The world above had started to murmur.
It had been four days since Elias Grayee and his four college friends—Emma, Mark, Nathen, and Blake—vanished without a trace. Four days in the human world, but time flowed differently in the cursed realm beneath the roots. For Elias, nearly four weeks had already passed since his descent into the forest's core.
Back on Earth, concern bloomed into panic.
At the local police precinct near the fringes of Greywood Forest, phones buzzed with calls from worried parents and university administrators. Elias and his friends had rented a black SUV and driven into the woods, seemingly on a weekend camping trip. They never returned. It wasn't just their absence. The GPS went dead. Phones—silent. No credit card activity. It was as if they had evaporated into the forest fog.
Enter Detective Samuel H. Carrington, known as Ranger Sam in these parts.
Tall, stoic, late forties with salt at his temples and deep-set, calculating eyes. Sam had seen enough disappearances around Greywood to understand that this wasn't ordinary. He had grown up on the edge of those woods, had once hiked deep into their shadowy belly as a boy. Something had stared back.
Now, decades later, he returned not just as a curious wanderer but as a man on a mission.
"Four kids vanish at the same damn spot. Same forest. Same silence," he muttered, flipping through his notepad. "What the hell is in those trees?"
He met the sheriff that morning.
"We reviewed the dashcam from the local gas station," the sheriff explained. "The group fueled up here. Bought snacks. Normal behavior. Emma looked nervous."
Sam narrowed his eyes. "And then?"
"They drove off toward Greywood. No footage after that."
Sam chewed on his pen. "I'm going out there. I'll need drones, two deputies, and everything from the old cold cases near Greywood."
The sheriff raised a brow. "You think this links to the others?"
Sam didn't answer.
Instead, he returned home and pulled out a locked wooden chest. Inside were yellowed maps, crumpled journals, and a thick leather-bound notebook titled: Whispers in the Canopy. A gift from his late father.
Sam opened to a page labeled "Greywood - Hollow Root Theory."
> "The forest has pockets. Hollows. You don't fall into them; they fall through you."
He frowned. That was his father's handwriting. A naturalist who vanished in those same woods forty years ago. No trace. No clue. Just the journal mailed back to Sam by an anonymous sender—postmarked from Roland County, which no longer existed on any modern map.
Back in the police station, Sam laid out the map and began circling possible entry points. It was time.
---
Back in the Dark Realm…
Emma stumbled through the fungal canopy, her breath shallow. Her wrists bore faint bruises from the vines that had bound her. She had escaped the Pteris villagers after convincing one of the young children—barely humanoid, all fern and trembling eye leaves—that she meant no harm.
She now trekked alone.
"Elias… where are you?"
Her chest tightened every time his name crossed her thoughts. She remembered their college days—how he'd always sit at the back of the library, sketching trees like they were long-lost friends. How he smiled with quiet reverence when talking about the woods. How he never once noticed Emma's lingering glances.
"He was always… otherworldly," she whispered.
---
Mark, Blake, and Nathen were now deep inside what could only be described as a decaying fortress—KINTAKEKAI, the rotting bastion of the fungal monarchy. The spires glistened with mycelium, and the air was thick with a sweet, sickly rot.
"Don't touch the walls," Mark warned, pulling Nathen back. "They breathe."
"I swear the hallways change," Blake muttered, swatting away a floating spore.
A glowing fungal sentinel emerged from the corridor—a humanoid, spindly-limbed creature with eyes like molten moss.
"You carry the scent of the surface," it rasped.
"Yeah," Mark said, stepping forward, "we're looking for our friend. Elias."
The sentinel tilted its head. "He stirs the underrealm. The king has eyes on him."
"Vrathkul," Nathen whispered.
The name sounded like a disease in the mouth.
Meanwhile, Emma reached the temple's edge—the Valley of Lichens spread before her like a wound in the earth. The valley shimmered under twilight, its moss-covered cliffs dancing with bioluminescent life.
At its heart stood The Temple of Symbiosis, half-grown from lichen and half-carved from ancient bone.
And just ahead… two figures. Elias and Elowen, the nymph.
Emma gasped and stepped back into the shadows.
She had found him.
But at what cost?
---
TO BE CONTINUED...