The map was wrong.

Mara knew this because the road had ended about three miles ago, but the forest didn't seem to care. Trees crowded areas where the ink had promised open ground, their branches knitting together overhead until the light above thinned and turned green. The air smelled damp and old, like something sealed too long had only just been opened.

She stopped walking.

The silence wasn’t complete - there were birds, somewhere far off, and the soft ticking sounds of insects - but she felt watched, almost as if the forest was holding its breath, sensing danger. Mara adjusted the strap of her pack and told herself she was being foolish. Maps were wrong all the time. Places changed. Nature took over. That didn’t necessarily mean that anything was wrong.

Still, she didn’t step forward.

Half-buried in leaf litter at her feet laid a stone marker. It was no taller than her knee; it was smooth on one side, split on the other, like it had been broken rather than gently placed down. Someone had carved a symbol into its face; a circle, open at the bottom, with a single line drawn down through it.

Mara had seen this symbol before.

Not in any book. Not on any sign. Not anywhere else, but-

She’d seen it in a dream she barely remembered—one of those dreams that left a feeling behind, the type you remember but don't know why.

Behind her, the forest made a sound.

Not a footstep. Not a gust of wind. Something slower. Heavier.

Mara turned.

There was nothing there.

When she looked back, the symbol on the stone marker started glowing on and off again, releasing a peaceful hum onto the sacred path. It seemed to be speaking to her, telling her to touch it, to interact with it so that its purpose could be fulfilled.

Only the path ahead remained, stretching far into the trees, as if it had always been the only way for her to go.

After a moment, Mara stepped on the stone.

The forest and Mara both exhaled.

Mara followed. It was not as if she didn't want to - but she certainly was not commanding her legs to carry her at the pace they were. For a second, a tune flashed in her min d- Yellow Brick Road - from the film her father had loved in his boyhood. Mara continued.

The path narrowed, then widened again, as if a throat swallowing. Roots curled along its edges like knuckles, but the ground beneath her boots was smooth, worn flat by time. With each step, the green light shifted, warming from moss to gold, and the hum behind her softened until it became part of her pulse. She realized, distantly, that the forest no longer felt like it was watching her. It felt like it was waiting.

She noticed then that the trees were not random. They leaned inward at intervals, forming arches, their bark scarred with variations of the same symbol from the stone. Some were faint, nearly healed over. Others were fresh, pale wood exposed, as if carved only days ago. Mara reached out without thinking and brushed one with her fingers. It was warm.

A memory surfaced—not a dream this time, but a moment: her father tracing a shape on the fogged window when she was small, telling her some roads only appeared when you were ready to walk them. She had laughed then, wiped the glass clean. He was trying to cher her up after she didn't make the gymnastics team. Standing here, she didn’t laugh.

Ahead, the path bent sharply, and for the first time since stepping on the stone, Mara felt her legs slow. The hum deepened. Whatever lay beyond the bend was the reason the marker existed at all.