Morning did not come in the forest. Sunrises and sunsets were things from the regular world that did not apply here.
Dawn and dusk were only suggested by a thinning of mist and and a lightening of shadows. Time passage here was more of an option than a fundamental quality.
Pluto hadn't slept much. Dark thoughts that hammered at the back head jarred him anytime he felt sleep's embrace.
The girl sat across from him on a root that rose like the spine of a buried creature. She curled herself into a ball, knees pulled close to her chest and arms wrapped around them. Her eyes remained alert despite obvious exhaustion.
The patch of ground they laid on was like a sore thumb among the rest, and not in a bad way. The forces of the forest that made terrain hazardous seemed to sip in less.
For a while, neither of them uttered anything. Pluto watched the forest, oblivious that her gaze was on him.
" You don't say much". She broke the silence, but not in an appropriate way. Her voice low enough to be categorised as shy.
He kept staring into the flowing mist. " Nothing useful to say at the moment". She huffed laughingly. Faint, but still.
" I'm Miranda by the way, Mira for short".
"Eighteen". she added after some thought .
He gave a polite nod, a gesture to show he acknowledged it. "Pluto."
"That's your real name?"
He frowned calmly. " Yes, it is."
She studied him again, trying to weigh his words on some scale that was too fake to give results. He didn't elaborate, so it was even harder.
Silence returned, but lighter now.
After a few minutes, she spoke again. " You felt it too, right?".
He glanced at her, silently demanding clarification.
"The week" she said. " Before this". His gaze met hers for a second longer, then he returned back to the mist.
"Yeah."
Her shoulder dropped slightly with relief. " That's good...". Confusion crept up his face. " I thought I was losing my mind".
She shifted, revere brimming in her eyes. She remembered something cold.
"At first it was just a newsfeed, and couple of rumours too. Then the air, it started buzzing. Lights flickering, humming sounds coming from the basement.
My mom said the wiring was old." She gave a small, humourless smile. "Then more people started disappearing, enough to make national headlines. Still, I didn't feel scared then."
"Why not?" Pluto asked, reminiscing of his own experience.
"Well, I could think of a thousand reasons why what was happening was happening, so it didn't bother much. Not until the shadows acted up."
He understood that.
" They seemed to grow more creepy as the days went by. Just a little out of sync. I'd turn and nothing would be there."
He didn't respond immediately.
"Same." In truth there was some differences, but the baseline remained the same.
"And the temperature changed " he said, finally speaking without prompt.
"Yes. Exactly. Like before a storm. But just without the clouds ".
He flexed his arm subconsciously. The eel shifted a bit beneath his sleeve, just enough for him to notice, and for her not to see.
They sat in that shared recognition for a moment. Perceptually, they had been prepared for this very moment, and for much more to come.
The forest settled around them, wood faintly creaking.
Mira lowered her voice a notch down. "When it happened... when I got pulled here, it wasn't sudden. It just enveloped me. Like an hour glass running out."
Pluto didn't answer, but the comparison was too similar to be coincidence. He remembered the weight in his chest. The walls that held their breaths. The electric threads that buzzed through the atmosphere.
The mist.
Mira studied him again. "You're not surprised by any of this."
" I am... surprise don't help." He was unconventionally calm.
She absorbed that. She accepted that he wasn't like her.
***
The day was too uneventful to remain that way. There was no plan of action, and nothing that hadn't been done weighing on them. They just wandered aimlessly.
Then–
A branch snapped somewhere behind them. At a proximity just between far and close.
They both went still.
This forest had two categories of sounds. There were natural ones– leaf shifting paths, settling bark and the slow movement of root and trunks.
And there were wrong ones.
This was wrong.
Not as heavy as the first predator, but just as erratic. It was lighter and seemed more cautious.
Pluto rose to his feet. Mira followed without an ounce of hesitation.
"What do you think it is?" She whispered.
"Smaller " he replied evenly.
She blinked. " How do you –"
He tilted his head, angling it towards the air that felt uneven just ahead.
A faint scraping noise slid along bark something to their right.
Pluto feinted sideways. The eel pressed against his arm again, nudging him towards the left. He followed the instructions.
Mira noticed his odd dance. " You keep doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Changing direction before anything happens."
He didn't answer. He answer wouldn't have made sense anyway.
The scraping came again, louder this time. Quick, sharp. Something darted through the mist. Close to the ground.
Fast.
It didn't charge blindly, it tested. Its shadow flickering between attack and reconnaissance.
Pluto moved without thinking, putting himself slightly ahead of Mira.
The creature boomed from the underbrush. It resembled a deformed mass of twisted vines and bark, bundled to mimick a animal's body. No clear outline, nothing taking clear ownership of being limbs. Just a plant layered with a frenzied nature.
It wasn't large, just the size of a medium dog. Slightly larger maybe.
Its surface rippled with vines weaving and unweaving themselves in restless motion.
Mira's legs trembled.
The creature lunged without hesitation, bubbling as it tore through wind.
Pluto stepped aside at the last instant, pulling Mira's sleeve to stir her clear of its charge.
It hit a tree trunk instead, vines losing tension on impact.
Then it rebounded.
It moved with grace, albeit a weird variation of it. Not like a plant, not like an animal, not like anything he had ever seen.
Pluto reached instinctively towards his right arm– and stopped.
He wasn't sure why he had done that. He didn't know what to do besides dodging.
The creature launched again. Towards Mira this time.
In a blink of an eye it was in front of her. She raised her arm defensively without thinking.
Something tore open. Her skin split in a way to symmetrical to be normal.
A dark oval shape appeared in the air, just millimetres from her forearm.
It wasn't a wound.
It was nothing. Not the absence of everything, but the presence of nothing.
The creature slammed into it. For a heartbeat everything froze. The oval widened.
The vine creature was stretched thin like spaghetti and sucked in cleanly.
No resistance. Just smooth and silent. Compressed, liquefied and swallowed.
Then the oval snapped shut. The forest stilled.
Pluto stared blankly, barely able to hold back his awe.
She stared at her arm, trying to peer through skin. "What did I just do?" She whispered.
Her skin was unmarked, but she could feel it shimmered just below the threshold of sight.
"You reacted", Pluto said evenly. Shocked nevertheless.
"I didn't mean to."
"It didn't ask."
She stared at him. " Have you done something like this too?"
He didn't respond. The mist lazily drifted between breaths, indifferent to her excitement hidden underneath fear.
She lowered her arm slowly, cautiously. "It felt like I created negative space..."
Pluto glanced at were the creature had disappeared. No remains, no sound, just gone.
They both stood unmoving for several long seconds, listening. It was all quiet.
***
But the air changed again. Becoming sharper and colder.
Pluto felt it first as heightened pressure packed behind his sternum.
Mira stiffened. "...do you feel that."
Pluto replied forcedly. "Yes"
It wasn't predators or shifting forest, it was something deeper.
Not dashing through the trees, but flowing in the very air they breath. It was above them, around them.
The mist thinned slightly, not to reveal something, but to create the sensation of being seen clearly.
Judged. It was fleeting, but impactful.
***
They turned slowly in unison.
And that was when they noticed the body. It lay partially covered behind a thick shrubbery.
A young man. Early twenties.
Paled face. Eyes open, fear still resonating in them.
There was no visible wounds, no dried up blood. Just a stillness that said he was dead.
Mira approached it. Pluto followed, scanning the surroundings.
The body looked –whole. Not attacked in the usual sense, but emptied out.
Mira knelt slightly, hesitating before reaching towards his neck. She hesitated.
She didn't touch him. She didn't need to.
"He's gone", she said. It was common sense to know.
Pluto studied the man, nothing was unusual.
" What could have done this?" Mira whispered.
Pluto looked at the man again. " Something powerful."
The pressure suddenly intensified, dwarfing it former in scale.
The mist rolled back in a jagged circle.
For the first time, Pluto felt it clearly. The judging presence.
Not a creature. The very presence that hummed in the power lines.
It did not have a voice, yet it was fluent. It had no shape but was defined. Its weight was all–encompassing.
An awareness that pressed against his mind like a fingertip against glass. His mind halted.
Mira's breathing hollowed. "It's here." Pluto tried to reply but his speech box failed him.
The canopy above became impossibly dense, branches weaving together in unnatural patterns, obscuring the sky.
But the sensation cut through anyway. Watching, measuring, counting.
It did not act. It simply acknowledged.
Mira's hands trembling despite her efforts. "Is this what it felt like before?"
"No" Pluto replied quietly. " This is clearer."
The pressure remained for several more seconds that stretched on like eternity. Long enough to settle into memory.
Then slowly, it receded, reliving them of the weight.
Not disappearing, just stepping back. Satisfied in a sense.
The mist thickened again, and the forest resumed it quiet movements.
Mira stood, her voice barely greater than a breath. " We are being observed."
"We are...to see who stays."
He looked at the body one last time. She swallowed as he turned away first.
"Let's move."
She nodded shakily and followed.
Behind them, the dead man's body seemed to become more pristine. But the significance of the death remained.
And far above– beyond the woven canopy and beyond sight– something rearranged the forest ever so slightly.