She should turn back. Every story, every prayer, every lesson from her father screamed it. Trespass wasn't just a legal word. It was a moral one. A sacred one. You don't enter a place that has closed itself to you.
But last night, a light had flickered in the woods. Not a flashlight—too steady, too amber. Like a candle in a window where no window should be.
And for the first time in three years, her daughter did, too. trespass
Inside, there was no furniture. No dust. Just a single candle on a bare floor, and in the center of the flame, a small, perfect handprint pressed into the air, as if the fire itself had been cupped by a child.
The moment her boot touched the moss on the other side, the air changed. It grew still, then thick—like wading through the memory of a held breath. The pines leaned inward, their needles whispering not with wind, but with a low, harmonic hum. She felt it in her sternum: a frequency, a warning. She should turn back
Wrong , the forest seemed to say. You are wrong here.
Now, at 5 a.m., Lena stood at the fence. Her father’s shotgun was heavy in her hands, but she hadn't loaded it. That wasn't the trespass she was planning. It was a moral one
The forest remembered her trespass.