Days pass. For a long time, our minds are robbed from us, and the world with it. We know only the shadows of the Wood — the bone-cold that creeps through our bodies, the mind-rot that maddens us. The devouring darkness swallows us, until we know not the difference between ourselves and the phantoms we flee. We are the Wood, and the Wood is within us.

Then… there is light. A thin, white light, blinking through leaves. At first we shudder to see it, thinking it another phantom. But when at last we stumble from the forest’s edge, it is into the glow of a warm, golden dawn. Sunlight dapples the landscape before us: a road, swelling with promise. We can scarcely believe our luck. We have walked the Wood and lived to tell the tale.

But even as we celebrate our good fortune, we perceive that not all have shared our happy fate. Our numbers have dwindled. The cost of our journey has been heavy; the Wood has claimed more than its fair share of victims. We do not linger to grieve. It is best to let the dead remain so. And yet as we set our boots to the road…

The breeze bears a sound behind us. It is the whistle of voices, high and strange — a parody of other voices, ones we heard once around a campfire. They call us by our names. Do not leave us, they beg. We are here. We did not die. For a moment, a dread descends upon us. But our hearts have been hardened by our trials. We will not be deceived.

One by one, we put our backs to the trees and walk on. Behind us, the voices grow fainter — and fainter — and fainter still. Then, like those who once walked beside us, they are gone.