When David and Lena find a strange amulet in the old forest, the night shifts in impossible ways, and a hidden ravine opens where no ravine should exist.
David had always been drawn to things that refused explanation. Lena, for her part, had a habit of going where everyone else stopped at the gate. That was why, on a night when the stars had vanished above their village as if someone had snuffed them out, the two of them stood together at the edge of the old forest.
No one came here anymore. Not since old Alina, the herb gatherer the children called Whisperer, had disappeared among these trees.
They moved deeper under the branches, where the air grew still and close. Even the shadows seemed restless, sliding over the roots without any wind to move them. Lena was the first to spot the glimmer beneath a twisted oak. The earth there looked disturbed, the soil loosened as if something had been buried in haste and forgotten.
They knelt and brushed away the dirt with their hands until they uncovered a small amulet of black stone, bound with fine silver thread. It was cold enough to sting. The moment David closed his fingers around it, a shiver ran up his arm, sharp and unnatural.
“Do you think it belonged to Whisperer?” Lena asked, but her voice had already thinned to a whisper.
The forest answered before David could.
A rustle moved through the branches overhead, though no bird broke from the leaves. Then came another sound, so faint it might have been imagined: a murmur threading through the dark, brushing against their thoughts instead of their ears.
David tried to let go of the amulet.
He couldn’t.
The silver thread brightened, then flared with a cold blue light that spilled across the roots and over Lena’s face. The ground gave a low, cracked groan. A seam split open in front of them, widening fast, as if the earth itself had decided to make room for something that had been waiting below.
A ravine yawed open where there had been only forest floor a heartbeat before.
From the darkness came voices, soft and amused, speaking over one another in tones that seemed to know their names.
Lena took one slow step back, then looked at David. “Do we go down?” she whispered.
And from the ravine, something whispered back.