By the time the real light dawn touched the edge of the forest,the trees had already begun to murmur.At first,it was only a faint rustle,like the sound of old clock dragging against stone.But then came a low,wordless voice that seemed to rise from the roots themselves,curling around her thoughts like a forgotten lullaby.
The deeper she walked into the Elder Wood,the clearer the voice became—a voice that did not belong to any human tongue.It did not speak in sentences,not exactly.It spoke in images:the memory of a girl running toward the trees,the flash a silver bracelet slipping from a wrist,the shape of a door carved into an ancient trunk.Each picture pressed against her mind,gentle but insistent,as if the forest were trying to remember something through her.
She stopped at a clearing where the trees parted like bowing elders and a single stone altar stood,cracked and covered in moss. The air above it shimmered,not with heat,but with something colderand older.From the edge of the clearing,a pair of glowing eyes a appeared between the trunks,set in a face that was neither wolf not man.The creature watched her, silent ,it's breath turning to a mist in the thin morning light.
The voice in the trees grew louder then,shaping itself into three unspoken words that pressed into her heart: You are needed.
she did not understand what that meant,not yet.But for the first time that night,she didnot feel afraid.She felt pulled—drawn towards the altar,towards the shodowed eyes,towards what ever secret the Elder Wood had kept waiting for her.