Chapter 1: The Assignment
Dr. Sarah Chen had spent fifteen years studying the world's most unusual ecosystems, but nothing had prepared her for the Elderwood.
The forest sprawled across the map like a green stain, its boundaries seemingly shifting depending on which century's cartography you consulted. Local legends spoke of travelers who entered and never returned—or worse, those who came back... changed.
"You're certain you want to do this?" Director Morrison asked, sliding the expedition approval across his desk. "We've had three teams turn back at the boundary. One researcher resigned rather than file his report."
Chapter 1: The Assignment
Sarah smiled, the expression not quite reaching her eyes. "Someone has to understand why the oxygen levels in that forest are off the charts. Why satellite imagery shows movement in places no animal should be."
She didn't mention the dreams she'd been having. The ones where trees spoke in frequencies just below human hearing. The ones where roots spelled out her name in the dark earth.
The forest was calling her. Had been calling her for years. It was time to answer.
Chapter 2: First Contact
The transition was immediate. One moment, Sarah was walking through ordinary woodland—birch and oak and the expected underbrush. The next, she was somewhere else entirely.
The trees here were ancient beyond reckoning, their trunks wider than houses, their canopy so dense it created a permanent twilight below. Bioluminescent fungi dotted the forest floor like fallen stars, and the air... the air tasted of something she had no words for.
Welcome, something whispered. Not in her ears, but somewhere deeper. We have waited so long.
Chapter 2: First Contact
Sarah's scientific training warred with what her senses were telling her. The trees were communicating. Not through chemical signals or root networks—though those existed too—but through something that felt terrifyingly like consciousness.
"What are you?" she breathed.
We are what remains, the forest answered. We are what was here before your kind built their first fire. And we remember everything.
Images flooded her mind: ice ages, continental drift, the slow dance of evolution across millennia. And behind it all, a growing dread at what humanity had become.
✨ To be continued... ✨