The forest we entered was not made of trees, but of columns—immense bone-white structures shaped like vertebrae fused into towers. They stretched far above, vanishing into clouds of ink. The ground beneath them pulsed, as though breathing.
Aleya whispered, "This isn't a forest. It's a spine."
We were walking on the back of something enormous. Something sleeping—or pretending to sleep.
Rae began murmuring her glyphs again, but even they faltered here. Her magic, once luminous, now flickered with rot. The shadows around her didn't follow natural laws anymore. They circled her ankles like hounds, impatient.
Jonah vanished first.
He was behind us one moment, sharpening his blade against his own bones. Then gone. No scream. No sound. Only a single silver feather left where he'd stood. Jonah didn't have wings.
We didn't speak of it.
We walked for hours, maybe days. Time bled strangely in the spine-forest. Sometimes the sky reversed. Once we watched the sun rise from the soil. And in the distance, always, a sound like teeth grinding stone.
Then we found the Feast Hall.
It was built into the side of one of the bone towers. Tall arches. Doors made of braided hair and cracked mirrors. Inside, candles burned with black flame, and a table stretched longer than reason. It was set for hundreds—no, thousands—of guests. Plates made of fossilized eyes. Knives still dripping.
But no one sat.
Elías's voice trembled. "Who set the table?"
Rae didn't answer. She touched one of the goblets. It screamed.
Then they came.
Not through doors, but through reflection. One by one, their shapes emerged from the mirror-plates and wine-stained cutlery. They were clothed in shredded banners. Their faces were stitched masks of royalty long dead. Their hands had too many joints, too many rings. They walked like dancers. Or spiders.
One approached me.
"You're late," it said.
"I wasn't invited," I replied.
It grinned with a mouth beneath its chin. "You carry the Scythe. That is invitation enough."
Aleya stepped forward, raising her blade. "What is this place?"
"A memory," said the masked being. "A banquet held before the end. You are guests now. You must eat."
We refused.
The beings didn't attack. Not with weapons. They sang.
The sound was hunger itself—like remembering starvation in the womb. My stomach clenched. My vision blurred. Aleya fell to her knees, vomiting black feathers. Rae bled from her nose, her ears.
I fought the music. I lifted the Scythe and swung it through the air.
It silenced them.
And from their masks, faces dropped out. Not theirs—ours. Versions of us. Laughing. Devouring. We saw ourselves, seated at that table, tearing into flesh we once loved. A thousand possible Elíases, all feasting.
That was the horror: we had eaten here. In other threads. Other timelines. Other Refuges.
The Scythe began to glow—not with power, but with shame.
We fled.
Outside, the forest had changed. The columns now bent toward us, like ribs closing in. The sky leaked a pale, viscous light. No stars. Just eyes.
We ran until we collapsed beside a lake of ash. There, at last, the world stilled.
Aleya lay beside me, muttering something in a forgotten tongue. Rae built a small fire from her own hair, burning with violet smoke.
I looked into the lake and saw myself.
But the reflection blinked first.
And it smiled.
---
Question for the Reader:
If you saw yourself devouring joy, love, or memory—would you keep eating, or would you let yourself starve?