Legend whispers that on the day darkness descended, shadow spilled like venomous smoke on the land which was once brilliant. Those who survived bore witness to scenes torn from the world's ending: creatures and beasts roared and scattered from where the dark veil swept, and then every plant withered to dust. Even the ancient groves seemed touched by some wicked enchantment, twisted into death's own puppets. The forest, now doomed by shadows, stretched its gnarled branches toward the backs of fleeing folk.
They knew only to run, to keep running, for those caught by creeping darkness would dissolve like mist into the void. Nothing would remain behind. When the earth's lament finally quieted, more souls vanished along paths where they searched for kin and companions.
From that moment forth, the forest fell into endless slumber. It writhes in perpetual gloaming with sorrowful desperation, screaming without voice, devouring any brave or foolish enough to tread upon the shadowlands… The eternal twilight.
As though cursed by ancient magic, even lands untouched by shadow found no mercy in their escape. Natural calamities, earth splitting asunder, hillsides crumbling, plagues without warning or remedy came rushing back like a dark tide. Some say the forest suffers still, and these disasters are its lifeblood weeping forth. Others claim the vast eternal night has shattered the sacred rhythms of sun and moon, of fate itself.
The world tilted sideways. Chaos reigns. All is disorder.
Folk endured, but the alchemists' calling grew ever more demanding. No longer could they simply harvest ore from mountain veins or gather roots from garden plots. They must brew countless antidotes and remedies, which meant venturing into that forest of eternal twilight to seek what would never flourish in the barren wasteland beneath ordinary daylight.
Small wonder, truly. People could scarcely coax even the humblest turnip from exhausted soil anymore, much less the luminous fairy caps that once dotted forest floors. Those seeking medicine nearly tore the door curtains from every alchemist's cottage. To hold back plague and screaming, the alchemists had little choice but to bind thick hemp rope about their waists, hang silver bells and courage vaster than the heavens themselves upon their persons, and step across the forest's threshold to sift through corrupted earth for precious materials and enchanted minerals.
A fortunate few returned bearing dead bracken or strange mushrooms growing in impossible colours. But most folk pulled back only frayed rope ends, empty and forlorn. No tooth marks marred the fibres. No signs of struggle or spilled blood remained.
Those who survived inscribed their peculiar encounters within the forest into the alchemists' hallowed grimoires, offering guidance to brave apprentices who would follow after. Perhaps some inherited this thorny profession by force rather than calling.
This tradition has woven itself through the years now for two full decades, passing from weathered hands to trembling ones, from one generation of shadow-walkers to the next.
And still, the Twilight Forest waits.
The alchemist's calling descended like the first snow upon thatch and timber, gentle at first, then relentless. Natural as winter's breath. Inevitable as the wheel of seasons turning, turning, always turning. Snow falls upon all hearths without favour, yet her bloodline alone chose to catch this thorny frost in bare hands and call it inheritance. They pressed the alchemical mysteries into her skin like hot wax sealing parchment.
Then came the whisper, soft and terrible: Child, this land keeps only us now. You must go inside.
Her small heart knew refusal. Oh, how it already knew.
Her tiny fingers fumbled with gathering baskets too large, glass vessels too precious, tools meant for hands that had seen more winters than she had drawn breaths. Still, she accepted the hand-copied tome in the end. Had to, didn't she? Those ink-stained pages carried generations of wisdom transcribed from the original grimoire, each word heavy as stone, each recipe a ghost reaching through time.
Time is a thief. It stole through her small fingers like water through cupped palms, never once merciful to this blighted earth. By the time she stood at the cavern's mouth, four full decades of eternal night had wrapped the Twilight Forest in shadow's embrace.
Inside, sound found her first.
A curious hum, soft and thrumming. Gossamer wings catching air. Then came the scattered chime of silver bells, bright yet frantic, a melody edged with fear. And then the sudden silence.
Whatever wee creature made that sound had sensed her, surely. Felt the footfalls of something far larger than itself treading the cavern floor. It gave the only response small, helpless things know how to give: the ancient stillness of prey.
But what came next surprised her thoroughly.
The tiny being spoke. Actually spoke, its voice tumbling out in desperate plea. Help! Is anyone there? Please, I beg you! The sound rang ethereal as wind chimes in summer rain, lovely as birdsong at dawn's first blush.
She moved closer, lantern raised. There, trembling in its own dim glow, sat a sprite no larger than her palm. Blue as forget-me-nots, delicate as morning dew on spider silk.
Shock didn't touch her, not really. The elder alchemists had written of these beings in their journals, encounters from journeys into the deep mountain hollows. Sprites were born from flower hearts, they said. Gentle souls who carried pollen from bloom to bloom, tireless gardeners of the wild places.
Which also meant: fragile. Breakable. Easily lost.
This particular sprite had gotten itself well and truly stuck. One translucent wing lay pinned beneath a stone the size of a good pumpkin. Perhaps she was the last. The final ember of her kindred, winnowed by this harsh, unforgiving world that ground down all soft and lovely things.
The alchemist knelt. Wrapped both hands around the boulder. Lifted.
The stone weighed little enough by human measure, but to a creature who could perch on a daisy stem? The gesture must have looked like Atlas himself shouldering the heavens. The sprite burst upward with a cry of pure joy, spinning loop after dizzy loop through the stale cavern air. Freedom, after months of darkness and crushing weight.
Alchemist from the dawn, the sprite sang, hovering at eye level now, her glow brightening. I bless you. May your heart be blessed with the spirit of a fearless wing, strong enough to soar to great heights, resilient enough to pursue the blazing sun, and yet gentle enough to savour the unexpected caress of the wind. I bless your dreams; I bless every step you take. I must forewarn that the path ahead is fraught with challenges: cliffs, thorns, and biting coldness. Fear not, dearest alchemist, for I pledge to be the feather beneath your wings, your shield, and the tiny candle brightening the darkness. Please allow me to serve you until the first ray bathes these ancient woods, banishing the curse of the endless twilight as your heart desires.
So. Just like that.
Like all the fairytales, the alchemist found herself saddled with a companion. A rather… chatty one, at that. Already the sprite was babbling about this and that, flitting circles around her head like an overeager firefly. Her notes claimed sprite-folk possessed precious few practical talents beyond their luminescence and uncanny way with pollen. No matter.
The alchemist shrugged.
What else could she do? The rope still held fast at her waist, secure as her grandfather's knots always were. She'd come seeking blood clotting moss for the potions. Failing that, at least a basket of mushrooms for tonight's stew.
Guided by that faint blue glow, she began her journey back, following the rope hand over hand through the winding dark. Back toward her cottage standing alone at the forest's ragged edge. But something had shifted, subtle as moonrise.
The silence no longer pressed quite so heavy. The darkness felt less absolute. Her footsteps no longer echoed quite so lonely through the cavern's throat.
*****
Alchemy's power held the plague at bay. Barely. Just barely.
For a blessed while, the shroud-weavers found their looms quieter. Fewer bodies wrapped for burial. Fewer pyres lit at dusk. But victory proved hollow—the carpenter's crutches vanished from his workshop faster than he could carve them. Children who'd been bright as sparrows one morning, chattering and chasing through cobblestone lanes, couldn't rise from their beds by evening's fall. Some folk woke to discover their world drowned in perpetual midnight, the Twilight Forest's curse creeping forth like poisoned ivy from nightmare's garden, coiling around eyeballs, dyeing souls in the forest's own wicked colours.
Blindness alone would have been mercy. But the pain sent grown men writhing upon dirt floors, howling like wounded beasts. Women tore at their hair. Children wept until no tears remained.
Every alchemist in the scattered villages wore their fingers to bone grinding remedies. Mortar against pestle, stone against stone, over and over.
The desperate came in droves, beating their skulls against garden gates, again and again and again, leaving dark stains on weathered wood. Violet vine-work spread across their faces like cursed embroidery, beautiful and damning. Their eyes had already turned that terrible shade, pale lavender drained of all light, all hope. They brandished walking sticks like weapons, voices raw from shouting, begging, cursing. Gold coins spilled from trembling hands. Mountains of coin for even a thimbleful of relief from the medicine-makers' stores.
So the alchemist's lantern burned. Night after night, it cast its lonely glow through her window while the world slept fitfully around her.
She ground mineral stones to powder, dawn bleeding into dusk bleeding into dawn again. Brewed tinctures from rare herbs. Crushed the luminous spirit mushrooms she'd clawed from beneath ancient roots in the forest's shadowed belly, where things that ought not live still drew breath. She laboured to birth stronger remedies, more potent potions.
The old recipes wouldn't suffice. Every healer's cupboard stood nearly bare as the blight spread like wildfire devouring autumn-dry tinder. To cling to familiar formulas now would only hasten their stumbling march toward the worst starvation.
Exhaustion lived in her bones now. She was tired. So painfully tired.
She spent most of her dwindling coin on speeding draughts, those bitter elixirs that kept fingers nimble and mind sharp. What little remained bought her supper. Just berries. Sour as her eyelids, eaten alone by candlelight for days that blurred together.
Because the sickness claimed someone who actually mattered.
The crone from three doors down, the one who'd helped her once upon a hard winter. The same weathered grandmother who'd left baskets of dried bread on her doorstep after grandfather vanished into the forest's maw. Always slipping away before thanks could be spoken, as though kindness were something to hide.
When the blindness took her, the crone's denial came sharp and stubborn as brambles. Rough as homespun burlap. Just like she'd always denied being the phantom gift-giver all those years.
"Still here, are you, little mouse?" The crone's voice rasped like wind through dead leaves. She waved gnarled hands in the air, those milk-white eyes fixed on the alchemist yet seeing nothing, nothing at all. "Scurry off now. Don't want you hovering about. Go on! Git yourself gone, or I'll break those skinny legs of yours."
The alchemist said nothing. Simply circled behind the old woman's chair and straightened her threadbare cloak where it had slipped from bony shoulders. The crone kept muttering. Kept cursing the weather, the sickness, the unfairness of a world gone sideways.
But her walking stick remained propped against the wall. Never once did she raise it.
The alchemist made a vow then, silent and steel-hard: whatever sacrifice required, whatever price demanded, she would save this woman who'd saved her.
One night, a figure emerged from the forest's edge, a woman draped entirely in black. She moved all wrong, too fluid, too…future, with a weird cloak. Each step measured, unhurried.
The alchemist tried to flee but found her limbs frozen, roots growing through her feet into earth that had turned cold as cemetery soil. The stranger drew closer. Her eyes shone lilac, yet unlike the plague-blind, these eyes saw. She saw everything. Saw through skin and bone to whatever cowering thing lived beneath.
The woman leaned in until their faces nearly touched. When she spoke, each word fell heavy as a stone dropped down a well.
When you are ready, follow the thread to find me.
The alchemist gasped awake, lungs burning.
She'd collapsed over her brewing table, cheek pressed against cool wood. Dawn light already crept through the window. She lifted her head, blinking away sleep's cobwebs, and turned her gaze eastward. Toward the forest.
There, where light should have been creeping over treetops, darkness reigned absolute. The shadows poured down like a waterfall of liquid night, forming a barrier between worlds. A wall no dawn could breach. The Twilight Forest still held its cursed ground, sealed away from the waking world.
The remedy had finished brewing. The lamp's fuel lay consumed, devoured whole by flames that left nothing save ash and the ghost-memory of heat.
A whoosh of air announced the sprite's return through the window, gossamer wings catching morning light like scattered crystals. She'd been wandering the forest's ragged edge again, bold as a robin in spring, flaunting that peculiar blessing her kindred possessed. The Twilight Forest's labyrinthine paths could never ensnare sprite-folk, never twist them about in circles until madness took root.
Even so, she dared not venture deep.
She spoke of things that dwelt in the woodland's dark heart. Enormous creatures fashioned from iron skin, groaning and rumbling with voices that belonged to no living thing. She'd glimpsed shadows of the long-vanished Gaia herself, that ancient earth-spirit whose name was now only whispered in tales. Dangerous business. Deadly business.
"Ophenfort," the sprite gasped, dropping a pouch nearly as large as herself onto the worktable with a dramatic thud. Her tiny chest heaved. "Spent the whole night searching. This was the only blessed one growing anywhere!"
The alchemist coaxed the pink blossom from its cloth prison with gentle fingers. So small, this miracle. Smaller than her palm, delicate as spider silk kissed by dawn. Plucked from earth's embrace, it had ceased its ethereal glow, but the scattered petals painting her table spoke volumes of how frantically the sprite had flown through shadow and thorn.
The grimoire's yellowed pages claimed this flower had once, in an age before memory, in gentler days when the world still smiled, restored sight to those dwelling in darkness.
She had to try.
The gods knew she had to.
When the healing draught finished brewing, she honoured the alchemist's sacred protocol: taste first, always first, lest you poison those you mean to save. The liquid burned down her throat, bitter and bright in equal measure. Then she gathered her worn leather satchel, its seams threatening to split from years of use, and made her way through the waking town. Went straight to the old woman's door, that weathered threshold she'd crossed countless times as a child.
Knocked once. Twice. Three times.
"Come in or bugger off!" the crone's voice rattled from within.
The first dose went to the crone, of course.
The old woman grumbled something fierce, cursing the weather and the sickness and the unfairness of it all, but her breathing told the real story. Those ragged gasps born of agony too stubborn to voice aloud.
Yet as morning stretched toward noon, as the sun climbed its celestial throne, those terrible sounds began to gentle. Grew quieter. Steadier. Almost peaceful.
"Don't stand there gawping like a landed fish," the crone snapped, though her voice had lost its sharpest edge. "If you're cluttering up my home, make yourself useful. Water won't boil itself. Dinner certainly won't cook itself either."
By the time afternoon light slanted golden through the window, the old woman could grip a scrub brush firm enough to tackle potato skins on her own. She even carved a palm-sized portion of precious salted meat, declaring the alchemist hopeless at every practical skill, eyes blazing indignant as a summer storm as they fixed on the younger woman.
Eyes that saw. Eyes that had swum in lilac-white blindness just hours before now tracked every movement crystal clear.
The alchemist felt tears prick her own eyes but blinked them away quickly. No time for that. No time for softness when work remained.
The crone insisted she stay for supper. Wouldn't brook an argument. When evening came creeping in on violet feet, the old woman pressed a bundle of wild greens into the alchemist's arms, claiming they'd spoil otherwise. "Going to rot anyway," she muttered, not meeting her eyes. "Wasteful to let good food go bad. Might as well be you eating them instead of the compost heap."
The alchemist returned to her cottage as dusk painted the sky in shades of plum and ash and copper. The world felt different somehow. Lighter. As though some terrible weight had lifted from her shoulders, if only for a moment.
For the first time in what felt like a small eternity, she slept soundly. Deeply. Without dreams to haunt her rest. Dawn didn't wake her, gentle as it was.
The cacophony outside her door did that work instead.
She startled awake to find the sprite perched on her bedside like a tiny sentinel, staring toward the yard where people had gathered thick as starlings before winter's first snow. So many people. The sight stole her breath. Other alchemists stood among the throng, still wearing their work aprons dusted with ground herbs and mineral powder. Miners clustered together, clothes dark with underground dirt. Gawkers had come to witness whatever spectacle this dawn might bring. But most numerous, most desperate, were the afflicted. The blind. The dying. Those touched by the forest's creeping curse, violet vines mapped across their faces like roads to nowhere.
A merchant stepped forward from the crowd. She'd never laid eyes on him before. Well-dressed in fine wool and leather, confidence worn like a cloak.
He claimed acquaintance with the crone whose sight had returned, expressed profound relief at her miraculous recovery with words smooth as river stones. Then came his offer, honeyed and rich—he would procure whatever materials the potion required. Anything. Everything. No resource too scarce, no danger too great. He'd even organize expeditions deep into the Twilight Forest's blackest reaches for harvesting of whatever she needed.
"All to help the townsfolk," he said. All to save them.
The alchemist studied him with narrowed eyes.
She didn't know him, at all.
But the crowd pressed closer, a tide of desperate humanity. Voices rose like floodwaters threatening to drown her where she stood. So many voices crying out. So much need radiating from hollow faces and grasping hands. The resources he promised danced before her mind's eye, glittering and tempting.
If she shared her formula, scores of people might regain their vision. Whole families could be made whole again. Fathers might see their daughters' faces. Mothers might watch their sons take their first steps into sunlight. The blind might witness one more sunrise painting the world in molten gold.
How could she refuse?
The crowd fell silent as she emerged from her cottage bearing parchment and quill. Every eye tracked her movements as she settled at her outdoor worktable, dipped her pen in ink and began to write. Each word carried the weight of mountains. Each ingredient listed. The merchant read over her shoulder, his breath uncomfortably warm against her neck, eyes lingering hungrily on the crucial component. Ophenfort, that luminous pink blossom found only beneath withered pine trees in the Twilight Forest's most shadowed corners, where even moonlight feared to tread.
The sprite—bless her helpful heart—fished the remaining crushed petals from her miniature satchel and held them aloft. Let everyone remember their colour, their shape, their pretty tiny structure. Let no one mistake what they sought.
The gathering dispersed. Folk scattered in all directions, already making plans. Organizing expeditions. Gathering rope and lanterns and courage enough to face that cursed woodland. The air buzzed with renewed hope, fragile and precious as spun glass.
The merchant pressed a leather purse into the alchemist's palm before leaving. She felt the weight of gold coins within. "Your due," he said, voice soft. Almost gentle. "Well earned, healer. The town won't forget this kindness."
She watched him go, that well-dressed stranger, and felt an inexplicable chill despite the morning's growing warmth.
"What did you find last night?" The alchemist asked when she returned to find the sprite drowsy and half-dreaming on the windowsill.
The little creature waved one hand in a lazy arc, rolled over without opening her eyes. "Already on the brewing table," she mumbled, words blurring together into one long sigh. Her head tilted sideways and within heartbeats, and then tiny snores filled the cottage.
The alchemist crossed to her workspace on silent feet. Found wild figs arranged in a careful pile, their purple-brown skins still dusty from wherever the sprite had found them growing. Several stalks of Arenasse lay beside them, silver leaves catching what little light filtered through the window.
Yes. Time to brew fire potions before winter came howling down from the mountains. The cold season would arrive soon enough, merciless and hungry as it always was. Best to be prepared.
She then reached for her mortar and pestle, sighed.
*****
Three mornings later, folk gathered in the town square like crows circling carrion. They formed a tight ring around the centre, where a small wicker basket held several stems of Ophenfort, lying quiet. But there was no jubilation in the watching faces. No excited murmuring or hopeful whispers threading through the crowd.
The word had already spread like winter sickness through the streets. Already twelve souls lost to the forest's hunger. Gone. Vanished into the Twilight Forest's shadowed maw, despite knowing the risks, despite the substantial settlement fees promised to their families for such brave sacrifice.
The alchemists stood scattered among the gathering, herself included. Not one could muster even the ghost of a smile. They understood the cruel mathematics of it all. This pitiful handful of Ophenfort would brew barely enough remedy for a fraction of the hundreds afflicted. The flower was rare beyond reckoning. Finite as starlight. Gone once plucked, never to bloom again in that same soil.
A grizzled man leaned toward his neighbour, voice pitched low. "We need to find alternative ingredients. This can't continue."
"The girl's formula costs too many lives," another muttered, eyebrows drawn together in troubled lines.
"Right you are. More folk will die in that cursed forest than ever went blind from the plague."
They thought their words would drown in the crowd's murmuring, scattered and lost before reaching her ears. Foolish assumption. So they continued speaking, careless as children, cruel as winter.
"Must be about the gold coin, yeah? That merchant bought the formula right off her."
"Half-finished recipe sold just like that. Girl must be truly desperate. Probably can't even afford bread anymore."
"Kid!"
The alchemist's head snapped toward the voice. The old woman stood at the crowd's edge, leaning heavy on her gnarled walking stick, eyes blazing despite her bent frame. Her sight had healed beautifully. Still aged, weathered by time, but clear and sharp as winter sky now. She had listened when the alchemist told her to drink an extra dose. Good.
The alchemist hurried forward to offer support. The crone muttered under her breath about not needing anyone's blasted pity, not being some helpless thing requiring coddling. But she didn't pull her arm away either.
"Come along now," the crone barked, scolding her like a wayward child caught wandering too far from home. "Back to the house. Lunch won't start itself. Nothing here worth seeing anyway."
The alchemist shook her head but obeyed, helping the stooped woman navigate away from the increasingly agitated crowd. Let them talk. Let them whisper their judgments and suppositions. She had more important work waiting.
By noon, the square already stood empty as a picked-clean carcass.
Everyone had scattered back to their homes, afraid to linger outdoors where the plague's invisible fingers might find them. The number of blinds kept climbing with each sunrise. News from distant towns spoke of similar, deadly sickness spreading like spilled ink, crushing famine, whole villages going dark.
But she heard more and more men signing on for harvesting expeditions into the Twilight Forest, drawn by promises of generous payment and settlement fees for their families. Unemployed butchers whose shops had shuttered months ago. Farmers whose fields had suffered two full years of blight and crop failure. Beggars. So many beggars, with nothing left to lose and everything to gain.
She couldn't stop thinking about what those men had said. Their words circled her thoughts like carrion birds, persistent and ugly.
"Useless lot, the whole pack of them," the crone emerged from her bedroom bent nearly double with age, carrying a cloth pouch in one gnarled hand and a rolled parchment in the other. She thrust both toward the alchemist with surprising force. "Take these. Then get yourself gone. Don't come back here. Everyone in this cursed town is going to die anyway. Best you're not here when it happens."
The alchemist's jaw dropped. She stared at the parchment's surface where intricate symbols had been inked in fading brown, whorls and stars and geometric patterns that seemed to shift in the dim light. She'd known the old woman used to practice divination and star-reading in her younger days, but had never witnessed it firsthand. Those arts belonged to a time long past, dangerous knowledge the grandmother had always cursed her for asking about, always deflected with harsh words and threats.
But those symbols. Those patterns…
This woman was a witch.
She shoved everything into her hands before she could gather her scattered wits. Then the crone grabbed her arm with impossible strength for someone so frail, so ancient, and hauled her bodily toward the door.
"Get out," she said, voice rough as stone grinding stone. "Don't come back. Go to your pathetic little cottage, or go to that damned forest. I don't care which, just get yourself gone from here. You hear me, kid? Go."
The crone practically threw her across the threshold.
A passerby, one of the butcher's relatives by the look of him, caught the stumbling alchemist before she could fall face-first into the dirt. "That old woman's always been strange," he said apologetically, steadying her with calloused hands. "Best not to mind her moods. Just leave her be. She doesn't mean half of what she says."
But she did. The alchemist knew she did.
"I'll return later to check on you," the alchemist called back toward the doorway, clutching the precious items thrust into her arms, mind reeling with confusion and a thousand unasked questions burning in her throat. "Remember to take your medicine. Just one more dose and you'll be fully healed."
"Stubborn as wet wood refusing to catch fire," the grandmother spat from inside. "Go on, get! And don't you dare come back here. I mean it, foolish girl. Stay away."
So the alchemist left.
In the end, she couldn't bring herself to ask. Couldn't voice the accusations or demands for explanation. She stuffed the forbidden tome deep into the cloth pouch, then pressed the whole bundle against her chest beneath her cloak where no prying eyes could spot it. Not a single corner showed. Not a hint of what she carried.
She walked through the afternoon sunlight toward the southeast, where her humble cottage waited at the town's ragged edge like a faithful hound. Beyond it, not far at all, the Twilight Forest's dark wall rose against the horizon like a threat or a promise or perhaps both at once.
Home again, she bolted the door behind her and emptied the pouch onto her brewing table, everything tumbling out. The sprite darted over immediately from her perch by the window, tiny nose twitching with curiosity that radiated from her glowing form.
"What's all this then?" the sprite asked, circling the parchment and leather-bound book.
The alchemist spread the items carefully.
"The crone gave them to me."
The sprite landed on the book's cover, running her tiny hands across the embossed leather. She couldn't decipher the symbols or secret codes marking the tome's pages, but she inhaled deeply and her glow brightened. "Ancient pollen," she whispered. "This book reeks of it. There are traces here of seeds from plants that vanished from the world ages ago."
They opened the witch's notebook together beneath the lantern's golden glow, hands moving with reverence born of fear and hope intertwined. The alchemist half expected glowing butterflies to burst forth, or dark magic to come smoking from the yellowed pages, or perhaps for the book to scream warnings in a dead woman's voice. But nothing happened. It was simply an old, brittle journal, its pages thin as moth wings and covered in cramped script.
The first page they examined listed herbs and flowers in spidery handwriting, alongside formulas written in a language she couldn't begin to parse. Strange symbols sat between the words like guards or gates. The next page showed star charts, intricate webs of connecting lines mapping shining patterns across the night sky. Compass roses marked cardinal points in each corner. Coordinates had been jotted in margins with shaking hands. Maps of places she'd never heard of, drawn with obsessive care and annotated in that same cramped script.
The sun began its slow descent toward the western horizon. Shadows grew long and hungry across the cottage floor, stretching their dark fingers toward the table where forbidden knowledge lay spread like a feast. The Twilight Forest's eternal darkness seemed to lean closer to the cottage, pressing against the walls, as though listening to their whispered conversation through cracks in the wood.
A witch's final gift to an unworthy apprentice. Or perhaps a witch's curse, payment for kindness rendered, a burden passed to younger shoulders because the old woman's bones could no longer bear its weight.
*****
Seven days passed without the alchemist returning to town. On the second morning, she ventured to the nearby cliff's edge—testing the truth of what the crone's notebook had promised.
A plant called morning dewdrop will bloom when the sun just peeks at dawn, but only for a few fleeting seconds.
She waited in the pre-dawn darkness, breath misting in cold air. The moment light broke through the night, the clifftop meadow came alive with pinpricks of blue starlight scattered across the grass. Dewdrop buds opening like tiny eyes waking from sleep. Pluck them while they bloom, and time itself will still... She cradled several tiny stems in her palm, gathered swiftly before they could wither to nothing, tucking them safely into her pouch before the earth turned wholly gold with bright lights.
Before winter comes, three stars align. The brightest trinity. Southeast, at half-gaze. Gold, emerald, and violet.
She pulled her cloak tighter. On a night when autumn winds howled fierce and wild through the trees, she lifted her gaze skyward and found a single brilliant star burning violet against the velvet darkness. It stood out among its celestial brethren like an eye watching from the heavens.
She could have sworn it blinked at her.
Though she saw no sign of the other two heavenly eyes the notes described, that single violet star felt like enough. Like a sign.
The map's markings led her to places neither she nor her grandfather had ever explored before. Through the notebook's careful guidance, she discovered scattered rare materials without ever needing to brave the Twilight Forest's depths. So many curious formulas begged to be tested, their ingredients finally within reach. By the fifth day, she'd brewed a night-vision draught using the dewdrop flowers, the potion glowing faintly white in its vial like captured winter.
Yet autumn's dying breath carried whispers of ill omen on the wind.
The harvesting parties had gathered enough Ophenfort to brew perhaps a dozen doses—enough for barely fifteen souls out of hundreds afflicted. The town erupted into chaos the day after she'd left. Everyone converged on the square in a desperate crush, voices rising in cacophony that echoed off stone walls, eyes fixed hungrily on the potions clutched in alchemists' trembling hands.
The merchant clapped his hands with elegant grace, placing the remedies gently upon an auction table.
Then the bidding began in earnest.
Prices climbed like flames devouring dry timber. One voice shouted over another, hoarse throats piling numbers upon numbers until they reached dizzying, impossible heights. Stacks of gold coins slid across the table toward the merchant's waiting hands with the whisper of metal on wood. Vials of precious remedy passed into the palms of those wealthy enough to pay.
The contract alchemists each received a purse of gold. Gold enough for a month's food and wine. No questions asked, no guilt required. Talk of finding alternative formulas died in their throats like snuffed candles.
Those without sufficient coins fell silent too. Could only watch helplessly as the medicine drifted further and further from reach. Could only think of their sick loved ones waiting at home, hope dimming in plague-touched eyes.
Later, the merchant displayed even more Ophenfort. A whole basket overflowing with the precious blooms, he claimed, gathered by volunteers who'd gone without food or sleep or rest to harvest such impossible abundance. His pockets swelled with endless gold while his mouth overflowed with beautiful comfort, with effusive praise for that talented alchemist girl, with flattery that elevated her to near-sainthood in the town's imagination. People carried away vial after vial. Souls vanished one after another into the forest's hungry mouth, swallowed by shadow. Those who still valued human life above profit had dwindled to precious few.
In the days when the girl no longer appeared in town, the crone emerged from her cottage, leaning heavy on her gnarled walking stick. She wandered the streets like something unmoored from reality, howling and weeping with wild abandon that frightened children and made adults cross to the other side. Those who'd always found her strange now hurled vulgar words at her bent form. She brandished her crutch like a weapon, threatening them back with surprising vigor. She shrieked in languages no one understood, ancient words that made the air feel thick and wrong, her eyes bleeding back to that unfocused pale violet of the plague.
When darkness fell each night, she became a wraith without direction, a ghost searching for something forever lost.
No one paid her any mind beyond curses and avoidance. Everyone was too exhausted, too focused on scraping together coins for the next auction. More and more folk simply gambled everything, joining those willing to sacrifice themselves by venturing into the forest's waiting shadows for one more harvest.
Then someone who'd drunk the remedy died screaming.
The moment the liquid touched their tongue, tree roots burst from their throat in a grotesque bloom, coiling around lungs, drowning them from within in wood and sap and disbelief. A death that came swift and choking and terrible to see.
Then came the second death. The tenth. The thirtieth. More each day.
All fingers pointed first at the contract alchemists, accusations flying like arrows. The alchemists flung blame toward the merchant in panicked self-defence—they dared not suggest the harvesting teams had erred, dared not question the supply chain. Too many dead already. Too much blood on too many hands, sticky and damning.
Then the merchant swore to the heavens that the formula came directly from that alchemist girl living at the forest's edge, that he'd changed nothing, modified not a single ingredient, and touched not even one measurement. I paid good money for it! Everyone had witnessed the girl accept his coin with their own eyes, hadn't they? Seen her take it willingly?
Oh! She must be taking revenge. She bore a surname that could only belong to those exiled to the borderlands after all. Oh wait, wait! Now they remembered, memories suddenly sharp! Wasn't her grandfather—or was it great-grandfather? Granduncle? That traitor who'd died in the purge wars, protecting witches from righteous fire?
Oh! She must be exacting vengeance for ancient wrongs! She was a witch herself, descended from that cursed bloodline, carrying their tainted magic—SCANDALOUS! She is a witch!
The merchant's words came fierce and certain, spittle flying into every upturned face, swearing oaths to heaven. They could already see the shape of the pyre taking form between his teeth. After all, they'd done it before, long ago. They could do it again! For the town, of course!
The crone's eyes wept black ink. She whispered curses in a voice that belonged to true ghosts, to things that should not walk in daylight, words that made the very air shudder. She released her grip on the walking stick and let it fall to the cobblestones. From her distant vantage far from the raging crowd, the old woman smiled.
She had no need of it anymore. That old friend of hers hit the ground with a clatter that echoed like a death knell.
I can only send you this far, my jade. Your grandfather saved me from their pyres once. Now I return that debt. I take their flames instead of you. Let them burn in the fire they kindled for your bones. Shed your mortal skin in the forest's heart. Rise. Ascend. Become the star. The Marulrie calls for you.
*****
By the time they noticed, the horizon had bled into colours of molten fire—like wildfire devouring autumn plains, racing toward them with hunger that knew no mercy. The mob came bearing torches like unholy offerings, some wielding axes and iron chains as though headed to war rather than execution. Even through dusk's thickening veil, she could see blade edges catching light, throwing back cold gleams sharp as winter stars.
Too late now. Even if some soul with conscience intact had tried to send warning, time had already slipped away like water through desperate fingers. That shepherd boy had learned mere minutes ago that the townspeople had departed, already reached the road's halfway point. He'd abandoned his flock and run straight to her door, words tumbling out breathless and panicked. Then he'd fled again Staying would brand him witch's accomplice, would see him thrown onto the pyre alongside her.
The formula was sound! She wanted to scream the truth until her throat bled.
But words turned to ash in her mouth, cold sweat soaking through her shift and freezing against her spine. They claimed the old woman had died with her restored eyes weeping black blood like ink, collapsed upon cobblestones still warm from afternoon sun. They swore she'd cursed the entire town before death took her—punishment for drinking the alchemist's wicked remedy. They said they'd witnessed her corpse crumble like burned paper, shatter into ash, then scatter on bitter wind until nothing remained. Not a bone. Not a whisper. Nothing.
So they'd come hunting the witch. She'd brewed poison, they said with absolute conviction. She'd murdered every soul who'd drunk that cursed draught.
The sprite's tiny hands yanked frantically at her hair, desperate to shake her from paralysis born of fear and crushing regret. Move, she begged silently, just move even one finger! The sprite knew, she knew, this wasn't her fault. The merchant had tampered with something, or perhaps he'd been playing a rigged game from the very start. Impossible to harvest that much Ophenfort from the forest's depths, even if you turned the entire twilight realm inside out like a coat, you'd never find more than two handfuls! She'd confirmed it through the beetle clan's network of whispers!
"Run! Now!" The sprite's voice pitched high with terror. "They've blocked the western road already!"
Run where? Where could they possibly go? Ahead stretched a wall of flesh and fury, torches setting dried grass ablaze, voices rising in declarations that the witch must burn. The other direction led straight to the Twilight Forest's threshold, that place forbidden to enter without wards and protections and prayers—
"They're here!" The sprite shrieked and dove into the alchemist's hair, burrowing deep as a frightened mouse. Brutal heat rolled over them in waves. The alchemist blinked once, twice, and felt her heart harden into something cold and distant.
This cottage was the only inheritance her grandfather had left. The only proof he'd ever existed. Ever loved her.
But the garden fence was already burning, wood popping and crackling like broken bones.
No time. No time left at all.
She remembered the fire potions brewed for winter's coming cold and yanked them from their shelf with shaking hands. Whispering incantations her grandfather had taught her when she was small enough to sit on his knee, she pulled the corks free and flung the shimmering liquid in wide arcs. Where it touched earth, flames erupted violent and fast, sparks meeting tinder meeting hunger. This could hold back the fire crawling toward the cottage walls, but it couldn't stop the arrows and stones already raining down on the roof like divine judgment, hurled by hands that had once waved in greeting…
She snatched her battered leather satchel from the chaos, grabbed the grandmother's precious book and clutched it against her chest like a shield. Fire's wind caught her hem, lifted the dry fabric, and hungry sparks landed to burn ragged holes through cloth her crone had mended just last winter. She threw open the back door with both hands. Beyond the threshold lay an entirely different cold, the Twilight Forest's ancient chill reaching out like skeletal fingers.
But she had no choice. Not anymore. This, or burn alive in their pretty lies.
So she ran.
Ran like prey runs from predators, like rabbits from wolves, like anyone with survival singing in their blood. Sprinted toward the forest's waiting edge with the sprite clinging to her hair and her satchel banging against her hip and smoke filling her lungs.
Behind her, screams began to rise. Agony and terror and something else, something that sounded almost like regret.
She didn't look back.
*****
No light. Not a whisper of it anywhere.
She crashed into the forest and the world's clamour died instantly, smothered beneath silence so bone-deep it felt like being buried alive. She didn't turn, didn't slow, just kept her legs churning forward. Tree branches sensed prey throwing itself willingly into their waiting grasp, reaching out with gnarled fingers like skeletal hands. She ran until her breath turned silver mist in freezing air, until her lungs burned as though she'd swallowed embers whole.
The deeper she fled, the less she could see anything at all. Then the sprite burst from her hair like a tiny falling star, and suddenly the ground beneath their feet glowed faint grey-blue, barely enough light to see shadows by.
A glance backward showed nothing. No trace of firelight, no hint of the world she'd abandoned. Of course not—she'd left no markers carved in bark, tied no rope to guide her home again like the alchemists of old. Even if she could escape this place, there was no home left to return to. She was exiled now, cast out by lies, by her own naive heart that had foolishly believed kindness could turn the tide of human cruelty.
A branch lashed across her cheek sharp as a blade. Warning. Command. The forest itself ordering her to halt before she stumbled into something worse. So the alchemist stopped, didn't dare venture deeper into that suffocating darkness where even her own hand held before her face would show nothing but void. She stood trembling on ground illuminated only by the sprite's feeble wing-glow, chest heaving, gasping for air that tasted of rot and moss and earth older than history.
The sprite understood nothing of goodbyes or grief or loss. She patted the alchemist's forehead with tiny hands, touch gentle as moth wings, and declared in that bright voice that they must figure out how to survive in this woodland realm now. She knew some areas, she chirped, knew where spirit mushrooms grew that sprite-folk could safely eat—but she felt quite certain they'd find precious little fit for human mouths. Setting aside unknown plants that might carry poison in their stems, they had no weapons to fight the creatures surely dwelling here, no steel or iron, and certainly no way to face the larger horrors lurking in deeper shadows with nothing but bare hands.
The alchemist thought of the crone.
She collapsed onto damp soil and wept like the world was ending. Sobbed until her throat went raw as scraped bone, until exhaustion claimed her so completely, she couldn't have stood if the forest itself had caught fire around her. She curled against an enormous tree root, ancient and gnarled as a sleeping dragon, and fell into sleep so deep it felt like sinking through dark water into an abyss with no bottom.
No beasts came. But no direction revealed itself either through dreams or visions. Just the whisper-rustle of leaves shifting in air that never quite moved like proper wind.
No light anywhere in this eternal gloom. Her world had become endless twilight. Eyes open or closed made no difference at all, both showed only shadow upon shadow upon shadow. Let it end here if it must, she thought before sleep dragged her under. If she woke, they'd reckon with survival then. If not... well. Perhaps that was mercy too.
Unfortunately, she did wake after some unknowable passage of time, eyelids heavy and burning. The same murky darkness greeted her opening eyes, though perhaps slightly less oppressive now that she'd grown somewhat accustomed to it. The sprite had wandered back from some small expedition, and the ground before them now held a modest collection of mushrooms gathered from somewhere nearby, along with flower petals that couldn't serve as food but added tiny spots of color to the unrelenting gloom.
The alchemist sat up slowly, every muscle screaming protest. Her dress hung in tatters, hem burned through in ragged places, fabric torn by grasping branches and cruel thorns. Dirt caked her hands and knees.
But the grandmother's book remained clutched against her chest somehow, miraculously undamaged despite everything. She'd protected it even while unconscious, even while grief had tried to drown her.
"How long was I sleeping?" she asked, voice coming out hoarse and cracked like old parchment.
The sprite tilted her small head, considering the question with the seriousness of a scholar pondering ancient texts. "Time doesn't move the same way here in the forest's belly. Could have been mere hours. Could have been days. Could have been something in between. The twilight doesn't much care for mortal cycle of sun and moon."
The alchemist looked at the mushrooms scattered before her. Some she recognized from her studies and her grandfather's teachings—edible, if not particularly nourishing or pleasant. Others were entirely unfamiliar, their caps sporting colours that practically screamed poison to anyone with even a thimbleful of sense. She sorted through them with careful fingers, setting aside the safe ones in a small pile.
She then lifted her gaze skyward. Murky grey-brown, like churned earth after heavy rain, scattered with pitiful pinpricks of starlight struggling weakly behind banks of cloud. The darkness here was so absolute she could barely discern even the canopy's silhouette looming above, though her hammering heart had begun, slowly, painfully, to adjust to this forest's suffocating dark.
She'd brought no torch. Of course not—who in their right mind would remember such vital survival details while fleeing for their life through flames and fury? Matchbox and flint stone both lay abandoned forever in some forgotten corner beneath her brewing table, left behind with everything else that had once made a life.
Oh. Wait.
Morning dewdrop. The potion.
She might have—possibly—unconsciously tucked one precious vial into this very satchel during those last peaceful days of gathering and brewing. Hope fluttered in her chest, so she spread her belongings across the damp earth, fumbling blindly over invisible stones and wicked sharp twigs, fingers searching clumsily through the dark.
The texture of a fresh label beneath her fingertips couldn't be mistaken for anything else. Yes! She'd brought one. Only one, but one was enough.
She couldn't bear to wait another heartbeat—pulled the cork free with trembling fingers and closed her eyes, tipping the liquid into her mouth without ceremony or hesitation. The draught touched her tongue, bittersweet, like honey mixed with starlight and frost, then slid down. When she opened her eyes again, everything drowned in absolute black now glowed soft grey-blue, luminescent as though lit by ghostly moonlight. Her satchel lay open on the ground like a yawning mouth, contents scattered everywhere from her desperate blind fumbling.
The sprite hovered half an arm's length from her face, little wings beating steady as a heartbeat, following her gaze downward to a seed pouch that had tumbled into the mud.
She couldn't remember when she'd tucked it away, in which moment of which day during which small task. But now it became the only thing standing out clearly in her temporary enchanted vision, as though outlined in silver. It lay there quietly, unassumingly, as though fate's own hand had ensured it found its way into her satchel at precisely the right moment. Or perhaps during those innocent days spent gathering rare materials under open sky, luck itself had quietly pressed into her palm, slipped unnoticed into her bag while she wasn't paying attention.
The sprite had no earthly idea what the pouch contained, only urged her in that bright worried voice to eat some mushrooms or leaves quickly—the leaves still held clean dewdrops she'd so carefully carried, tiny perfect spheres of clean moisture. Dewdrops, seeds, leaves. Yes, of course, they needed food first and foremost. They needed water too, whether for immediate survival or eventual cultivation. Her priority now was finding a proper water source while this brief borrowed night-vision lasted, before the magic faded and left them blind again.
"I remember if we go that direction, there should be a lake!" The sprite's voice pitched high with hope, almost desperate. "Water! We could go there!"
The sprite's tiny finger pointed toward some unknown section of woodland, likely one of several half-remembered locations from her hazy memory of this cursed place. The compass in the satchel spun wildly when the alchemist checked it, needle whirling like a broken clock gone utterly mad, as though magnetic north had ceased to exist entirely in this twilight realm. The stars above were pitifully few and so faint they seemed ready to gutter out like dying candles. She couldn't determine north.
But hope was still hope, fragile and precious as spun glass. Even if they found only the worst possible scenario—some wretched stagnant puddle in moss-choked dying dirt—she'd have to make it work somehow. Survival left no room for pride or elegance.
She gathered her scattered belongings back into the satchel quickly, wound her long braid loosely around her neck to keep it from snagging on reaching branches, and set off in that uncertain direction with the sprite leading the way like a tiny lantern bobbing ahead.
They walked what felt like several miles through the unchanging gloom. No beast's growl disturbed the heavy silence; no wind stirred the motionless air. Only cicada songs rose and fell, and the cold watchful eyes of owls tracked their movement from high branches. After a full night exposed to this place, damp chill had gradually seeped through her autumn dress and into her very bones, making her shiver despite her steady pace, but it remained more bearable than those terrifying flames that had devoured her home. The tree roots that earlier had seemed like grasping fangs and evil tentacles reaching for her throat now appeared in night-vision as simply roots and branches. Gnarled and ancient, yes, but they were not moving. They didn't lure hapless travellers into their wooden grasp and devour them whole as the townspeople's fearful tales had always claimed.
The sprite ahead let out a startled cry.
The alchemist looked up.
There, through the grey-blue haze—water. A Lake.
Not quite a lake in the proper sense. More an ancient pool carved by patient hands from living stone in some age before memory. Its surface hung mirror-still, reflecting absolutely nothing, as though the water itself had learned to refuse acknowledgment of the starless sky pressing down from above. Thick moss carpeted its edges in luxurious spreads, luminescent in her enhanced vision, glowing soft ethereal green like foxfire dancing over graves. Strange flowers bloomed along the banks in careful rows, their delicate petals folded closed against the eternal night. Sleeping eyes, she thought. Or eyes that had seen too much and chosen blindness.
"Is it safe?" she whispered, though she couldn't say why she kept her voice so low. Perhaps because this place felt sacred somehow. Touched by old magic. Or cursed beyond redemption. Or both at once, indistinguishable in the gloom.
The sprite darted down to hover just above the water's surface, her tiny reflection showing clear and bright—the only thing in this cursed realm that dared show itself true. "It's old," she said slowly, as though tasting the word and finding it insufficient. "Very old. The water here predates the curse, I think. It remembers when this forest still saw sunlight."
The alchemist knelt at the pool's edge. Cupped her hands. Dipped them carefully into the water. It felt shockingly cold, cold enough to ache in her bones, but clean. Pure. She brought it to her lips and drank, and it tasted like melted snow from mountains she'd never seen.
Slightly astringent, bracingly cold. But clean. Blessedly, impossibly clean.
The night-vision enchantment had mere hours left before fading back to nothing. The alchemist worked with borrowed time now, hastily shaping a small basin from clay she found near the shore. She used her only remaining fire potion to kindle flames for baking it hard.
The sprite flitted back and forth like a restless honeybee, gathering dry leaves and brittle branches with her small hands, piling them beside the growing campfire. Their small clearing brightened with warm dancing light that pushed back the shadows, and for a moment the world felt almost kind. The alchemist scavenged flat stones and withered vines from the lake's edge, bound them together, turning them into a crude but functional hoe. Tools. She was making tools. She was preparing to survive.
Before she could press the first seed into waiting soil, she caught something unusual glowing.
The night-vision cast everything in grey-blue, but there across the lake she spotted a defiant crimson spark against the gloom. A single point of colour in this washed-out world. She released her gathered skirt without thinking, letting the carefully selected pebbles tumble forgotten onto the earth.
"Oh heavens above! Maria Rose!" The sprite's voice pitched high with something between awe and alarm, terror and fascination warring in those two small words. "They propagate like plague! They need no sunlight yet burn with that crimson fire as though lit from within by something that shouldn't exist! Us sprite-folk consider them nightmares. Their sustenance might be hope itself, or despair, or something else entirely, something deeply wrong. I don't know what feeds them! I've never dared come this close before! Wait, you mustn't—"
"But they produce light," the alchemist said simply. The words came out flat. Final. "That's enough for me."
She turned to check their campfire, still burning steady and strong with warmth that wouldn't last, then lifted her tattered hem and strode directly toward that feeble red glow. Purpose drove each step forward, carrying her carefully over ancient gnarled roots and through tangled undergrowth that tried to snag her ankles like grasping fingers. "Light is what we need most," she called back, not quite sure if she was justifying herself to the sprite or to some deeper voice of caution whispering warnings in her skull.
Before the exasperated sprite could protest further, she'd already rounded the lake to the opposite shore where shadows pooled thick as oil.
Within breathless moments, she was on her knees, panting, digging frantically at the soil beneath a Maria Rose with bare hands. Unearthing its roots and all, tearing it from the earth like treasure from a miser's grasp. Her warm breath ghosted over the faintly glowing plant cradled in her muddy palms, and the thing seemed almost alive. Flickering, responding to flowing air like tiny flames meeting oxygen for the first time, burning brighter as though pleased by her touch. As though it recognized prey when it felt breath upon its petals.
She cradled three roses still clinging to their dark earth. Precious as jewels. Dangerous as serpents. Walking back toward the campfire's welcoming golden light, she thought perhaps the crone's mysterious notebook might contain information about this peculiar plant's nature and habits. Warnings, maybe. Instructions for cultivation. Something.
She'd have to study it thoroughly by using a firelight tonight. If she cultivated enough of these crimson beauties, might she see the forest paths more clearly? If she grew enough of them in careful rows, planted them like stars across this benighted earth, could she light up this endless twilight? Push back the suffocating dark? Hope surged in her chest like a spring tide returning after a long winter—warm and almost painful in its intensity, sharp enough to cut. There were things here that made their own light without sun or flame. She might actually survive in this place.
She could do this.
She absolutely could.
The campfire still burned bright and merry, crackling with life that seemed almost defiant in this place of death. The alchemist placed the Maria Roses gently on rich soil where firelight could reach them, only then noticing with a jolt how everything beyond the fire's blessed radius had returned to that crushing black abyss. The night-vision potion's grey-blue enchantment had finally worn off completely, extinguished like a snuffed candle, and with it went even the sprite's distinctive blueish glow that had become so comforting.
The little creature had gone.
Off searching for small treasures, probably. Or fleeing this foolish human who dug up nightmare flowers with bare hands and called it survival. The alchemist couldn't worry about that now, couldn't spare the energy for fear or second thoughts. She dug shallow holes in the damp loose soil with her bare fingers, nails collecting dirt and darker things she didn't want to name, and planted those fragile three crimson glowing flowers with the tender care one might show newborn chicks. Mounded rich earth around their delicate stems. Packed it firm but gentle so they'd take root properly and thrive in this dark soil.
So they'd grow. So they'd spread. So they'd light her path through the endless night.
The campfire's light kept her company in that strange timeless place for quite some while afterward... perhaps two days, perhaps two full weeks. She genuinely couldn't tell and eventually stopped trying to count or measure. The stars here never moved across the sky, never wheeled in their ancient patterns. Time seemed frozen forever in that exact moment when everything had returned to primordial darkness. The Maria Roses grew from three modest stems to over a dozen glowing beauties, spreading their crimson light in an ever-widening circle, and a patch of loosened soil she hadn't consciously noticed before suddenly sprouted familiar green seedlings reaching toward the firelight. They definitely came from the seed pouch tucked in her satchel, but she couldn't remember planting them with any deliberation or watering them with lake water at all.
Aside from methodically breaking every reachable branch around her small space, gathering anything remotely useful to craft into crude but functional tools, shaping simple vessels and bowls from malleable lakeside clay... she'd done nothing but stare fixedly at the Maria Roses' deepening crimson. Her face lit with desperate hope bordering on obsession, silently willing them to push one more precious bud up through the dark earth, then another, then another still, until her little circle of light grew large enough to feel almost safe within.
However, her beloved sprite never came back.
Hours stacked, or what felt like days in this place where time moved strangely, flowing thick as honey one moment and racing like rapids the next. She talked to herself sometimes, or perhaps to the absent sprite whose company she missed terribly, narrating her actions in a steady stream to fill the oppressive silence that pressed against her ears.
"This one should go here beside its sisters. Yes, good rich soil beneath. Deep roots will anchor it strong."
Her voice sounded peculiar in the stillness, a little too loud and swallowed immediately by the forest's endless hungry quiet.
The seedlings grew faster than seemed remotely natural or possible. Within what might have been a single week, though without sun or moon as witnesses who could say with certainty, they'd sprouted into recognizable plants she knew from her extensive studies. Medicinal herbs her grandfather had taught her to cultivate with patient hands and kind words. Healing flowers mentioned in ancient texts. Things that absolutely shouldn't grow in perpetual twilight according to every botanical principle, yet here they thrived with vigour, as though the ancient soil remembered bright sunlight even if the perpetually grey sky had long forgotten what warmth felt like.
She created a proper garden within the firelight's protective reach, tending it with devotion. Maria Roses for precious illumination, arranged in careful geometric patterns that pleased her eye. Medicinal herbs for healing and basic sustenance. Even a few vegetables that seemed to spring from those mysterious seeds as though by minor miracle, though she hadn't consciously planted them with any thought or plan.
The endless work kept her hands perpetually busy with purpose, kept her restless mind from dwelling too long on the sprite's troubling absence, on the crone's terrible sacrifice made in black blood and cursed words, on the town that had tried with torches and hatred to burn her alive for crimes she'd never committed.
But during the quiet times, when the campfire burned low to glowing embers and the Maria Roses' glow dimmed to barely visible points of light like distant dying stars, loneliness crept in like winter frost covering everything in its path. She'd catch herself turning with excitement to share some small botanical discovery with the sprite, only to remember with crushing disappointment the empty air beside her shoulder where blue light should be hovering. Would call out enthusiastically "look at this curious thing!" and hear only her own voice echoing back hollow and mocking, a sad ghost of companionship.
Where had the dear little creature gone? Had something terrible lurking in the forest's depths taken her in its jaws or claws? Had she simply abandoned the alchemist once the danger became too visceral, too immediate and real to ignore? The not-knowing gnawed at her conscience worse than physical hunger, worse than the damp bone-deep chill that never quite left her body no matter how close she huddled to the flames.
She tried desperately to stay hopeful despite everything. The sprite was remarkably resourceful, had survived this cursed forest far longer than any human possibly could. Surely she'd return eventually with some precious treasure or vital useful information clutched in her tiny hands, chattering excitedly about her grand discoveries in that bright musical voice that made even dark things seem less frightening.
Or maybe it was just a comforting story she told herself to sleep better in the oppressive dark, nothing more substantial than wishful thinking. And perhaps, the alchemist thought with grim weary resignation as she planted another rose in soil that seemed almost eager to receive it into dark embrace, perhaps she'd always been destined to walk this lonely path entirely alone after all. Perhaps that was simply her fate written in stars she could no longer see, and struggling against it was as futile as fighting the tide itself.
By the thirtieth night—or what her breaking mind insisted was the thirtieth—she let the campfire die.
No more would she feed it branch and tinder. No more would she coax flame from reluctant wood. The firelight had become something else entirely. It was a brand seared into her very flesh, a wound that wept but would not close. The roses by then did spread like a plague of their own making, crimson tongues licking at the darkness, painting everything in shades of old blood and fresh carnage.
After that, time became a thing unmade.
The Twilight Forest kept no ledger of days, no rhythm of hours. But she knew, bone deep, she knew. That vast stretch of time had passed through her like water through cupped hands. Long enough that Maria Roses had claimed every inch of soil around her makeshift dwelling, vast crimson fields stretching endlessly into the hungry dark like a sea of bleeding light. Long enough that she'd built herself a proper cabin from scratch with her own blistered hands, roof woven from dried leaves that whispered secrets she no longer wished to hear, walls bound together branch by patient branch with vine and compromise. Long enough that the cuts marking her palms had become permanent residents, dark lines etched into skin that the crimson glow rendered invisible yet never truly healed.
She had wished for light. The forest had granted it with cruel abundance.
Every plant, every patch of tilled earth, every stone. All bathed in that relentless red radiance until the world became a single burning eye that would not blink. She could see, yes. At last she could see. But her gaze drifted ever upward now, seeking those feeble distant stars that flickered like dying hope above the canopy. Those gentle warm blinks scattered across the sky, whispering cruel truths of a wrong turn taken: that she had drawn her own prison with loving hands, that not all illumination brings salvation. Some cages are built from the inside out.
The endless crimson sea had begun to devour her sight from within. She would hide in the cabin for days, pressing palms against swollen eyelids, scratching at skin gone raw from the floating pollen that filled the air like ash from funeral pyres.
The witch's notebook held no mention of Maria Roses. She had searched every page until the words became patterns without meaning, until she could recite passages in fevered whispers to the empty air. The alchemist's grimoire too she had memorized, cover to cover, twenty times over and more. Every formula. Every warning. Every scrap of wisdom that had proven powerless against this particular doom.
She wanted to leave. Gods and stars and whatever lay beyond, how desperately she wanted to leave this cursed land. To cross to the lake's far shore and simply walk, walk until her legs gave out or the darkness took her whole. But her garden had grown roots deeper than soil. She did not know (She couldn’t.) if stepping beyond this circle of cultivated light would mean dissolution into the forest's hungry maw, or worse. It might be an eternity of wandering through absolute void, searching for illumination she herself had abandoned.
They had been right all along. Grandfather. The elder alchemists stretching back through generations like a chain of warnings unheeded. Not a single soul had volunteered to enter this forsaken realm because they understood the terrible arithmetic of it. The survival of the body did not equal life of the spirit. The Twilight Forest would preserve your flesh like a specimen in amber while loneliness, like that voracious mist with teeth, gnawed away everything that made you human, leaving nothing behind but bones and the echo of what you'd been before the dark took up residence in your chest.
It would erase you.
So, on what might have been the thousandth night, she did not leave the cabin at all.
She barred the door against the crimson world she had so lovingly, so foolishly nurtured. Closed her burning eyes against the poignant red that had become both prison and prisoner. Dizzy with exhaustion that lived in her marrow now, she collapsed into something resembling sleep. Pretended, in that space between waking and oblivion, that this was the true reality—that she would surface from nightmare into a world where a small beloved creature with forget-me-not wings still chattered beside her, filling the silence with brightness.
*****
What woke her was unexpected. It was a beam of light.
True light. Golden as summer wheat, pure as the dawn she'd almost forgotten existed. It struck her closed eyelids like a physical blow. She raised one trembling hand to shield against this impossible radiance streaming through gaps in her makeshift walls. It came from the lake's direction, casting dense shadows that danced across the cabin's pity wall.
She flung open the door with both hands.
The light was soft. Harmless. It touched her face with the gentleness of spring wind, nothing like the invasive flames or that oppressive crimson that had ground her vision to powder. The lake's surface gleamed wet and new, as though dawn itself had been distilled and poured across the water. She squinted hard, adjusting slowly to the shape moving steadily toward her…A flower emitting concentrated sunlight, held casually in a stranger's hand.
The man had spotted her. His face showed no joy at finding another living soul, no shock at the unexpected. Instead, he wore deep disapproval like a familiar coat, brow furrowed with something approaching exasperation.
"Are you completely mad!?" he shouted across the distance. "These things devour people whole!"
He strode toward her, lifting that miraculous bloom high overhead. The alchemist had stumbled from her dwelling on legs gone uncertain from disuse, watching him accelerate with clear agitation. He raised the flower higher still, and warm light flooded over what had been her vast crimson sea.
Then came the screaming.
Faint at first, rising from the air itself, like ancient wraiths being burned by purifying flame, torn voices lifted in terrible harmony. So many voices. The entire field of Maria Roses burned and dissolved under that cleansing radiance, delicate petals falling and shredding to ash, scattering on wind that should not exist in this still place. Even the surrounding mist seemed to retreat in fear. For one breathless moment the air filled with the eerie luminescence of burning petals, the departing dirge of flower-spirits banished from their feeding ground.
The alchemist stood frozen, watching everything she had cultivated through endless twilight extinguished in mere heartbeats.
But anger did not come. Grief arrived hollow and distant, an echo of what she should have felt.
The painful swelling had vanished from her eyes. The golden glow settled into gentle illumination that felt almost holy against her starved senses. She turned slowly, gazing with blank confusion at this stranger who had appeared from nowhere. She had not seen another living human in so terribly, impossibly long. Did not know whether to condemn or thank him. Did not know if the tears brimming hot in her eyes were born of loss or relief.
"Maria Rose," the man announced, still scanning the perimeter for a missed crimson glow. "Also called Prisoner's Flower in older texts. Feeds on human hope and expectation as sustenance, then turns prey who've given up struggling into willing slaves for its survival." He looked at her directly. "It's a parasite. The bleeding tears of the Twilight Forest."
A false hope dressed as a rose.
"Thank you," she managed, voice hoarse from seasons of silence. "I've been here a long while. I stopped counting."
"How did you enter this place?" He held that small sun casually, as though carrying concentrated daylight was perfectly ordinary. His clothing looked foreign—cut and fabric unlike anything from her region. That golden hair catching light, those startling blue eyes, belonged to somewhere far away. Perhaps he was from elsewhere. Perhaps she no longer belonged to anywhere at all.
"They called me a witch," she said simply.
"Oh?" He shrugged with casual ease. "They said I stole coins. But I'm a magician." A small smile played at his lips, there and gone.
"How long have you been here? In the forest."
"About fifty years or so, give or take." He caught her face and added quickly, "Listen. time works different here, so completely different. You can age ten years in a blink, even if only three days have passed in the world outside. Or you might think a century has gone by, but look up and find the clouds haven't moved even an inch. Time is shattered here." He paused. "By the way, are you hungry at all?"
Something occurred to her with sudden, sharp clarity.
She spun and rushed inside the cabin on unsteady legs, dug frantically through the compost bucket for ingredients she'd buried what felt like months before. Carrots picked two months prior (or what she'd thought was two months) showed no sign of withering. They looked exactly as when first pulled from earth, dirt still clinging to their orange skin like the memory of growth.
She had not felt hunger during her time here. Had not noticed her hair growing a single inch. The same tree shadows day after day. Plants showing no natural change or maturation. The same blurred starlight, the same unmoving clouds. All these small oddities magnified now into revelation.
Time works different here. Her seeds should be like her. Should be showing no signs of time's passage. They should not sprout or mature at all. They were outsiders, prisoners. Unlike the Maria Roses, those native parasites that fed on hope like vultures on carrion.
"We work differently here too," the magician's voice drifted from outside. "This moment when we meet only happened because the branches grew to a fork in the path. Fate's crossroads. We might be sent to completely different endings by the mist in the next breath."
The light shifted. He was moving, his sun-flower's glow retreating.
The alchemist did not respond immediately. She fumbled through scattered belongings with trembling fingers, found the crone's precious manual, flipped to the final page. Read the words she had read countless times before but never truly understood.
Sprite-folk's unique nature means they remain unaffected by the Twilight Forest's curse. They are eternal guardians of flowers and crops. For this sacred purpose, they will sacrifice their own lengthy lives willingly.
Guardians of flowers and crops.
She moved slowly to the doorway, gazed with a new sight at the unusually fertile soil not far ahead. That thriving patch of green vitality that pulsed with the faintest blueish glow. Like a tiny heartbeat. Like a promise kept in secret.
The golden light vanished abruptly. The world returned to familiar darkness.
"Will we see each other again?"
She asked the void, voice small and uncertain. The terrible stinging had disappeared when the crimson sea faded, and now she could finally see properly. There, in that small precious patch of farmland, glowed that extraordinarily faint blue light. She had stared at red petals too long, too desperately, completely missing this answer that had been waiting all along.
Time had not taken her, but it had taught her nonetheless.
The witch's notebook lay open in her hands to the page about the three miraculous stars, that celestial trinity meant to guide her path.
"Just kidding about leaving."
The magician's voice came from directly behind her, making her jump. "A simple magician's trick, nothing more. Misdirection and shadow play." His tone turned more serious. "Do you have any idea of the Horizon? The beacon?"
1 comment
Where can I find the continuation for this story 😭