It is immeasurably quiet, the kind of quiet that makes my ears hum. As I’m admiring the contrast of the vibrant leaves against the gloom on the ground, one of them blinks. Then another, and another, until I realize the source of the hum—or rather, the rustling. These leaves aren’t leaves; they’re eyes. Thousands of crows are perched in the branches above, creating a dark void of feathers to black out the sky, each bird only discernable from the next by its radiant, hateful eyes.
If I was frightened before my arrival, I am petrified now. Being alone in a strange, horrifying forest heightens every sense in my body to a level of alertness only known to those confronting the face of death.
“Sinisa,” the very air whispers, and I whip around searching for the source of the voice.
A pale, sickly man—little more than wrinkled, decaying skin on spindly legs—steps out from the shadows. His hands, tucked against his hollowed belly, are covered almost entirely by billowing red robes. The fabric drapes over his face, casting each crevice into shadow, falling all the way to the ground and pooling like blood at his feet.
This reminds me of something—the pooling of blood—but the memory comes and goes so quickly I can’t latch on to it. My mind is just as foggy as the land around me. I know I had a past before I arrived, but the harder I try to squint at it, to search for the memories that made me me, the less of it I can find.
“Welcome,” the man says in his hoarse rasp, though I barely see his lips move. It’s like the night itself speaks. “You know what is to come?”
I start to shake my head, but thoughts that aren’t mine invade me. They’re not tangible, and there are no words, but they soothe me with the sense that I do know, even if I shouldn’t. It’s not like I’ve ever been to Veltuur before.
“Yes, Councilspirit,” I say, feeling my apprehension dissipate, settling to the ground like the fog at my feet.
The longer we stand here, the more those emotions dwindle. All the dread, the guilt, the regret, gone, until all I feel is…nothing. I don’t even remember what had me so worried before. A calm settles over me, making me feel at peace. No, not at peace—that’s not the right word.
Blank. Erased.
More bodies of shadow and decay, adorned in crimson robes, step from behind the trees, until I am surrounded by a half dozen creatures. Though as a group they are reminiscent of the first—their velvet robes identical—individually they are vastly different. Some with spindly appendages, others covered in grotesque ripples of melted flesh. However the one thing they all have in common is an air of death. These are the husks of mankind, what is left of the people who found themselves in a position not too dissimilar from mine at one point in time.
This should scare me too, but for some reason it doesn’t. It’s like the oxygen here stifles fear, smothering my every thought and will. Who I was is suffocated until all that is left is who I am about to become, who they want me to be.
“Then go,” the first man says, a thin finger extending. “Walk among the trees and select your crow.”
A nearly mindless puppet, I do as I am instructed, and though I’m not sure how I will do what he’s asking, there is no doubt in my mind that I will do it with ease. It’s like there is a hand at the small of my back, like Veltuur itself is guiding me. Everything that needs to happen will.
I turn back around, facing the opening I’d first laid eyes on. This forest is expansive, forever growing, stretching farther than the eye can see, and yet, there is a patch that calls to me. Like it is mine and mine alone. Like I belong to it.
As I walk down the staggered openings between the foliage, shadows scurry along the forest floor with each step. I know their names, though I don’t know how. I’ve never seen a Wraith before, but the longer I am in Veltuur, the more I start to understand it, the more I become part of it.
The Wraiths move too fast to truly glimpse them, but I see the talons and enough to know they are the same misshapen monsters that… I can no longer recall. The harder I think, the foggier my memories become until everything up until this moment is one small blur, ready to blink out of existence.
But the man’s robes pooling on the ground like blood, that image remains. It’s the only one I can keep hold of, and so I do. I cling to it like it’s my only lifeline, my only sense of self, like it’s the story of my birth and therefore it’s the most important piece of my entire existence.
There is a particularly knotted tree, one whose bark bulges in patches as long as my hand, that summons me. I am careful not to trip over its roots, which creep out from the dirt much farther than I would expect, as I traverse the underbrush to get closer. It must be old, ancient even.
As I draw nearer, the ruffling of thousands of wings ceases until I hear only one bird. I take a deep breath, letting the scent of moss and slugs slide its way into my lungs, before looking up. One crow sits, glaring down at me with immortal eyes.
I hold out my arm.
Caw, it says, cocking its head away from me.
If I could feel anything in this place, I might’ve blushed when it didn’t come.
My pleading gaze travels back to the Councilspirits to see if I’ve completed the task. Perhaps all that was needed of me was to find a crow, and here I am having found one. But none
