On Kupala Night, Marek and Lena enter an ancient forest in search of the Holy Fern Glade. In the mist, they meet the Boer Grandfather and a gate no one was meant to find.
The forest swallowed them whole. Wet leaves pressed close overhead, and the night air carried the smell of moss, earth, and something older than memory. Marek and Lena followed a narrow path that seemed to appear only when the moon touched it, silvering roots, stones, and the pale trunks of the trees.
Kupala Night had turned the woods strange. Every branch creaked like a warning. Marek kept one hand on the old knife at his belt, the blade his grandfather had left him, more for comfort than use. Lena rubbed her cold fingers together and kept glancing into the dark between the trees, where the shadows seemed to shift a moment too late.
They had come for the Holy Fern Glade, or what was left of it in the stories. Lena's grandmother had spoken of it as if it were a place half dream, half trap, where the forest opened for those foolish enough to look for it. Marek had laughed then. He was not laughing now.
When the path widened into a clearing, the mist thickened at once, white and low, curling around their boots. A smell of crushed herbs drifted through it. Then a long, low sound rolled from the roots of a twisted oak, and an old man stepped out as if he had been waiting there all along. His beard was green with moss, and his eyes held a cold, steady fire.
"What are you looking for in my forest?" he asked, his voice rough as leaves dragged over stone.
Marek and Lena froze. Before either of them could answer, shapes began to move behind him - lean russet backs slipping through the grass, heavy shadows with bristling coats, and something larger still, circling just beyond the fog.
The old man lifted one hand. In his palm, a holly torch glimmered weakly, throwing red light across the clearing. "If you have come for answers," he said, "you may not like what answers the night gives you."
A gust of wind slammed through the trees. The mist tore open at their feet, and there, half hidden in the earth, stood a gate grown over with moss and black roots, its iron bands wet with moonlight. It had not been there a moment before. Marek took one step forward - and the gate gave a slow, unmistakable creak from the other side.