She picked up her pace, stunned by the strange encounter, her breath shallow and uneven. The forest felt different now — charged, watchful. She stumbled upon a large, flat stone nestled at the base of an ancient tree. Its surface was smooth. Waiting.
She flopped down, soaked and trembling, the key still warm in her hand. Her fingers curled around it like a lifeline. Just in case, she thought. Just in case she disappeared.
She pressed the key’s edge to the stone slab under her, meaning only to scratch a message — something simple. A name. A plea. A sign that she was here.
The lines came slowly at first, hesitant. Then faster.
Not words. Not symbols.
A curve. A wing. A spiral.
She blinked. The shape was forming beneath her hand, as if the key remembered something she didn’t.
A dragon. Contoured and coiled.
Not fierce. Not wild. But watchful.
It looked like Lizzy, but then it didn’t. The image was something much older. Elliot stared at the final etch.
The forest was too quiet now. Not reverent — expectant. She felt it watching, waiting, and something deep in her chest told her she’d gone far enough for one day.
She laid the key on the rock for just a moment while she scrambled to her feet. It pulsed once more, softer this time, like a heartbeat fading into sleep, but she didn’t notice. She brushed dirt from her jeans with trembling hands. Whatever she’d done — whatever she’d touched — it was time to go.
She put the key in her pocket and as she slipped beneath the canopy of tangled branches, another shift pulsed around her. The air cooled. The leaves rustled. And the forest, ancient and watchful, inhaled — then exhaled again in the form of a light breeze, a soft sigh of awareness that brushed against her cheek.
The forest shuddered when an unseen flicker rippled through it, charged with a power not meant for daylight.