Ian felt it before he saw it, a jolt that shot through his entire body like a static charge ripping up his spine. A dizzying surge of energy, hot and cold all at once, like being dropped underwater while simultaneously falling through air.
His stomach twisted. Hard.
He doubled over, a sharp nausea rising in his throat. The world around him spun. The ground didn't feel right. The air didn't feel right. He blinked.
Everything steadied just enough for him to look back, expecting to see Tessa right behind him, probably freaking out, probably yelling at him for touching a weird tree in the middle of nowhere. But she wasn't there. There was no one.
The space behind him where the trail had been, where she had stood was just forest. Not the one he'd just been walking through. This one was denser. Wilder. Older somehow, but younger at the same time. Like it hadn't been touched in centuries… or had only just started growing.
"What the hell…?" he whispered, his voice hoarse.
He spun around.
The Yew tree was still there. Still rooted in the same spot. But it was different. Smaller. Not small, but… less. The gnarled trunk that had looked ancient and hollow before now stood solid and thick, the bark dark and tight, without the rot or age lines.
He backed up, eyes scanning the trees, the canopy, the path, or what should've been the path. No markers. No trail signs. No disturbed ground. No Tessa....Nothing!
He shouted before he realized he was going to.
"Tessa!"
His voice rang out and bounced back, swallowed by the trees.
No answer.
He turned in a slow circle, his chest tightening. "Tessa!" he tried again, louder this time, desperate.
Still nothing. Just birds. Leaves shifting in a breeze that didn't feel familiar.
This wasn't right, he could feel it.
He was alone.
Ian felt real fear...for the first time in a long while. Not the creeping kind that came from a bad dream. This was sharp, immediate. His brain screamed something is wrong in a thousand ways at once.
He started walking fast.
Scanning the ground for footprints. Calling her name over and over again. His voice cracked the quiet like broken glass.
Still no sign of her. No answer, no trail. Just him.
Ian yanked the phone out of his jacket pocket with shaky hands, the panic clawing up his throat like fire. The screen came on .... full battery, no service. Not even a single bar.
No signal icon. No reception. Just dead silence where his lifeline should've been.
"Come on, come on," he muttered, holding it up like a signal might magically appear if he just pointed it at the right patch of sky.
He tried opening the messages app. Nothing loaded. Tried Tessa's number. The call failed before it even tried to ring.
"Shit."
His grip tightened on the phone. He took a few quick, shallow breaths, eyes darting around. This was wrong, all of it.
She wasn't here. And now his phone, in a world where you could get signal on a plane, was suddenly a brick.
Then hestarted walking fast again...tracing his steps, or what he thought were his steps. The terrain was familiar but different, like someone had copied the layout from memory but hadn't gotten the details quite right. Some trees looked close enough to recognize. Others didn't belong at all.
He needed to find the trail. Get to the city. Find someone. He needed a search party to find Tessa.
His pace quickened the moment he saw light breaking through the trees ahead. His heart thudded faster.
He broke through the tree line....And stopped dead in his tracks. It wasn't the city, it wasn't even a road. Just more forest.
A wide, endless sprawl of trees stretching out in all directions, blanketing the hills with no sign of buildings, fences, cars, nothing. It was supposed to be here. The city. The road.
But there was only silence.Only trees.
"What the fuck…" he whispered, the words dropping into the air like stones.
He turned in place, eyes wide, chest heaving. It wasn't possible. The city couldn't just… be gone.
But it was....and he was completely, utterly alone.
Ian's thoughts spun, clashing into each other like cars in a pileup.
This wasn't happening. Couldn't be.
The city was supposed to be here. Buildings. Traffic. Sidewalks. Noise. Something.
But all he saw was trees. Miles of them. Thick, endless, stretching beyond the rise ahead and rolling down into another valley like a green ocean with no shore.
He staggered back a few steps and dropped onto a fallen log, breathing hard, sweat cold on his neck. His chest rose and fell quick, too quick. He pulled the rifle from over his shoulder and laid it across his knees, gripping it like it might suddenly give him answers.
It didn't.
The metal was cold in his hands. Real. Solid. Unlike everything else around him.
He muttered something, he didn't even know what. Maybe a curse. Maybe a prayer. His voice felt too loud out here. Too alone.
With a tense breath, he popped open the side pouch on his backpack and grabbed a small box of rounds. His hands weren't steady, but they worked. Muscle memory.
One by one, he loaded the bullets into the rifle. Click. Click. Click.
He wasn't thinking about hunting anymore. This wasn't about stags or rabbits or whatever. This was survival. Simple a
s that.
He chambered a round, then sat still, listening. Holding the rifle a little tighter.