The boy moved through the forest like a shadow, his bare feet silent against the mossy earth. He felt every pebble, every root, but his skin did not flinch. The canopy above filtered the golden morning light into spears of shimmer, slicing through low-hanging mist. Birds chirped above, but Kai listened past them, to something deeper.
The Everwood whispered.
It always had. It was older than memory, older than language. The forest spoke not with words, but creaks of branches, silences between birdcalls, the way the wind slowed near certain stones. Kai had learned its tongue by instinct, not instruction. A sudden hush in the canopy was a warning. A sharp breath of cold wind could mean death.
He had been named Kai by the woman who raised him. She was long gone now, swallowed by the trees like so many other things. But the name remained, along with her old blade and the habits of survival.
Kai was alone. But never lonely.
The forest gave. He snared rabbits, foraged roots and berries, drank from crystal streams. He mimicked owl calls and fox barks, and in time, the creatures of the Everwood no longer fled from him. Some even watched him, curious. As if they knew something he didn't.
Still, there were places even Kai avoided. Places where the mist clung to the skin like breath, where stones bore markings he could not look at for long. In those places, the whispers twisted, speaking in a language that made his ears ring and his teeth ache.
One evening, as twilight spilled like ink across the moss, something shifted.
The air grew colder. The whispers grew louder, not in volume, but urgency. Something was waking.
Kai knelt by a stream to drink. His reflection barely rippled, though the water ran fast. Then the sound changed.
No birds. No bugs. No babble of the stream.
The forest was holding its breath.
He rose slowly, every instinct bristling. His hand went to the bone knife at his belt.
Then came the scent.
Faint at first. Metallic. Old. Not the blood of prey, not the familiar copper tang of a kill, but something ancient, sacred, and wrong.
And then, movement.
Across the stream, half-veiled by twisted roots, stood a deer.
No.
Not a deer.
Its eyes glowed faintly in the dusk. Not with light, but with memory. With knowing.
It did not move, but Kai felt its gaze pierce through skin and thought, like it was reading the story inside his bones.
A low hum filled the clearing, not sound, but pressure. A vibration in the air, in his chest, in the earth itself.
The creature did not speak. But the forest did. Through it.
Then the thing turned and vanished, no rustle of underbrush, no breaking of branches. One moment it was there. The next, gone.
Kai remained frozen. His breath visible in the air. The whispers around him had changed.
They no longer warned.
They called.
High above, nestled in the crook of a gnarled tree, a figure watched.
Her red hair was tied tight. A longbow rested across her back, but her hand stayed still.
She had seen many strange things in the Everwood.
But nothing like this boy.
Lyra narrowed her eyes.
And kept watching.