The forest was wrong.
It wasn't the trees — though they towered unnaturally tall, their bark etched with breathing runes, their leaves whispering names Elías had never spoken.
It wasn't the light — though there was none, and yet everything was visible.
It was the feeling.
The ground pulsed. Not with life, but with remembrance.
And the trees… remembered him.
---
"We've entered the Remembering Wood," said Tirian, voice low.
"Doesn't look like it forgets much," muttered Verrun, tail twitching.
Leshra was silent. Her hand gripped the hilt of her blade, but her eyes — they scanned the dark like it was a language she once knew.
---
They walked.
And the forest watched.
Bark twisted. Branches bent. Roots curled around their feet, not to trip, but to taste.
Every step brought back something.
A whisper of a name Elías never said aloud.
A flash of a scar he hadn't earned yet.
A memory of a scream — not his, but one he should've heard.
---
Then came the statues.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Scattered through the trees. Some tall, proud. Others curled in fetal despair. All carved from flesh turned to stone. Not sculpted — transformed.
One reached toward them.
Mouth open.
Eyes still weeping blood.
---
"They were us," Leshra whispered. "Once."
"What do you mean?" asked Elías.
"I mean… they tried to pass through."
---
Something cracked behind them.
They turned.
The path was gone.
Replaced by trees too wide to pass. Too close to slip between. Their bark bore names now.
Leshra's.
Verrun's.
Tirian's.
And Elías'.
All scratched in with bone.
---
"The wood rewrites the past," Tirian said. "It'll test who we are by what we've been."
"And what we could become," Verrun added grimly.
---
They pressed forward.
The statues thickened.
Some now moved slightly. Not enough to walk — just enough to remind.
A finger twitch.
A blink.
A breath.
One statue — a girl with no mouth — stared at Elías.
He knew her.
He didn't know how.
---
A voice echoed:
"You cannot become what you do not remember."
---
The forest opened.
A glade.
At its center, a single tree — thicker than a tower, bleeding sap like ink. Hanging from its branches were pages. Thousands of them.
Some still fluttered.
Some… moaned.
---
Tirian dropped to his knees.
"It's the Heartwood."
Leshra bowed.
Verrun looked away.
Elías stepped forward.
---
Each page bore a moment.
Of someone's life.
Of someone's end.
He reached out and touched one.
---
Suddenly:
He was old.
Too old.
Sitting in a collapsing house, holding the hand of a dying lover. He didn't know her name. But he loved her. And she looked at him like he was still twenty.
She whispered, "Elías… I never forgot your voice."
Then the page burned.
---
Another.
He was a soldier. Sword broken. Surrounded. He screamed a name — his own — but it sounded wrong.
He died.
Again.
And again.
Each page was him.
Or could have been.
Or will be.
---
"I don't want this," Elías said.
The tree laughed.
Not with joy.
With certainty.
"You don't have a choice."
---
Then it bent.
Not fully — just enough for its lowest branch to touch him.
He felt a download of history.
Not memory — consequence.
He saw the things he would do.
The friends he'd betray.
The gods he'd kill.
The children he'd never have.
The world he'd unmake — and the one he'd try to fix.
And worst of all:
He saw himself alone.
Crowned in silence.
Holding nothing but the quill.
---
He pulled away.
The bark beneath his fingers burned with letters in a dead language. They translated themselves across his vision:
"TO REMEMBER IS TO BLEED."
---
He turned to the others.
"They showed me who I might become."
Tirian nodded. "That is the price of passing through."
"Will it change you?" Leshra asked.
Elías didn't answer.
He just looked at his hand — where the ink still pulsed in his palm.
Then he stepped beyond the glade.
And the forest let him.
---
The others followed.
Behind them, the tree exhaled.
The pages fluttered.
And somewhere, a new one appeared — with today's date.
And Elías' name.
---
That night, they made camp under roots shaped like ribs.
No one slept.
Because their dreams were already awake.
---
Question for the reader:If you could see all your possible selves — would you still choose to be you?