The forest quieted.Lena stood alone in the clearing.
Where Evan had stood, the new Green Man turned toward her.
There was no rush of violence. No lunge.
Only stillness.
Recognition.
For a fleeting moment, within the hollows of his wooden face, she saw Evan’s eyes.
And then the roots shifted.
The ground opened.
Not to seize her — but to present something.
A small spiral seed.
Dark.
Warm.
The forest had not taken her.
It had marked her.
The Green Man stepped back into the trees. His movements were smoother now, less monstrous, more inevitable — like wind bending branches.
Within moments, he was indistinguishable from the forest.
Lena fell to her knees, clutching the seed.
In the distance, she heard hikers laughing along a trail.
The forest felt calm.
Balanced.
For now.
But beneath the soil, roots shifted toward the path.
And in her palm, the spiral twitched.
Waiting.
Epilogue: What Still Grows
Years later, long after Alderbridge vanished from maps and memory alike, people began to talk about a forest that should not exist.
It appeared gradually, the way all dangerous things do. A patch of unusually dense green along a forgotten highway. A stretch of trees that seemed too old, too thick, for land that had once been logged bare. Satellite images showed only shadow and canopy, a dark smear that confused surveyors. When questioned, officials blamed outdated data, seasonal growth, or equipment error. No one wanted to admit the truth: the forest was expanding.
Hikers who entered it described the same sensations. The air felt warm and damp, heavy with the scent of soil after rain. Sound behaved strangely there; footsteps seemed muffled, voices swallowed. Compasses spun uselessly. Phones lost signal within minutes, their screens flickering before going black. Most unsettling of all was the feeling of recognition, as if the forest knew them.
Some claimed to see figures among the trees. Not moving, not threatening—just watching. Tall shapes half-fused with bark, faces softened by moss, eyes dark and calm. When approached, they did not flee. They simply smiled, wide and patient, as though waiting for something inevitable.
Few stayed long. Those who did returned changed.
They spoke less. They spent hours outside, standing barefoot in gardens or parks regardless of the weather. Their homes filled with plants that thrived without care, vines curling along walls and ceilings. Doctors found nothing wrong with them, though blood tests sometimes showed odd traces of chlorophyll-like compounds, dismissed as if meaning nothing, somehow eternal.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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