The forest was thick with mist when he heard the low growl again.

  It was just past dawn. The fire had dulled to embers, and the first shafts of sunlight filtered through the Greenwood canopy in golden streaks. The young man stood alone, breath held, heart beating a steady rhythm against the silence.

  The creature from the night before hadn’t been imagined. The gleam of those yellow eyes, the almost-human intelligence in their gaze — he could still feel it, watching from the darkness beyond the trees.

  He scanned the undergrowth, hand instinctively resting on the suitcase at his side.

  There was a rustle to the left — subtle, but deliberate.

  He turned.

  Then, without warning, it leapt from the underbrush.

  It was massive — the size of a stag, but shaped like a wolf. Its fur was pale as moonlight, matted and tangled with bits of moss and bark, as if it had been grown from the forest itself. Its fangs gleamed, long and curved, and there was something unnatural in the way its legs bent — jointed like a spider’s, giving it a disturbing grace as it skidded into the clearing.

  The girl stirred at the sound, blinking herself awake, while the stranger rose fluidly, without alarm, as though he’d expected this.

  “Get back!” the young man shouted, stepping forward, body between the beast and the camp.

  The creature didn’t attack immediately. It crouched low, sniffing the air, its eyes fixed on the girl’s staff — specifically, the glowing green stone nestled within the gnarled wood.

  The girl rose to her feet, lifting her staff with practiced hands. Its glow brightened.

  “A Pale Fang,” the stranger murmured. “A guardian of the Hollow’s threshold. They haven’t been seen in centuries.”

  “It’s not attacking,” the girl said quietly, watching the creature with unblinking calm. “It’s... waiting.”

  The young man’s hand hovered over the latch of the suitcase. “For what?”

  The stranger’s gaze was fixed on the beast. “For recognition.”

  Before anyone could stop her, the girl stepped forward.

  The creature growled low — not hostile, but warning.

  Slowly, deliberately, she lifted her staff and tapped the end gently against the moss-covered earth. A ripple of green light flowed from the stone, illuminating the clearing like sunlight through leaves.

  The Pale Fang’s eyes narrowed. It lowered its head slightly, ears flicking, and let out a breath — a foggy plume of air that reeked of old bark and stone.

  “Don’t move,” the girl whispered to the young man. “It’s testing us.”

  With a grace that belied its size, the Pale Fang stepped forward. One paw. Then another. It stopped barely two arm’s lengths away from her, its breath shallow and erratic, its eyes darting between her face and the staff.

  Then — it bowed.

  Not deeply, but with unmistakable purpose. Head lowered. Ears back. Submission.

  The girl’s eyes widened, and a sharp intake of breath escaped her lips.

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  “It recognizes the staff,” the stranger said. “You’re marked.”

  The creature turned to the young man then — and growled again. Louder this time. Not threatening, but questioning. Its eyes scanned him, resting briefly on the suitcase.

  It stepped closer, sniffing the case.

  And then, it backed away, growling low again — this time in what sounded eerily like disappointment.

  “It knows I don’t belong,” the young man muttered.

  The stranger nodded. “And yet, it spares you.”

  The Pale Fang took one last look at the group. Then, with a sudden bound, it turned and vanished into the woods, silent as a shadow.

  The young man exhaled only when he could no longer hear its movement.

  The girl looked down at her staff, then at the direction the creature had vanished into. “That wasn’t just a wild beast.”

  “No,” the stranger said. “It was a guardian. And its appearance means we are close.”

  They broke camp within the hour, and their path took on a new tone — quieter, more watchful.

  The Greenwood changed as they moved deeper. The trees grew taller, their trunks twisted, bark worn smooth by time and magic. Vines coiled like serpents around stone pillars that emerged from the ground like broken teeth. The air grew heavier, not with danger, but with memory.

  At midday, they stopped at a clearing with a stone altar half-buried in moss. The girl knelt beside it, brushing her fingers over the carved surface.

  “Elven,” she murmured. “Older than anything in the south.”

  The young man crouched beside her. “Can you read it?”

  “Not all of it. But I recognize this—” she pointed to a sigil carved into the stone, shaped like an eye inside a hollow circle. “This is the mark of the Hollow.”

  The stranger stood nearby, arms crossed. “It is said the Hollow was not just a place, but a memory — one forgotten by all save those who chose to remember.”

  “Sounds like a contradiction,” the young man said.

  “It’s magic,” the stranger replied with a faint smile. “Contradiction is the point.”

  The girl stood, wiping her hands. “We need to keep moving. I can feel the pull. The staff is reacting more strongly now.”

  They continued through terrain that grew stranger by the hour. The forest floor was littered with glowing fungi. Strange birds with crystalline feathers watched them from the branches, unafraid. At one point, they crossed a stream that flowed uphill, defying all reason.

  By late afternoon, they reached a steep incline where the trees thinned and stone ruins emerged from the earth like the bones of a buried city.

  And there — just beyond a broken archway — stood another Pale Fang.

  This one was smaller, older perhaps, with fur streaked grey and one eye clouded.

  It did not growl.

  Instead, it turned and walked.

  Leading them.

  As the sun dipped behind the trees, they followed the creature along a narrow path that twisted through crumbling towers and shattered bridges over chasms lost in shadow.

  Finally, they reached it.

  The Hollow.

  Not a place — but an absence.

  Before them stretched a clearing where nothing grew. No trees, no moss, no stone. Just a vast circle of perfectly flat earth, untouched by time or decay. At its center was a single tree — dead, leafless, its bark blackened. The wind stopped at its edge. No birds sang. No insects stirred.

  And at the base of the tree… a door.

  Wooden. Ancient. Bound in silver.

  The Pale Fang stopped at the edge of the circle and looked back at them.

  “This is it,” the girl whispered.

  The stranger’s voice was calm. “Beyond that door lies what was lost.”

  The young man stepped forward slowly, the suitcase in his hand suddenly heavier than ever before.

  “What do we do now?” he asked.

  The girl looked at him — truly looked — for the first time with a strange softness. “We remember.”

  And then, the Pale Fang howled.

  A deep, mournful sound that shook the leaves of the trees behind them.

  The wind rose again — this time not as a breeze, but as a voice.

  Whispering.

  Calling.

  The girl stepped forward, and the staff in her hand burst into light — not green now, but white.

  And the door at the tree’s base opened.

  Not with a creak — but with a silence so profound it felt like the world had held its breath.