The next morning, Caleb led the group out of the abandoned rest shelter with the diary clutched tight in his grip. The veil of mist had not lifted, and though the light had returned, it brought no warmth. The wind carried an unsettling hum, faint but persistent, as if something was singing through the trees in a language meant to unnerve.
They moved in a staggered line, the two groups now merged into one—twenty-three survivors by last count, including the child, Ivy, who was now walking hand-in-hand with Hana. Petra had started drawing faint trails on nearby bark with charcoal from last night's fire, guided by notes in the diary.
"They say we should avoid anything growing in perfect circles," she muttered. "Symmetry is a trap here."
Biran scoffed but didn't argue. The truth of the place was beginning to settle into even the most skeptical among them.
As they crossed through a gnarled thicket of trees, Caleb held up his hand. "Stop."
Everyone froze.
"What is it?" Carla asked, voice low.
He crouched and pointed toward the moss-covered ground ahead. It was slightly discolored, cracked in a vein-like pattern. Alya moved beside him and whispered, "That's not just moss. It's… skin?"
Dev took a step forward. "You think it's another one of those root creatures?"
"No," Caleb said. "I think it's something worse."
A shrill, drawn-out cry echoed through the woods behind them.
Everyone turned.
From the mists, a figure emerged—not running, but stumbling fast. A boy, thin and shivering, his eyes wide with terror. His arms were scraped raw, his clothes half torn.
"Help! Please—behind me!" he screamed, collapsing just as Dev and Biran sprinted to catch him.
Before anyone could ask more, the mist behind him parted again—unnaturally, like curtains yanked aside. Something was there.
Not a beast.
Not quite a person either.
It shimmered—faint ripples in the air forming a shape. The outline of a humanoid body. Where light hit it, reality bent, like heat waves on concrete.
"It's cloaked!" Carla barked, pulling her weapon free.
They backed away quickly as the boy screamed again. "It killed them—it used fire—it didn't need to see us—it just knew."
Caleb looked to the journal and scanned quickly. "Page seventeen—anything that distorts light—avoid. They sense thoughts."
As if hearing him, the creature turned.
And the world around it darkened.
Without touching anything, the air warped and burned—a heatwave rippling out like invisible fire. Bark withered. Leaves curled.
Petra screamed. "It's using power! Like—real power, not like the beasts!"
"Back!" Caleb shouted. "Regroup behind that ridge!"
They ran—not scattered, but focused. Dev and Carla took the rear, both throwing makeshift spears into the distortion's path. One was caught mid-air—hovered—and then snapped in half without a sound.
Alya scooped up the boy and followed behind, breath ragged.
As the group scrambled over the ridge and into a basin of rotted trees, Ivy stumbled. The distortion flared again, setting the underbrush alight with a flashless fire that didn't burn red—but green.
"Caleb!" Hana screamed.
He ran back and grabbed Ivy, pulling her free just as the tree behind her burst into crackling black flame.
They reached the other side of the ridge and dove into a narrow crevice between two roots the size of buildings. It offered no real shelter, but the creature paused.
Then vanished.
Gone.
The silence that followed was more deafening than any scream.
"What the hell was that?" Biran demanded.
"A predator," Carla said grimly, sweat dripping from her brow. "Not like the others. That thing had intelligence."
"Did you see how it moved?" Petra asked, eyes darting. "It didn't walk. It bent around space. Like the forest obeyed it."
"I saw it lift the spear with no hands," Dev added. "Telekinesis or something close. That's not a natural predator. That's something that hunts by sensing thoughts."
Caleb opened the journal again. The pages trembled slightly in his hands. Page seventeen held a crude sketch—blurry, but reminiscent of the thing they'd seen.
"'Faceless flame'," he read aloud. "Avoid. Unseen. Heat-walker. Power-user. Only approaches when you think of it."
The group fell silent.
"We were talking about it," Petra whispered. "Before it came."
The child, Ivy, looked up at Hana and said, "I was scared… I kept thinking something was coming… I didn't mean to."
Caleb knelt down beside her. "It's not your fault, Ivy. We've all thought of it."
"We have to move," Carla said. "We can't stay in one place too long. Especially not if thinking of it brings it closer."
"Not just move," Caleb said. "We use the diary. Not as scattered entries. As a manual. We plan based on it."
He looked at the others. "We set watches. Only think of safe paths. We control what we speak aloud. And we stop describing the things we see unless absolutely necessary."
"You want us to fight that thing?" Biran asked.
"No," Caleb said. "I want us to survive it. Just like whoever wrote this diary survived long enough to leave it behind."
The boy who had stumbled in—his name was Yusuf—sat up slowly, clutching a bruise on his side. "There were five of us. From another camp. We found an old ruin and tried to stay… but that thing was already there. It didn't eat them. It… burned them without touching them."
His voice broke.
"They didn't scream. They just… melted."
Hana hugged Ivy close. "We have to keep moving."
"And we need a plan," Dev added.
"Here," Alya said, kneeling beside a stream bed. "Looks clean."
Rahul crouched beside her, squinting at the shallow trickle of water. "How can you tell it's not like the last one? That one burned my tongue."
Alya flipped open the diary and held it beside the stream. "He says look for 'stream beds where moss grows with a silver sheen—no glow, no spores. No stench of iron or rot.' This matches."
Still, Rahul hesitated. He sniffed the water, then glanced at Caleb.
"We test it," Caleb said. "One of the safer insects. If it drinks and lives, we know."
Dev muttered, "We're boiling it anyway. Even if it's safe, we don't risk parasites."
Hana had already begun unpacking the cooking gear. Ivy helped her, keeping the little girl beside her with a gentle arm around her shoulders. The child—still silent, but no longer numb—watched the water with wide, cautious eyes.
"Is it good water?" she asked quietly.
"We'll find out, little one," Ivy said with a reassuring smile.
By midday, they had confirmed the stream was safe. A precious find.
But the joy of discovery quickly soured.
They found a plant—low to the ground, purple-spined leaves, plump berry clusters that looked almost like blackcurrants. The diary marked it with a "?"—and a note: Possible nutrition. Tasted. Vomiting. Not fatal, but don't trust it.
They tried it anyway.
It was Petra who doubled over first, vomiting hard behind a tree. Carla followed shortly after, and even Dev gagged despite taking only a small bite.
"We need protein," Carla growled later, rinsing her mouth out. "Not poison berries. Not twigs and moss."
"You think I don't know that?" Petra snapped, still pale, gripping her side. "We can't live on boiled roots and slim hope."
"Hey," Caleb said, voice firm but low. "Enough."
He looked to Alya. "Anything from the diary about traps?"
She nodded. "Yeah, actually. He used bait—diseased meat, left it near the dens or trails. He said the Veilwild beasts are drawn to rot and blood."
"So are flies," Petra muttered.
"We might be able to trap one of the smaller ones," Dev said, standing now, wiping his mouth. "Something with enough meat to feed us for days. But it'll mean risking a lure team."
They continued west, according to the old maps in the journal. The guide—whoever they were—had drawn coordinates, or perhaps migration patterns of the worst creatures.
They walked for hours.
By dusk, they had found a steep cliff overlooking a muddy gorge. At its edge, the forest began to thin out, replaced by crooked, half-dead trees and strange spirals of blackened earth.
Petra scanned the surroundings and pointed to a tree trunk scarred with the same symbols as those in the journal. "Another safe mark."
They camped beneath it.
For the first time in a while, Caleb felt a flicker of something close to hope.
They had fire. Shelter. A written guide. And each other.
But deep in the woods, somewhere beyond the cliff, something shimmered again—and the air around it bent just slightly.
It had heard something.
A memory. A thought. A whisper.
It was listening.
And it was still hunting.