Blogtober 2025, Day 23: Enigma

 

Lucy's Path: Chapter Twenty-three

Mark slipped away after midnight, the map folded in his pocket and the amulet burning against his chest. The others slept by the dying campfire, their faces ghosted by ember light. He told himself it wasn’t betrayal—just necessity. Someone had to end this.

The forest welcomed him like it had been waiting. Every tree leaned inward, their branches knitting above to swallow the stars. He followed the spiral path until he reached the pale oak, its trunk faintly pulsing with a dim internal light.

He knelt, placed the amulet at its roots, and whispered, “Take me instead.”

For a moment, nothing. Then the wind died. The hum returned—low, vast, alive. It seeped into his ears until all other sound drained away. He opened his mouth to call out, but no voice came. The silence was complete, suffocating.

The woods moved around him—shifting shadows, figures half-seen and half-remembered. The boy from before. A girl with braids. The stone child’s carved eyes gleaming. They stared as if waiting for an answer he couldn’t give.

Mark clutched his throat, gasping silently. The forest had taken his voice—the price for acting alone.

When Sarah and Tyler found him at dawn, he sat against the oak, eyes blank and lips moving without sound. The amulet lay dull in the dirt, its light gone.

The forest, it seemed, had solved one more enigma: how to make a man listen.