Moon felt so of the tension leave his own body as he could tell Selene had chosen to believe him.
"Good. Because we need to work together if we’re going to figure out what this place is doing to us."
"Agreed." Selene turned to look around them, her expression hardening with focus. "So if it’s not an illusion, what is it?"
Moon stared into the oppressive darkness between the twisted pines, his mind churning through possibilities and discarding them just as quickly. Spatial manipulation. Perceptual distortion. mory alteration. None of the theories fit, and without more data, he was just guessing.
And guessing had never sat well with him.
But there was sothing else bothering him now. Sothing that had been nagging at the back of his mind since they’d started their investigation of the mysterious forest.
They’d been walking for over an hour. Testing. Observing. Moving deeper into the forest’s territory.
And they hadn’t encountered a single beast.
Not one.
Every other part of Lunaris Island teed with dangerous creatures.
But here, in the place that had killed nearly every previous expedition, there was nothing but silence and twisted trees.
That absence wasn’t natural.
Whatever ruled this forest was watching them. Playing with them. Leading them in circles while they tried to understand the rules of a ga they didn’t even know they were playing.
Moon’s hand tightened on his staff.
"You know what?" he said, his voice carrying an edge that made Selene glance at him sharply. "We are going to change plans, I’m tired of this."
"What do you an?"
"We’ve been creeping around, trying to be careful, trying to understand what we’re dealing with."
Moon’s eyes swept across the darkness.
"But whatever is doing this—whatever is hiding in this forest—it clearly already knows we’re here. It’s been toying with us since we entered."
Selene’s expression changed dramatically at his words. "You want to draw it out."
"Exactly." A cold smile crossed Moon’s face.
"Let’s stop being prey and start being hunters. Whatever is hiding in this darkness, let’s give it a reason to show itself."
Selene stared at him for a mont, then a matching grin spread across her face. "Make so noise?"
"Make a lot of noise." Moon’s mana began to circulate in his body, responding to his will.
"Let’s burn away the shadows and see what’s been watching us."
Their auras flared simultaneously as they activated their skills.
Two spheres of fla began to form at an alarming rate
Moon’s [Ignite] expanded rapidly, growing from a fist-sized ember to a massive fireball five ters in diater.
The heat radiating from it was intense enough to make the air around him distorted like heatwave in a desert. Beside him, Selene’s own fireball reached three ters, smaller in size and weaker in strength, but still powerful regardless.
The darkness retreated from the blazing light, pushed back by the sheer intensity of their conjured flas.
For the first ti since entering the Rotten Pine Forest, they could see more than a few ters before them—the twisted trunks illuminated in stark orange and red, the diseased bark rendered in sharp detail, the oppressive shadows burned away by firelight.
And for the first ti, the leaves on the trees began to rustle restlessly.
"Ready?" Selene called out, her voice carrying over the crackling of the flas.
Moon’s eyes fixed on a cluster of trees thirty ters ahead.
"Three... Two... One... GO!"
Selene’s fireball launched first, a cot of destruction hurtling toward the twisted pines. Moon’s followed half a heartbeat later, twice the size, carrying enough force to reduce entire trees to little trunks.
The fireballs streaked through the air, trailing sparks and heat, their impact points predetermined, the explosions inevitable—
And then the trees moved—
The gnarled trunks moved like phantoms, sliding away from the fireballs’ trajectories.
One mont they were directly in the path of destruction. The next, they had simply relocated— so five ters to the left, others ten ters to the right.
"What the hell?!"
Selene’s curse was drowned out by the explosion as her fireball detonated against empty ground, sending up a geyser of dirt and ash.
Unlike Selene’s fireball, Moon’s fireball managed to hit a group of trees, his attack too quick to dodge
and too powerful to survive.
The massive explosion tore a crater into the forest floor, sent burning debris of the trees flying in all directions.
And as the flas died down, as the echoes of the explosions faded back into the forest’s silence.
Moon and Selene stood looking in shock. Because they could see it now. See what had been invisible in the darkness.
Hundreds of trees.
Packed so densely around them that their original estimate of the forest’s layout had been laughably wrong.
Trees that should have been within touching distance. Trees that should have blocked their path entirely.
All of them now clearly visible in the fading light of their fire magic. Including the sa tree that Moon had
Carved an X mark on.
"There were hundreds of trees around us," Selene whispered, her voice hollow with disbelief.
"All this ti. And we didn’t know."
Moon’s mind raced, trying to process what he’d just witnessed.
The trees hadn’t just moved to avoid the fireballs.
They’d revealed themselves. Shown their true nature to the two of them.
"The forest isn’t sparse," Moon said slowly, his earlier aggression replaced by cold analytical focus.
"It was never sparse. We just... we couldn’t perceive that the trees were actually monsters...surrounding us from all directions without any sign of life. The spacing, the layout, everything we thought we saw—Now it makes sense. As we moved through the forest, the forest was moving with us, the trees moving positions to constantly keep us within it."
As if in response to his words, the darkness pressed back in.
The temporary illumination from their fire magic faded, and the forest’s unnatural shadows reclaid their territory.
Moon imdiately summoned another fireball, understanding exactly who was his
Enemy.
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