The earth does not forget. It remembers, and it feeds.
Elias had never been close to his father.
Growing up on the farm, he had always felt like a stranger in the house. His father was a quiet man, rough around the edges, a man of few words. His work ethic had been relentless, a man who never rested, never took a day off. He toiled day and night, his hands calloused from years of labor, from cutting wood, tilling soil, and tending to the animals. But he never spoke much. The few conversations they'd had were brief, functional, like transactions between strangers.
Elias never understood his father's coldness. His mother was warm, gentle, always taking the time to care for him, to make sure he was fed and safe. But his father... his father had seemed distant, always focused on the work, as if he was driven by some invisible force, a force Elias couldn't comprehend.
But then, one day, his father simply disappeared.
It wasn't like the other disappearances that plagued the town. His father hadn't run off or left them. There had been no fight, no argument. He had simply... gone. One morning, Elias woke up to find the house empty, the barn silent. His father's truck was gone, his tools left in the yard, half-finished work abandoned in the fields. The only clue was a single, tattered piece of cloth, hanging from a tree near the edge of the woods.
No one in the town had heard from him. No one knew where he had gone. The search parties had combed the woods, the rivers, the surrounding farmland, but they found nothing. No sign of struggle. No body. Just the cloth, fluttering in the wind like a forgotten memory.
Elias had been just a child, too young to understand what had happened. But he never forgot the feeling that something dark had taken his father. Something that had been waiting in the woods, something that had always been there, just out of sight, just beyond the edge of the fields.
The truth had always been a secret.
In the years that followed, Elias tried to make sense of it. He poured over his father's journals, scraps of paper that his father had left behind, hidden in the attic. They were filled with strange symbols, cryptic writings, and references to something called the Greywood. There was talk of deals made with the land, sacrifices to ensure a good harvest, to protect the farm, to keep the animals healthy. But the further Elias read, the more twisted the writings became. There were mentions of an old pact, a dark promise that had been made between his father and something beneath the earth.
His father had been a farmer, yes—but he had also been a caretaker, and the land he had tended wasn't just soil and stone. It was alive.
Elias had never understood what that meant. As a child, he had simply accepted it as another strange thing his father believed. But now, in the wake of his own descent into the depths of the Greywood, Elias could no longer ignore the signs.
The symbols. The whispers. The feeling of something tugging at the edges of his mind. All of it was connected. His father's disappearance, the strange happenings around the farm, and the tunnel that had swallowed him whole—everything was part of a larger design. And that design was tied to the land itself.
As he walked through the woods now, Elias could almost feel it—the weight of the past pressing down on him, urging him forward, guiding his steps. The trees seemed to lean in closer, their twisted branches like fingers reaching out to touch him. The wind had a different smell now, one that was thick with decay, with something ancient and forgotten.
He paused in the clearing, just beyond the edge of the farm. The place where his father had disappeared.
It was here, he realized, that everything had started. Here, where the woods had first begun to grow strange, where the shadows had begun to move on their own. The soil was rich here, dark and thick, but there was something wrong with it. It didn't feel like the earth he knew—it felt... hungry.
He bent down, running his fingers through the dirt. It was cool to the touch, but there was a vibration to it, a pulse beneath the surface. As if the ground itself was breathing.
His heart raced.
And then he heard it. A low hum, a distant sound that seemed to come from deep within the earth. It was the same hum he had felt beneath the cabin, beneath the trapdoor. The same hum that had pulled him into the darkness.
He stood up, his breath shallow, his hands trembling. He was no longer alone.
The forest had seen him.
Suddenly, the ground began to tremble, and the trees around him seemed to shudder in response. The air grew heavy with the scent of rot. Something was rising beneath the soil. Something old. Something that had waited long enough.
The hum grew louder. And then he saw it.
A figure, emerging from the ground.
It was his father.
But not his father, not as he remembered him. The man standing before him was gaunt, his skin pallid and stretched tight over his bones. His eyes were hollow, empty sockets filled with writhing shadows. His clothes were torn, ragged, and covered in soil and blood.
And his face... his face was wrong.
It was twisted, stretched, like something had tried to pull his features from him. His mouth was a gaping maw, filled with too many teeth, jagged and sharp, like they were made for something else.
Elias stepped back, his breath catching in his throat.
"Father?" he whispered, his voice trembling.
The figure didn't speak. It just stared at him, its eyes filled with a hunger that Elias knew all too well.
The forest was calling.
Elias turned and ran. He didn't know where he was going, but he couldn't stop. The woods were alive, the trees pressing in on him, the earth beneath his feet shifting and writhing as if it had a life of its own.
And all the while, he could hear his father's voice.
"Come back to us, Elias," it whispered, from somewhere deep within the roots. "Come back to the soil. To the Greywood."
He didn't stop running. The forest, the voice, his father—it was all too much. His mind was unraveling, his thoughts fragmented, caught between the fear of what he had seen and the compulsion to understand it.
And then he heard it.
The sound of hooves.
Heavy and deliberate, like the thundering of a distant storm.
Elias spun around, his heart pounding in his chest.
From the trees, it emerged.
A creature, half man, half beast, standing at least ten feet tall. Its body was covered in a patchwork of moss and bark, its face obscured by a mask of roots and skulls. It moved with unnatural speed, its eyes glowing with a sickly yellow light.
Elias froze.
And then, just as suddenly, it was gone.
The hum in the ground faded.
The woods fell silent.
And Elias was left standing there, alone again, with the weight of the past and the dark future that awaited him.
His father's voice still echoed in his mind.
And he knew—he knew—that the Greywood was calling him back.