Beneath the Hanging Roots

“Aaron… your voice is breaking. Where are you?”

The wind carried his silence before he answered, drifting over the barren stretch of land with a mournful sigh, as though the earth itself had grown old with secrets too grievous to utter aloud. The sound of Lucy’s voice crackled faintly through the phone in his hand, distant and fragile against the colossal stillness surrounding him.

“I told you… I just stepped away for a minute.”

“A minute turns into trouble with you.”

A feeble smile, scarce visible and touched with that quiet recklessness which belonged wholly to him, stirred at the corner of Aaron’s lips. He walked farther into the pale wilderness, his boots sinking lightly into the untamed grass. The place appeared forgotten—not empty, never truly empty—but abandoned in the peculiar manner of things once beloved and later feared. The land bore traces of absence, as though human footsteps had long ago retreated from it in haste and had never dared return.

The grass reached almost to his knees, wild and uneven, its sharp tips brushing against him like cold fingers. Above, the sky hung low and colourless, veiled beneath heavy clouds that denied the world both warmth and mercy. Even the air possessed an unnatural stillness. No birds called. No creatures stirred. The silence did not feel peaceful; rather, it lingered like a held breath.

And then he slowed.

Something within him shifted, though he could scarcely have named it. Every stone, every brittle branch, every whispering current of wind appeared to impress itself upon his memory with strange urgency. It no longer resembled one of his ordinary wanderings, those impulsive adventures he so often sought merely to escape monotony. No—this felt larger, darker, marked by the dreadful certainty that he would remember this place for the remainder of his life.

But how?

The question brushed past him like the shadow of an unseen hand.

Something ahead drew his attention with quiet insistence. It was no common curiosity now, nor the childish thrill of stumbling upon some hidden corner of the world. The feeling ran deeper. Stranger. As though he had crossed some invisible threshold and wandered beyond the ordinary province of men into something ancient and ethereal.

Behind him, distant voices drifted through the misted air. God alone knew whether they were disturbed by the place or desired to disturb it further.

“Sir! Stay with the group!”

“Let him go,” another muttered darkly. “People like him never listen until something answers back.”

Aaron ignored them. He always had. Guidance sat poorly upon him, and caution even worse. There existed within him a restless hunger for discovery that no warning had ever quite subdued. Some things, he believed, were meant to be found alone.

Yet Lucy—Lucy had always been the exception.

She alone had never made his solitude feel heavy. With her he could speak freely of foolish dreams, impossible places, and the quiet longings he concealed from the rest of the world. She was neither intrusive nor indifferent; her presence settled around him with rare ease, like candlelight in a darkened chamber.

“Lucy…” he said more softly now. “Do you ever feel like some places aren’t just places?”

A pause followed. He could almost picture the confusion knitting her brows together.

“…What does that even mean?”

“It means,” he exhaled slowly, “I think I found something that doesn’t belong here.”

He stopped walking altogether.

For several moments he merely stood there, gazing ahead with cautious wonder, almost as though afraid another pair of eyes might steal the discovery from him. The strange thing before him felt private. Forbidden.

The tree stood at the centre of the clearing.

Not merely tall—present. Terribly present.

It seemed less a part of the earth than the reason the earth existed around it. The trunk was vast and twisted with age, its bark darkened like weathered bone. It bore the appearance of something that had not grown naturally but endured through centuries by sheer will alone.

Yet it was not the height of the tree that rooted Aaron to the spot.

It was what hung from its branches.

Roots.

But not the kind that disappear beneath soil and stone.

These descended from above in long heavy coils, endless and pale, swaying faintly in the wind like strands of silvered hair. Not wild. Not tangled. They hung with dreadful intention, arranged so delicately it almost resembled design rather than growth.

The sight stirred some ancient memory within him.

They resembled the locks of forgotten goddesses from old carvings and ruined temples—those solemn, powerful figures whose beauty always concealed calamity. Every strand appeared aware. Watching. Waiting.

Aaron stood motionless, suspended between fascination and unease.

“Lucy…” his voice lowered instinctively. “It looks like… hair. Like those old depictions, you know? The powerful ones. The kind where every strand means something.”

“Aaron,” her tone shifted at once, sharpened by uneasiness, “step away from it.”

He did not move.

Warnings had never possessed much authority over him, particularly hers—not because he lacked affection for her caution, but because some stubborn portion of him always believed he could master whatever danger presented itself.

This time, he could not.

Slowly, almost reverently, he reached out.

His fingers brushed against one of the hanging roots.

Cold.

Not dead—merely still. Too still. It lacked the quiet warmth carried even by winter trees. The texture beneath his fingertips resembled neither bark nor vine but something unnervingly smooth.

“…There’s something carved here,” he murmured, his voice lowering.

“Don’t,” Lucy replied quickly, fear threading through the single word.

“A heart,” he whispered.

With his thumb he brushed aside a thin veil of frost clinging to the surface.

Then silence.

“Aaron?”

His breath slowed.

“…It says Aaron and Lucy.”

The stillness that followed felt heavier than disbelief.

“That’s not funny.”

“I didn’t do this.” His voice softened almost helplessly. “You know I wouldn’t.”

He traced the carving again, slower now.

“The heart is split,” he said quietly. “Straight through the middle… like someone tore it apart.”

“Aaron, listen to me carefully.” Her voice had tightened with unmistakable dread. “You need to leave. Right now.”

“I’m taking a picture.”

“No, Aaron.”

Click.

The sound echoed unnaturally through the clearing, loud as a gunshot within the suffocating quiet.

Then a voice drifted through the wind behind him.

“You should not mark what is already marked.”

Another followed, lower and nearer.

“Or perhaps… it marks you.”

Aaron turned sharply. “Who said that?”

Nothing.

Only the sighing wind moved through the hanging roots.

“Lucy… I swear someone’s here.”

“Come back,” she said immediately. “I don’t like this.”

Something softened within him at the fear in her voice.

“I miss you,” he admitted quietly.

The confession escaped before he could restrain it. In that instant the strange tree, the unnatural silence, the gnawing unease surrounding him—all of it faded.

“I keep thinking…” he continued, his voice scarcely above a whisper, “if you were here, this wouldn’t feel so strange.”

There came only silence from her end.

“I mean it,” he said more gently. “Every place I go feels incomplete without you.”

Lucy did not answer. Yet Aaron sensed something unsettled within her stillness, as though she stood upon the edge of some dreadful foreknowledge she dared not name aloud. His words touched her, certainly—but not enough to outweigh the darker instinct warning her that something far greater was approaching.

At last she whispered, almost pleadingly:

“Aaron… please just come back.”

Unaware of the danger gathering above him, Aaron leaned lightly against the trunk.

Then the roots moved.

Not swayed.

Adjusted.

His breath caught.

“…Did you hear that?” he whispered.

“What?”

Before he could answer, something seized his ankle.

Cold. Firm. Alive.

“What—?!”

“Aaron?!”

Another root descended, coiling violently around his leg. Then another.

“Lucy, this isn’t—!”

The phone slipped in his trembling grasp. Panic surged through him all at once, swift and merciless, scattering every coherent thought. It felt as though the world itself had slipped beyond his control.

“Hold onto something!” Lucy cried desperately.

“There’s nothing to hold—!”

Voices rose again from somewhere beyond the clearing.

“Do not resist it.”

“He has already been chosen.”

“Another one…”

“What do you mean another one?!” Aaron shouted, terror cracking through his voice.

The ground beneath him shifted.

Not breaking.

Opening.

The roots tightened.

Then they pulled.

Fast. Merciless. Unforgiving.

“Lucy—!”

Her voice shattered through the distance.

“Aaron! Stay with me!”

But his grip failed.

The final thing he saw was the carved heart upon the tree.

Split clean through the centre.

Watching him.

And then—darkness.