The Forest Between Seconds

Chris Orwyn 1 story

Summary

Some doors should never be opened. For seventeen years, Rowan has lived with one unanswered question: What really happened to his mother? His father has always given him the same answer. She left. Then, on an ordinary rainy afternoon, an old brass clock that once belonged to his mother stops at 16:33. A woman's voice whispers Rowan's name. And his bedroom disappears. His desk remains. His laptop remains. The clock remains. Everything else has become a vast, impossible forest where rain hangs motionless between the trees—and something is watching him. Pulled into the mysterious kingdom of Aveloria, Rowan discovers a world suffering from a terrifying affliction. People are forgetting names, faces, families, and pieces of themselves. There he meets Liora, a girl carrying secrets of her own, Marek, a hunter who trusts no one, and Nym, a strange creature whose silver bells seem to remember things no one else can. But Rowan has discovered something Aveloria was never meant to know. He can borrow time. And every second he takes has a price. A memory. A piece of himself. As Rowan searches for the truth about his mother, he begins to realize that her disappearance was never the beginning of the story. It was only the beginning of his.