NOVEL WEB Chapter 1: I Need A Sign
"Run!! Run!! Run!! Run...!"
The cries of the crows tore across the sky like fractured glass. Black feathers wheeled above Oliver's head as he bolted through the forest, chest heaving, skin slick with sweat and blood.
Their pale white eyes glinted like ancient beacons, never blinking—always watching.
His heart pounded louder than the unseen waves crashing somewhere beyond the trees.
Branches twisted violently as if gripped by invisible hands. The forest groaned. Trees bent at crooked angles.
Leaves fell—not in gentle spirals, but like razors hurled by a furious god, cutting across his arms, nicking his face. He didn't slow down.
"Hazel!" he shouted."Hazel! Where are you?"
Each time he called, the name grew fainter. As if the forest was swallowing it. Or mocking him.
The air was wrong. Too still, too thick. The sky above churned in pale shades of black, with clouds that moved like bruises over the moon.
Wind howled through the trees, but it wasn't natural—it was shrill, desperate. Like something old was waking up.
His legs buckled slightly, but he kept going. The pain in his toes told him some of them were likely broken. It didn't matter.
He had to find her.
He didn't know how long he'd been running—minutes? Hours? He was lost in time, in space. In memory.
Then—he saw it.
A hut.
Crooked. Ancient. Surrounded by a clearing that shouldn't exist.
It hunched there like something dead trying to stand upright. Its beams groaned, wood blackened and rotting with age, yet intact.
A roof slumped under the weight of time and moss—sickly gray-green, almost glowing. The single window gaped like a blind eye. Something moved behind it. Slowly. Watching.
The crows stopped.
Silence fell like a guillotine.
The leaves froze in midair, suspended like insects trapped in amber.
Then came the scent: metallic, rotting... sweet. Like blood and roses left to decay in a closed coffin.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He looked down.
The leaves were bleeding.
Red liquid rained from above, pooling around his boots. It wasn't water. It was too thick. Too dark.
The trees themselves seemed to recoil.
Oliver took a shaky breath and stepped forward.
The air thickened. His breath felt muffled, like the sound was being stolen. The hut wasn't just sitting there. It was feeding—on noise, on light, on sanity.
The frost climbed up his legs.
And then came the smell again. Worse now. Blood pennies. Rotting meat. And beneath that… a perfume. Violets. Hazel's favorite. But wrong. Decayed.
He gagged, stomach tightening. But his eyes remained fixed on the hut. His body trembled. His instincts screamed.
The shadows between the trees grew thicker—coalescing. Taking shape.
Watching.
But the crows didn't flee.
They bowed.
Feathers spread wide, wings slow, reverent. Like priests before an altar. Or mourners at a grave.
Something warm splashed against Oliver's forehead.
A laugh echoed through the air.
A baby's laugh.
High. Twisted. Glorious and grotesque all at once.
Oliver—a man not known for fear—stumbled back. His legs shook beneath him.
He caught a glimpse of movement inside the hut. A shadow shifting just behind the broken window.
He stepped closer.
The crying baby sound warped into words, the tone rising and falling like a lullaby drowning in static.
"Mmm... Mmm... Mmm..."
The hut responded.
Its door didn't creak open. It inhaled. A low, sickening suction noise dragged the wood inward, revealing darkness blacker than midnight. A void. A mouth.
And above the entrance hung something reflective. A round, shiny object.
With a handle.
No light touched the hut. So how was it glowing?
He squinted.
Is that... a frying pan? No. Not that.
It was a mirror.
Cracked. Rusted at the edges.
And it was reflecting his own eyes. Only—it wasn't. The reflection smiled back.
Then came the wind—soft, almost a caress. It brushed through his hair like fingers. The sensation took him back. To the cemetery. Noon sun. Dead quiet. A chill out of nowhere.
The voice came next.
"Oliver... is that you?"
Familiar. But not.
It sounded like Hazel. But hollow. Stretched, as if her voice were trying to fit into a too-small body.
His hand went to his side, fingers wrapping around the pocketknife. The blade was already slick with blood—from himself.
A recent wound.
He barely remembered how it happened. Just that it hurt. And that the pain grounded him.
He switched the knife to his left—the hand he fought with. Raised his right in a fist.
"Hazel!" he called.
No answer.
Just silence. And breath that wasn't his.
Then, the voice returned:
"Come. I'm inside."
The words felt... wrong. As if they wore her voice like a mask.
The crows took to the air again, circling in strange patterns above the roof. Not frantic. Coordinated. Ritualistic.
Oliver advanced, slow and silent. Like a knight in a sleeping dragon's cave.
His hand stretched toward the door. His thumb brushed across something carved into the wood—grooves that felt like claw marks.
No. Not just marks.
Letters.
Words.
He squinted.
"You were here before. You just forgot."
A chill gripped his spine. He blinked hard, reading it again. The bark around the words had warped as if resisting the truth they held.
Beneath the sentence, two initials carved in a slow, spiraled scrawl.
O.L.
His own.
He froze.
"I've never been here," he whispered.
But even as he said it, something inside him disagreed.
His vision swam.
His legs weakened.
Then he saw the date carved beneath his initials.
A date that meant nothing.
And everything.