Chapter 49: The Whispering Forest
The chamber was dark enough that the inscriptions covering its walls seemed to emerge from the stone rather than decorate it. Their ancient shapes twisted across the surface, some so distorted that staring at them too long made the eyes strain.
Three-eyed statues stood along either side of the chamber, carved from black stone and positioned to face the rows of white-robed figures gathered below. None of the statues moved, yet their countless eyes gave the impression of watching every person in the room.
At the highest point of the chamber stood the leader of the gathering.
He looked down at the hooded figures without speaking for several seconds before his voice finally carried through the silence.
"We have waited long enough."
The words echoed through the chamber.
"For generations, we hid ourselves. We abandoned our names, buried our identities, and watched from places where the world could not reach us."
His gaze moved across the white robes.
"They hunted us because they feared what they did not understand. They called us monsters, cursed blood, abominations. They erased our history and taught their children that our existence was something that should never have been allowed."
A murmur moved through the gathering.
"And we endured it."
His voice hardened.
"We hid while they hunted. We ran while they grew stronger. We allowed them to believe that they had won."
He raised one hand.
"But that age is over."
The chamber fell silent.
"The descendant of the Progenitor has appeared."
Several figures straightened. Others lowered their heads, their hands trembling beneath their robes.
"After all these years, the blood they tried to erase has returned to this world."
His expression slowly changed into something almost reverent.
"Do you understand what that means?"
No one answered.
"We no longer have to wait in the shadows while our enemies decide whether we deserve to exist."
He spread his arms.
"The descendants of those who hunted us will learn what it means to be hunted. The bloodline they tried to bury will rise again, and the will of the Progenitor will not remain silent forever."
A low chant spread through the chamber.
The words were ancient, their meaning preserved through generations of secrecy, but the reverence behind them was unmistakable.
The leader waited until the chanting settled.
"Hail the Progenitor."
His voice echoed through the chamber, and the others joined.
"Hail the Corrupt King."
---
Caelus felt his body lose all sense of weight, suspended in a space without direction.
There was no ground beneath him, no sky above him, not even the sensation of movement. His thoughts remained clear, but his body had nothing to orient itself against.
Then he heard water.
A heartbeat later, he dropped straight into it.
Cold water closed over his head.
His lungs seized as he inhaled on instinct, taking in almost nothing but water. Caelus immediately forced the panic out of his body and focused on the simplest problem first.
Up.
He kicked hard, found the direction of the surface, and drove himself toward it.
He broke through the water and dragged in a breath.
His vision cleared enough to reveal a dark body of water stretching around him. Thick clouds covered the sky, leaving almost no moonlight to illuminate the surrounding landscape.
He turned toward the nearest shore and began swimming.
The water dragged at his clothes, each stroke heavier than it should have been. By the time his boots touched the bottom, his legs had already begun to feel the weight of the soaked fabric.
He pushed himself onto the shore and stood, water dripping from his clothes onto the ground.
Terrible arrival.
Caelus wiped the water from his face and looked around, taking in the shoreline.
Forest surrounded the water on nearly every side, the trees forming a dense wall beneath the darkness. Beyond them, faint hills rose against the cloudy sky.
The shoreline was where it should have been. The surrounding forest matched the description he remembered from his writing. So far, the island was behaving as expected.
Caelus didn’t relax.
The world had already begun deviating from the novel. His own existence had altered things that should never have occurred in the original story.
For now, though, he had a reference point. This section of the island contained only one major water source.
The one he’d just climbed out of.
He checked the shoreline before moving farther inland.
His awareness extended as far as he could manage without using magic, but nothing suggested that a creature or another candidate was close enough to pose an immediate threat.
Great.
At least he had been given a few seconds before the island tried to kill him.
He raised a hand.
"Drain."
Mana moved through the spell and pulled the excess moisture from his clothes, hair, and skin.
The water collected briefly around him before dispersing back into the environment.
Within seconds, the worst of the dampness was gone.
Caelus stopped near the edge of the forest and began organizing the problems in his head.
The examination had only just begun, but he already had enough concerns to make the next several days unpleasant.
First, he needed to rank first.
His father had made that expectation very clear.
Second, he had to survive long enough to actually earn that position. He was probably among the weaker candidates in direct physical ability, and the examination contained people whose capabilities far exceeded anything he could currently match through brute force.
He could not afford to fight like someone stronger than he was.
Third, there was the Contractor accusation.
He didn’t know how many candidates had believed it, but the rumor had spread far enough that some of them might decide killing him was worth the risk.
Fourth was the most troublesome.
He knew this world better than almost anyone present, and that knowledge came with information he couldn’t simply ignore.
Certain people mattered.
Some of them would become important to humanity’s survival later. If one of them died here, the consequences would extend far beyond an examination score.
Then he needed shelter before the weather changed. He needed a hunting route. He needed to determine which regions of the island were worth entering and which were better avoided.
Caelus looked toward the forest.
Survival, points, Contractors, future manpower, food, shelter.
He suddenly felt considerably older than seventeen.
Caelus sighed and moved into the forest.
Tall trees crowded together overhead, their branches forming a canopy that left little room for moonlight to reach the ground. Layers of old leaves softened his footsteps as he went deeper.
He recognized the section almost immediately.
The whispering forest.
One of the examination island’s more irritating regions.
The plants here could create illusions and lure people toward danger by exploiting their false perceptions.
He knew how candidates usually died here.
They mostly relied in their eyes.
Once that happened, the forest only had to wait for them to walk somewhere they shouldn’t.
Caelus had no intention of trusting his eyes.
He ignored the first strange shape that appeared between the trees.
It looked like a path.
It wasn’t.
He expanded his moisture sense.
The Eclipse Ring made the process considerably easier to manage. Moisture in the air, water stored within the vegetation, the movement of living bodies through the surrounding humidity, even the water carried within blood became faint points of information.
It wasn’t the same as sight but it was better in a different way.
Illusions could fool his eyes.
They couldn’t easily reproduce the subtle moisture patterns produced by a real body.
Caelus adjusted his path according to those signals and continued deeper into the forest.
Shapes moved at the edges of his vision.
A path appeared where none existed.
Something large seemed to move between the trees.
He ignored all of it.
He continued like that for hours.
The forest became a test of patience rather than strength. Progress was slow, the forest forcing him to navigate through the terrain using partial information instead.
It wasn’t elegant but it worked.
A high pitched scream cut through the forest.
Caelus stopped walking.
"H-Help!"
The voice came strained and desperate.
He assumed it was another fake call created by the forest.
His moisture sense reached toward the source before he turned his head.
Blood.
Far more than a normal wound should produce.
Someone was being attacked.
Another scream followed, closer this time.
"P-please! Someone h-help me! I Don’t w-want to die! M-Mom!"
Caelus didn’t need to see the poor victim to understand what had probably happened.
One of the creatures of illusion forest had probably caught them.
Caelus remained still for another breath.
He could go.
He could also get himself killed for someone whose name he didn’t even know.
Nah.
Caelus turned away and continued walking.
The victim’s screams gradually disappeared behind him.
---
The forest slowly began to change.
The trees grew farther apart, the undergrowth thinning until the ground became easier to read.
The strange distortions that had followed him through the previous section gradually disappeared, and the air carried fewer of the subtle shifts he had learned to associate with the illusions.
Caelus checked the sky through the gaps in the canopy.
It was already beginning to lighten.
The terrain ahead was still part of the forest, but the ground was drier, the trees more widely spaced, and visibility considerably better.
He had finally made it through.
There was, however, one problem his tactical calculations had failed to solve.
He was hungry.
Caelus had spent most of the night navigating an illusion forest, and he hadn’t eaten since before entering the examination.
Finding something edible would be his next priority.
Caelus started walking.