The forest did not sleep. Not when prey bled fear like these kids did.
They moved single file, torches burning low and flickering out one by one, leaving only four good flames between thirteen shivering bodies. The counselor's weight sagged between Rafi and the braid girl, each step dragging more than the last. He muttered nonsense now, his mind drifting back into the dirt even as his heart clung on, stubborn as an old stump refusing to rot away.
They stumbled through underbrush so thick it bit their ankles and snapped back like barbed wire. Branches clawed their cheeks, mist coiled around their necks like wet rope. Somewhere behind them, something cracked through the undergrowth — never running, just pacing, patient.
A boy fell. Nobody noticed until the braid girl hissed a curse, dropped the counselor, and sprinted back into the dark. Rafi turned, torch sweeping side to side. In that orange blur he caught a glimpse: small shape on its knees, a taller shape bending over him, arms like roots coiling around his shoulders.
Rafi bellowed. He plunged into the dark, swung his burning stick with a snarl in his throat. The thing flinched — not screaming, just melting backward into a wall of fog. The boy gasped, eyes wide, tears streaking a muddy face. He'd tripped on a root. He'd heard his mother laughing. He'd answered.
Rafi dragged him up by the collar and shoved him back toward the stumbling line of kids. One more torch guttered out behind them, leaving only three sputtering flames. The mist thickened, tasting the gaps between them.
The braid girl spat blood — she'd bitten her tongue when she fell beside the counselor. She grabbed Rafi's wrist, squeezed hard enough to make him feel it through the numbness setting in his fingers.
They pressed on. No talk. No tears. Only breath and branches snapping under feet that barely remembered how to run.
A pale ribbon appeared ahead: the ranger's road, cracked and half-eaten by moss but solid enough to promise open sky beyond the trees. The kids near the front saw it and broke into a hopeless ragged sprint, dropping branches and packs just to reach it.
Behind them, the forest hissed. A wave of black shapes slipped forward — not animals, not wind, but the forest's hunger given shape and bone. It lunged for the weakest, claws of mist hooking sleeves and hair.
Rafi turned, torch high, bellowed at the braid girl to drag the counselor ahead. She hesitated — just one heartbeat too long — before obeying.
He swung the fire like a blade, driving the creeping shadows back. Each time he struck, the flame guttered lower. The smoke burned his eyes raw.
Then the boy he'd saved earlier slipped beside him, grabbing a half-burned branch. Too small, too thin to fight — but he swung anyway.
Two more kids turned back too, forming a tiny line in the dirt and dead leaves. They made no plan, no war cry. They just swung and shoved and screamed the way kids do when they want so badly to be older than the dark wants them to be.
And in that chaos, the braid girl reached the cracked road. She dropped the counselor to his knees on the gravel. Her voice split from shouting the rest forward — run, run, run, don't stop, don't look.
Rafi shoved the last boy ahead, torch hissing its final breath as the shadows lunged one last time. Something cold and wet slammed into his chest. He felt bark, teeth, the taste of grave mold. He spat a curse at it. He didn't fall.
Hands grabbed his arm — the braid girl, cursing him, dragging him onto the road. The thing snapped at his heels, then recoiled as moonlight broke through the choking mist.
Behind them, the forest closed its throat around the path they'd fled — hissing, whispering, promising it would wait. It always waited.
On the crumbling road, the kids huddled in the weak glow of dawn's first bruise on the horizon. The counselor lay on his side, not moving but not yet gone.
Rafi looked at the braid girl. She looked back. Neither smiled. There was no triumph here — only breath and bruises and a promise that roots could not drag them down today.
They didn't know who would find them first — a rescue patrol or the forest come creeping back. But dawn cracked the sky anyway, spilling pale light on dirty cheeks and bleeding knuckles.
And for the first time in days, the shadows flinched away from their skin instead of sinking deeper in.