Chapter 2 – The Forest Remembers

The dreams always began the same way.

Running.

Through trees too dense, too dark. Branches clawed at his arms like fingers. The forest breathed around him—alive, watchful, ancient. And always, in the distance, a howl. Long and low. Familiar.

It called to something inside him. Something buried.

---

Calen woke with a jolt.

His breath hitched as he sat upright in his childhood bed, sweat clinging to his skin, his shirt twisted around him. The room was dark—unfamiliar in its familiarity. Moonlight filtered through the blinds, striping his wall in pale silver.

The sheets smelled like dust, old pine, and something else. Him.

But not just him as he remembered.

His senses were sharp. Too sharp.

The creak of floorboards two rooms away.

The rustle of wind against leaves outside.

The hum of the refrigerator downstairs.

It was all too loud.

---

He stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the light.

The mirror greeted him with the same reflection he’d grown to avoid—same pale skin, messy black hair, and dark circles under his eyes. But now there was something else.

A golden sheen.

Faint. Flickering. Gone as soon as he leaned closer.

“Lack of sleep,” he muttered, trying to convince himself.

The mirror didn’t answer. But the woods outside his window did.

A faint rustle. A shadow in the trees. A glint of silver.

He gripped the sink.

No. Just nerves. Just memory.

---

He didn’t tell his aunt he was back. She hadn’t written in months anyway.

The house still smelled like her—lavender, coffee, cigarettes—but it was clear she hadn't lived here in weeks. Maybe longer.

He made himself coffee and stared out the window, toward the tree line behind the backyard. Ashfern Forest. The same place he’d disappeared into. The place that never gave him back completely.

It stared back.

---

By noon, Calen couldn’t take it anymore.

The house was too quiet. His skin itched. His legs kept twitching like he had to go. Like something in his blood needed to be moving.

So he went outside.

The path behind the house was overgrown now, branches drooping, weeds tangled around old stones. Still, his body remembered how to move through it. His feet found the trail instinctively.

---

He didn’t realize how far he'd gone until the trees thickened and the light dimmed.

Ashfern was alive with whispers—wind, leaves, things unseen. But it wasn’t scary. Not to him.

It felt like coming home.

He closed his eyes and breathed.

That’s when he heard it.

A snap of a branch. Deliberate. Close.

He opened his eyes slowly.

Rowan Vale stood a few feet away, half-shadowed under a pine bough. His arms were crossed, again. His expression unreadable.

“You’re following me now?” Calen asked.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Rowan replied.

“I wasn’t aware you had jurisdiction over the trees.”

“You’re triggering the border. The others can feel you.”

Calen tilted his head. “Feel me?”

Rowan stepped forward. Slowly. Carefully. Like Calen was something that might bolt.

“You don’t smell like you did before,” he said quietly. “You don’t smell like one of us. But you don’t smell like a rogue either.”

“Thanks?” Calen said, heart hammering in his chest.

Rowan didn’t smile.

“The forest recognizes you,” he added. “That’s... dangerous.”

“Then why are you here?” Calen asked.

A beat passed.

“I wanted to see if you were real.”

Calen froze.

Rowan looked away first, jaw clenched.

“You think I’m some ghost?”

“No,” Rowan said. “I know you’re not. That’s what scares me.”

Another silence stretched between them—so thick Calen could hear both their breathing. His pulse. Rowan’s.

Their eyes met, and it was like the air between them cracked.

Then Rowan turned abruptly. “You need to leave these woods. Before someone else finds you.”

“Someone like who?” Calen called after him.

Rowan paused. Just for a second.

“The ones who remember the truth.”

Then he was gone again, like mist between trees.

---

Calen stood alone in the forest, blood buzzing in his veins.

He didn’t know what was more terrifying: the idea that someone was hunting him...

Or the deep, animal part of him that wanted them to come.

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