from the ground like skeletal hands, grasping, tearing. The very air turned dense, thick, laden with an unseen pressure that threatened to crush every thought, every sense, every fleeting hope.
"Everyone move!" Riven shouted, his voice cutting through the chaos as he grabbed Brin and Mira, dragging them away from the oncoming storm of roots and branches. Sir Calden swung his sword with practiced precision, severing a root that lashed out like a whip, but the forest was relentless.
Still, Erasmus stood. Unmoved. Unfazed.
The loop was collapsing.
—
The trees seemed to be stretching infinitely until a sudden, silent stop.
Reality snapped.
The forest was no longer forest but a storm of fragments—time shards, broken memories, slivers of perception tearing through the air. People screamed, vanished, reappeared. The trees bled ink. The sky split open, revealing not stars, but a vast, watching eye that blinked once and vanished.
Through it all, Erasmus stood still.
He watched the world collapse and remade its meaning in real time. The false Ilya flickered, then dissolved—leaving behind not dust, but absence, a hole in reality where something had once convinced them it was real.
As the last scream faded and silence returned, Erasmus stood alone in a clearing that had not existed a moment before.
His thoughts were steel.
This was not chaos. This was trial.
And now he would begin to judge it.