Myles woke up suddenly. He didn’t know why exactly. He felt strange, like he hadn’t really rested. He slowly lifted his head from the pillow and looked at his phone. He hadn’t touched it, but the screen lit up by itself. A message appeared. No name, no number. Just this: “we’re waiting…”

He blinked a few times. He felt like he had a dream, but couldn’t remember much.

At school, he spotted Lexi sitting alone on a bench in the back corner of the yard. She looked like she hadn’t slept either. He sat next to her, quietly.

“Didn’t sleep either?” he asked after a moment.

Lexi nodded.

“I had a dream… or maybe it was more than that. It was the forest. It was crying. And there was this girl… screaming from inside it.”

Myles felt a lump in his throat. He didn’t know what to say.

Just then, Nico and Sath showed up. Nico, being Nico, got straight to the point:

“Okay. Something weird is definitely going on. I say we skip school tomorrow and go there. To the forest. Figure it out.”

Myles raised an eyebrow. He clearly wasn’t thrilled by the idea.

Sath smiled, in that way that felt a little too calm.

“Yeah. We should go.”

Later, during lunch, they all sat in the far corner of the cafeteria. Lexi was sketching something in her notebook, and Sath had started drawing out a map.

“We can get in from behind the sports field,” Sath said. “No one’ll see us.”

“And we’ll map everything,” Nico added. “Anything weird we see or hear — we write it down.”

“I don’t know if this is such a great idea…” Myles muttered. “What if we don’t come back?”

“Then at least we’ll know it wasn’t just in our heads,” Lexi said softly, kind of sad but calm.

The next morning, the four of them stood in front of the school. It was early. Cold. Quiet.

“Are we really doing this?” Lexi asked.

“Yeah,” Nico answered simply.

Myles adjusted the strap of his backpack and sighed.

“Hope we’re not just crazy.”

Sath smiled. That same mysterious smile.

“If we are… we’re all crazy together.”

And they started walking. Toward the forest.

Some paths, once you take them, don’t end the way you thought they would.