The Cairn's Silent Witness

Deep in the boreal expanse, Andie, Rex, and Saol find themselves pursued, their discovery drawing unwanted attention. The forest, usually a familiar friend, now holds a creeping dread.

The thud of Andie’s boots on the damp forest floor was a frantic, irregular rhythm, echoing the beat against her ribs. Spruce branches clawed at her parka, a hundred tiny pinpricks on her exposed skin. She ignored them. Behind, the crunch of dry leaves, too heavy, too steady, was not Rex, was not Saol. It was the others. The pursuers.

Rex, ahead, a blur of grey, didn’t break stride. He moved with the quiet grace of a predator or prey. Andie envied it, this ability to flow through the unforgiving undergrowth. Her own movements were all sharp angles and clumsy stumbles. Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead, stinging her eyes.

“Still with us?” Saol’s voice, a low rasp, came from somewhere behind her left shoulder. Andie didn’t turn. She couldn’t spare the breath.

“Aye.” A single syllable, choked. Her lungs burned. Every inhale tasted of pine and panic.

They had been three days out from the last trapper’s cabin, heading north, deeper into the untouched sprawl of the Old Growth. The map, yellowed parchment with crude, hand-drawn symbols, promised a cairn. Not just any cairn, but the Cairn of Whispers, a place of old stories, almost forgotten. Andie had dismissed most of the lore as campfire tales, meant to keep young apprentices from wandering too far.

Until they found it. A pile of rough-hewn stones, taller than a man, impossibly old, covered in moss and an intricate lacework of lichens. It wasn’t on any modern chart. Buried beneath the central stone, not treasure, not a scroll, but something else entirely. Something humming. Something cold and alive.

And that’s when the feeling started. The prickle on the nape of her neck, the sudden, unnatural stillness of the forest. The birds had gone quiet. Even the mosquitos seemed to vanish. Then, the sound. A faint crack of a twig, too deliberate, too heavy. Not an animal. Something that walked on two legs and knew how to be silent.

### The Hum Beneath the Stones

They’d been too slow. Too curious. Rex had touched the artifact first, his usually impassive face creasing with a frown. It was a smooth, dark sphere, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, pulsing with an inner, soft blue light. Not bright, not aggressive, just… there. A steady, insistent hum emanated from it, vibrating through the rock, through their bones.

Saol had pulled a thin silver chain from her pocket, wrapping it around the sphere. The hum quieted, dulled to a mere tremor. "It's… not good," she'd said, her voice tight, unusual for her. Saol rarely spoke in absolutes.

Now, Andie felt the sphere, warm against her sternum, tucked deep inside her parka. The silver chain was cold, but the hum still seeped through, a low thrumming against her ribs. It felt like a second heartbeat, alien and insistent. She hated it.

Rex suddenly stopped, a hand raised. Andie almost collided with him. He pointed. Ahead, a faint deer trail, barely visible, veered sharply east. "Swamp," he grunted, his breath coming in short bursts. "Left. Through the alder thicket."

The alder thicket was a nightmare. A tangled mesh of young, rubbery branches, grabbing, tearing, slapping. Andie pushed through, her arms aching, her face scraped. The ground beneath was softer here, a swampy mess that sucked at her boots. She could feel the water seeping through the leather, cold and cloying.

They emerged, gasping, onto a slightly higher ridge. Behind them, the alders thrashed. Not with wind, but with bodies. Heavy bodies. They were close.

“Too many,” Saol muttered, wiping mud from her cheek. Her eyes, usually bright with calculation, were shadowed. “And fast.”

Andie looked back. A flicker of movement between the alders. A glint of something dark. "They're not giving up," she said, stating the obvious. The words felt hollow, inadequate.

Rex turned, his gaze sweeping the tree line. His hand went to the worn hilt of his hunting knife. "Diversion," he said, his voice flat. He looked at Andie. “West. You and Saol. I’ll draw them off.”

Andie’s breath hitched. “No. We stick together. We always stick together.” The rule. The most important rule. Since they were kids, running through these same woods, playing at being explorers. Now it wasn’t a game.

“Less chance,” Rex cut her off, his eyes hard. “They follow one. The other two escape. Better odds.” He didn't wait for an argument. He turned, melted into the deeper woods, heading in the opposite direction from the deer trail. A faint snap of a twig, then silence.

Andie stared after him, her heart a lead weight. "Rex!" she whispered, but he was gone. Foolish. Reckless. But she knew him. He wouldn’t have offered if he didn’t think it was their best, only, chance. Rex hated talking. Loved moving. He knew the woods better than his own skin.

Saol gripped Andie’s arm, her fingers surprisingly strong. “He’ll be fine. He knows these woods. More than we do, still.” Her voice was steady, but her grip was a silent command. Move.

---

Andie forced her feet to move, east, deeper into the less trodden parts of the forest. The pursuit seemed to have shifted. The sounds were more distant now, concentrated on Rex’s path. A small relief, quickly overshadowed by a gnawing fear. What if Rex didn’t make it back? What if he was doing this because he knew it was a dead end for all three?

She focused on the details: the delicate pink of fireweed blooms pushing through the undergrowth, the way the late afternoon sun slanted through the canopy in fragmented gold and green. Anything to keep her mind from picturing Rex, cornered, fighting against impossible odds.

Saol moved fluidly beside her, occasionally pausing to break a branch or scuff her boot in a particular way. "Covering our tracks?" Andie asked, her voice still ragged.

Saol shook her head. "No. Making new ones. Different ones. More confusing. They track patterns. Not individual steps." Her explanation was terse, as always. But Andie understood. Saol saw the forest as a complex puzzle, the pursuers as logic-driven opponents.

They moved for what felt like hours. The sun began its slow, northern descent, casting long, distorted shadows that danced and stretched like mocking figures. The air grew cooler, carrying the damp scent of nightfall. Still no sign of Rex. No sound of pursuit, either. Just the deepening quiet of the forest, which felt more menacing than any chase.

Andie stopped by a trickling stream, its water icy cold against her chapped lips. She splashed her face, trying to wash away the fear, the exhaustion, the sticky hum from the sphere. It was still there, a low vibration, a constant reminder of their folly.

"What do they want with it?" she asked Saol, her voice raspy. "The… thing."

Saol sat on a fallen log, meticulously cleaning mud from her boot with a broad leaf. She looked up, her gaze distant, fixed on something beyond the trees. "Control, maybe. Power. The sphere… it's not just ancient. It's an anchor. A focal point. Something to bend the will of this place."

Andie frowned. "Bend the will? What does that even mean? It's just a rock. A glowing rock."

"No," Saol said, her voice softer than usual, almost a whisper. "This forest… it has its own will. Its own deep currents. It remembers. The sphere… it feels like it channels that. Draws it in. Concentrates it. And someone wants to harness that power. For their own ends."

Andie shivered, despite the humidity. The idea of the forest having a 'will' wasn't new to her, but Saol spoke of it with a certainty that chilled her. It turned the familiar woods into something monstrously alive, aware, and potentially hostile.

They ate what meagre rations they had left: dried berries, a small piece of jerky. The silence between them was heavy, filled with unspoken anxieties. Rex’s absence was a gaping hole. They had always been a trio, a self-sufficient unit. Now, they were two, and Andie felt the sudden, crushing weight of leadership. Every decision now rested solely on her.

She felt a sudden urge to just bury the sphere. To leave it, to run, to forget they ever found the cairn. But the humming, that internal, relentless thrum, would never let her forget. It had embedded itself, a parasitic beat within her.

---

### The Edge of the Known

They moved through the deepening twilight. The air grew thick with mosquitos, buzzing persistently around their ears, a natural torment after the unnatural silence. The forest here was older, the trees taller, their crowns forming an almost unbroken ceiling, blocking out the last streaks of sunset. It felt like entering a different world, ancient and indifferent.

Saol stopped abruptly, holding up a hand. Andie froze, her senses on high alert. A low, guttural growl vibrated through the ground. Not animal. Something… different. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

“They’re not human,” Andie breathed, the thought finally coalescing. She’d tried to rationalize it, to believe they were just a rival group of prospectors, or some lost hikers. But the relentless, silent tracking, the coordinated movements, the sheer unnerving presence… it wasn’t human.

Saol nodded slowly. “They’re not. Not in the way we understand it. They're… fragments. Manifestations. Drawn by the sphere. Drawn by the ancient energies it taps into.” She spoke with a detached, clinical air, as if analysing a specimen.

“Fragments of what?” Andie asked, her voice barely audible. Her hand went to the lump beneath her parka, the sphere’s cold silver chain. The hum was louder now, more insistent, almost a throb.

“The forest remembers,” Saol repeated, her eyes now wide, staring into the dark. “The spirits of the land. The ancient powers. They’re not benevolent, Andie. Not all of them. And the sphere… it’s a beacon to the hungry ones.”

A branch snapped, loudly, just metres to their left. Then another, to their right. They were surrounded. The growls grew louder, a chorus of deep, unsettling rumbling. Andie could almost feel the vibration in the soles of her feet, rising through her bones. The air grew thick, not just with humidity, but with an oppressive, unseen force. Her head swam.

“What do we do?” Andie asked, her voice cracking. The leader. The burdened leader. She needed an answer, a plan, a way out. She had to protect Saol. She had to get them both out. Rex was already risking his life for them. She couldn't fail.

Saol gripped her hand, her touch cold. Her face, pale in the encroaching darkness, was set with a grim determination Andie had rarely seen. “We run. And we don’t look back.”

Before Andie could react, Saol pulled her, not deeper into the impenetrable woods, but towards a narrow, almost invisible cleft in a sheer rock face. It looked too small, too dark, like a wound in the earth itself. The growls surged behind them, a wave of guttural sound that seemed to shake the very trees.

They scrambled into the cleft, Andie scraping her knees, her hands tearing on rough stone. Inside, it was a damp, cramped passage, barely wide enough for one person. It sloped downwards, into the absolute, suffocating blackness of the earth.

The growls outside faded slightly, muffled by the rock. But the hum of the sphere against Andie’s chest intensified, vibrating furiously. It wasn’t just a beacon to the hungry ones; it felt like it was attracting something from within the earth itself. Something ancient and trapped. The air grew heavy, thick with a smell like wet dust and something metallic, like static charge before a storm.

Andie could hear Saol’s ragged breathing, a desperate, shallow sound in the darkness. She pushed forward, one hand on the rough stone wall, the other instinctively clutching the sphere. It pulsed violently, a silent scream against her ribs. She could feel the tremors in the rock, not just from the surface, but from below. The passage twisted, narrowed, the air growing colder, heavier, denser. And then, far ahead in the suffocating dark, a new sound began. A deep, resonant *thrum* that wasn't the sphere. It was larger. Older. Calling back.

Something else lived beneath the cairn. Something the sphere was waking. And they were heading right into its grasp.

The ancient forest, deep and uncaring, had revealed its first true horror. And Andie knew, with a certainty that froze her blood, that this was only the beginning of what the cairn had awakened.

This was not a simple hunt. This was an invitation. And they had accepted.