CHAPTER 1: The long walk

The morning the Long Walk began, the sky hung low and gray, as if the clouds themselves were waiting to see who would make it to the end this year. The path stretched out from the edge of Briarfield Village like a thin scar across the land — straight, endless, and older than anyone alive.

Tessa stood at the starting line with her pack slung over one shoulder, trying not to let her nerves show. Everyone walked the Long Walk eventually. It was tradition. A rite of passage. A test. But knowing that didn’t make her heartbeat any slower.

“Remember,” her father said quietly beside her, “the Walk isn’t about speed. It’s about who you become along the way.”

Tessa nodded, though she wasn’t sure she understood. People came back from the Walk changed — some wiser, some quieter, some carrying stories they refused to tell. And a few… didn’t come back at all.

A bell rang, sharp and clear.

The crowd fell silent.

The Walkers — twenty of them this year — stepped forward. Tessa felt the weight of a hundred eyes on her back. She tightened her grip on the strap of her pack and took her first step onto the ancient path.

The ground felt different immediately. Firmer. Colder. As if the earth beneath remembered every footstep that had ever touched it.

Ahead, the path cut through the fields, then dipped into the dark line of the forest. Beyond that, no one in the village could say for sure. The Walk changed every year. Some said the path moved on its own, bending toward whatever lesson each Walker needed to learn.

Tessa wasn’t sure she believed that — until she felt the faintest tremor under her feet, like the path was waking up.

A boy she didn’t know walked beside her, tall and quiet, his eyes fixed straight ahead. On her other side, an older girl hummed under her breath, maybe to calm herself. The group spread out slowly, each person finding their own pace.

By the time they reached the forest’s edge, the village was a distant cluster of shapes behind them.

Tessa paused, staring into the shadows between the trees. The air smelled of pine and something else — something metallic, like a storm waiting to break.

The boy beside her finally spoke. “Once we cross in,” he said, “the path decides.”

Tessa swallowed. “Decides what?”

He didn’t answer. He just stepped forward and disappeared into the trees.

Tessa took a breath, squared her shoulders, and followed.

The forest swallowed the light behind her, and the Long Walk truly began.