Rowan stumbled into the clearing for the fourth time that day. Three days lost. Three days of his mother waiting. He kicked the dirt and shouted at the trees, begging for a path home. This time, the forest answered. The ground shivered. Vines crawled up from the soil and twisted into a wooden cross, blooming with pink and orange and purple flowers. A voice that was not a voice pressed into his skull. Leave something behind, it said. Pay the price, and the path will open. Rowan's hand went to his neck. He pulled out the small carved pendant his mother had pressed into his palm the morning he left. His chest ached. He stepped forward and hung it on the flowered totem. The petals closed around it like a fist. A new trail split open between two trees, dark and waiting. Rowan walked toward it, lighter by one pendant, heavier by one promise he could not take back.

The new trail pulled Rowan forward like a thread on a spool. Trees thinned. Light grew. He smelled smoke from a chimney and heard a dog bark far away. His village waited just past the last row of trunks. But his feet slowed at the edge. Something in his chest tugged backward, sharp and nameless, as if a hook had caught behind his ribs. He turned. A small girl stood in the shadow of a giant red mushroom cap, her dress stitched from petals, her eyes too round and too bright. She did not speak. She only watched. Rowan felt the nameless thing leave him and settle into her, quiet as a coin dropped in water. He stepped across the boundary. The forest closed behind him, and the mushroom girl stayed, holding whatever he had lost.