Claris POV
The people in my village say the forest begins where the road ends, but I think the forest begins much earlier than that. It begins in the way the wind changes when you walk toward it, in the way the birds suddenly grow quiet, and in the strange feeling that something unseen is already watching you long before the first tree appears.
Everyone grows up hearing the same stories about the forest. Mothers whisper them to children to keep them from wandering too far, and old men repeat them by the fire as if the words themselves might keep the darkness away. They say a monster lives deep within the trees, something ancient and cruel that kills anyone foolish enough to step beyond the safe paths.
I never believed those stories the way the others did. Monsters always sounded too simple, too easy to blame for the things people don't understand. Still, even I couldn't deny the fear that settled into my chest whenever I looked at the dark line of trees stretching across the horizon like a wall the world had built to hide its worst secrets.
That morning the village felt restless, as if something invisible had disturbed its quiet rhythm. The air smelled like rain that had not yet fallen, and the clouds above hung low and heavy over the rooftops. I had gone farther from the village than usual while gathering herbs, following a narrow trail that twisted between hills and tall grass.
At first I didn't notice how close I had come to the forest.
It happened slowly, the way danger often does. The sunlight faded beneath the thick branches above me, the wind died away, and the cheerful sounds of the fields disappeared until the only thing I could hear was the quiet crunch of leaves beneath my boots.
When I finally looked up, the trees surrounded me.
They were taller than any I had ever seen, their trunks thick and twisted like ancient pillars, their branches tangled together so tightly that only thin pieces of grey light slipped through. The forest felt alive in a way that made my skin prickle, as if every shadow hid something that had just barely moved when I wasn't looking.
I told myself to turn back immediately, yet my feet didn't move.
There was a strange pull deeper within the trees, a quiet curiosity that felt stronger than fear, like the forest itself was whispering for me to come closer. I took another step forward before I could stop myself, and the moment my foot touched the dark earth beneath the trees, the entire forest seemed to fall into a deeper silence.
Then I heard it.
A branch snapped somewhere behind me.
The sound was soft, but in the stillness it felt impossibly loud, like a warning breaking through the quiet. My breath caught as I slowly turned my head toward the shadows between the trees, my heart beating so hard that I could feel it in my throat.
For a moment, there was nothing.
Then something moved.
Not like an animal, not like a person, but something larger, something wrong, a dark shape shifting between the trees with a slow, deliberate grace that made every instinct inside me scream to run.
And in that moment I understood something the stories had never needed to explain.
The monster in the forest was real.
And it had just found me.