Veilwild: The Returned

The survivors ran.

Not in a sprint—no one had the strength for that—but a stumbling, gasping flight through the moss-choked clearing and into the trees beyond. The moment they crossed into the forest, the air changed. It thickened. The mist clung to them, colder and denser than before, swallowing sound like wool.

Branches reached out like claws. Bioluminescent vines shimmered faintly beneath their feet, pulsing in odd rhythms. Leaves whispered above them, though no wind blew. Hana stayed close to Caleb, and Alya led the way with two others at her sides—Dreadlocks, whom some were calling "Dev," and a short, stocky woman with a military stance named Carla.

They didn't stop for ten minutes.

When they did, it was because the ground simply ended.

They stood at the edge of a deep basin—a sunken hollow in the earth at least fifty meters across. The air here was wet, humid, and reeked of decay. Mushrooms the size of dinner plates dotted the landscape. Thin stalks of red fungal growth swayed as if breathing. A few faint lights flickered beneath the caps, casting a faint amber glow across the bowl of rot.

No birds. No insects. Just that breathless silence and a smell like rotting meat.

Dev muttered, "We can't go back. That thing—whatever it was—it's in the clearing."

Caleb asked, "Can we go around?"

Carla shook her head. "North and east both curve into the basin. I checked. Mist gets thicker the further west. This is the narrowest point. And we're being followed."

Hana looked behind them, eyes wide. "Followed?"

Alya nodded grimly. "I've heard something keeping pace. It's not close—but it's there. Watching."

No one wanted to jump into the pit.

But the alternative was worse.

So they climbed down into the fungal basin, one by one, careful not to touch too much. The moss had vanished here, replaced by damp, spongy loam that oozed beneath their feet. The red fungal stalks swayed as they passed.

At the bottom, Caleb heard it: a faint wheezing. Then a sound like clicking—wet and rhythmic, as if something was breathing through a broken reed.

The group paused.

Then Dev called out sharply, "MOVE!"

Something shifted in the fungus. The stalks trembled.

A sudden shape rose from beneath the loam—man-sized, cloaked in rot, with limbs like twisted roots and a skull made of bark and bone fused together. No eyes. Just a slit where a mouth should be, gaping, gasping. The thing let out a sound like steam escaping a kettle.

People screamed.

Carla swung a branch like a club, knocking one of the stalks aside. "Go! Run! Up the far side!"

Caleb grabbed Hana's hand and pulled. Mud sucked at their feet, and the spongy ground refused to give easily. Another creature emerged, twitching, dragging a strange limb behind it. It moved like a puppet with its strings half-cut—jerky and unnatural.

Then a cry behind them.

Someone had fallen—an older woman, her leg caught in a root. Caleb turned to help, but Dev was already there, yanking her free and tossing her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing.

The group clambered up the other side of the basin and into the trees again, panting and covered in dirt and spores.

Carla was the last up. She turned back, hurled a rock down into the basin, and then followed.

The forest on the far side was… different.

Cooler. Drier. The mist had thinned slightly, but the trees here were taller and leaned inward. Their bark had scars—slashes, as if something had once clawed at them in passing. The light filtering through the canopy was greenish-blue.

They huddled beneath one of the larger trees.

No one spoke for several minutes.

Then someone—an Indian man named Rahul—began to laugh. It was soft at first. Then louder. Unhinged.

"I get it now," he said, breathless. "It's like a game. Some twisted test. Like we're rats in a maze."

Hana shivered. "If it is, who's watching?"

Dev looked up. "Something is. I've seen signs. Look at the trees."

Caleb followed his gaze. Dozens of thin, bone-white marks scarred the bark, like tally marks. Some were high—impossibly high, near the upper boughs. And some… some were still fresh.

Carla wiped her brow. "We need shelter. Night might be worse."

Someone whispered, "It gets worse?"

They didn't respond.

Instead, they set off again, slower this time. The ground here was more solid, and the strange glowing moss returned in patches. They passed shattered rocks marked with carvings no one could read. Once, they found a rusted piece of metal embedded in a tree—twisted like it had melted into the wood. Another time, they stumbled across bones. Human.

Caleb knelt beside one pile. The skull was cracked. The teeth were still there, some golden. Around it, mold grew in a perfect circle.

"They died a while ago," he murmured.

Alya frowned. "Then we're not the first."

"They didn't get far," Carla muttered.

As the sun—or what passed for it—began to dim, they came across a structure.

It was small. Wooden. A single-room shelter built from logs and lashed vines. Half-collapsed. But it had walls. A roof. A door.

The group approached slowly.

Inside, they found old gear: rusted cans, a broken compass, the remains of a makeshift bed, and—most disturbingly—a journal.

Caleb picked it up. The cover was rotted but intact.

The first entry was smeared, but readable:

"Day 3. Only five of us now. Something in the mist. We saw it again last night—tall, silent. Watching."

The next few entries devolved into panic and drawings—scribbled sketches of the same thing: a creature without a face, limbs too long, standing just outside the structure. One entry had only a single phrase written over and over:

"Don't sleep near the roots. Don't sleep near the roots. Don't—"

The last page was stained with something dark.

Caleb lowered the journal and turned to the others. "We're not alone. We never were."

A cold wind whispered through the trees, though none of them felt it.

That night, they took turns on watch.

Alya volunteered first. Caleb joined her.

They sat near the door, listening.

After a long silence, she asked, "What did you see? Before you woke up here?"

He hesitated.

"My apartment. Lights flickered. Then the air buzzed. Like… like every atom in my body was being unraveled. Then blackness."

She nodded. "Same for me. But I smelled burning leaves. Then screaming. It wasn't mine."

They both turned when they heard a sound—something dragging in the distance. Not near. But not far enough.

The forest breathed around them.

And somewhere, just beyond the edge of their firelight, something watched.