Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 233: Ch231. Rememberance

Chapter 233: Ch231. Rememberance

The forest grew stranger the farther north they went.

What began as woods soon became somewhat like a deadly silent cathedral. Trees thickened until their roots rose like ramparts, great twisting veins that curled over the earth. Leaves no longer rustled in the breeze, because there was no breeze.

There was not even the faintest breeze.

Not in a dead way, not even in a silent one.

It felt as if the forest was listening.

Miles walked ahead, his club in one hand, the other outstretched to brush moss-thick trunks as they passed. Each time he touched one, the pulse deep inside him, the same one that had started small, weeks ago, flickered in response.

It was growing more frequent, more precise.

It did not hum like System notifications. It did not announce itself with Skill pings or cold little status boxes.

It felt instead, like recognition.

Like the world saying...

"Oh, you are still here..."

Sarissa limped beside him, favoring her recovering leg. Her eyes and ears scanned everything, every rustle, every shadow that lingered longer than it should.

Behind them, Dee padded silently, its tail twitching. The salamander had grown again. Now the size of a large dog, though it moved more like a cat, low and fluid.

Its pupils were slit and gleaming, its eyes now smaller than before, and Miles could swear that its footsteps left faint scorch marks that quickly faded.

"You feel it too..." Sarissa said quietly, not stopping.

"Yeah. Like the trees are... Not watching. But remembering." Miles nodded.

They passed beneath a massive overhang, roots hanging like chandeliers of bone, and emerged into a clearing covered in small white flowers, deciding to take a small break.

And from above, when silence stilled, a voice drifted.

"How poetic. Remembering, though you might be flattering them. Trees rarely remember the same way people do."

Sarissa jumped.

"Cheshire, what the hell...?" Miles groaned.

He was lounging upside-down on a branch that didn’t appear to have existed until just now. Head hanging, tail curled around the limb like a question mark, one eye open, the other blinking in lazy sequence, his grin ever impossibly large.

"Don’t mind me." He said, grinning. "I’ve always liked this grove, very melancholy. Trees that knew fire, trees that grew after."

"After what?" Sarissa asked. She already knew better than to expect a straight answer.

"After the first End, before the first Beginning. Somewhere in between, where all the good stories rest."

Dee hissed at him. Cheshire blinked at the salamander and sniffed theatrically.

"You’ve gotten spicy, I like you."

"We’re heading north." Miles turned back to the path.

"You are." Cheshire said. "North is full of surprises. Mostly teeth, and things with no mouths that bite anyway. But!"

He flipped upright in a single impossible motion and gestured grandly with his paw.

"It’s also where the forest forgets the memories of the future. Not just lacks it, forgets it. And that’s where you’ll find the marrow of things. The parts of yourselves you haven’t lied to yet."

"What does that mean?" Sarissa blinked.

Cheshire disappeared in a blink of leaves, and they moved on.

***

They passed beneath arching roots like gates, and down into a basin where the air tasted faintly metallic. Miles paused often now, but not to rest. To listen.

The pulse was more than a presence now, it had begun to take rhythm. It moved when he did, and paused when he considered.

It guided him.

Sarissa crouched at one point and touched the bark of a blackened stump. Her fingers brushed faint glyphs, not words, but patterns that looked like glyphs.

Stories encoded in shape, symbols like the ones Miles had seen by the pool.

"This one means ’First Light’." She said, almost automatically.

"How do you know that?" Miles frowned, tilting his head.

"I don’t... I just... Do." She frowned back.

Miles didn’t question it, because he felt it too. Even though he was not able to understand the glyphs as well as to read them out loud.

They made camp early, though the sky above never really shifted, Tir’Serene’s forest light filtering eternally dim, and they ate for strength, not schedule.

Time felt like a lie here.

And they stayed quiet.

That night, Sarissa dreamed. Not the aching dreams of fear and exhaustion, but something else.

She stood beneath a mountain that bled light. A field stretched before her, dotted with spears. Not stuck in the ground, but rising from it, like plants.

Each one singing a single note.

And behind her, a voice spoke in promise.

’You begin.’

She woke with tears in her eyes, unsure of why, the memory of the dream fading with the first light.

***

Two days later, the thing returned.

They found its sign near a ravine. Bones, crushed and drained.

Hollowed.

Dee sniffed the air and let out a low, keening growl.

Sarissa raised her spear. Her limp had improved, but tension returned to her stance.

Miles felt the pulse slow now, not stopping.

Waiting.

Cheshire appeared again, sitting in a tree that overlooked the site.

"I’d suggest running. But you won’t, you can’t. It’s far too late for that, right?"

"What is it?" Miles looked up at him.

"Oh, a question! I love those. Even better when they come with fear."

"Chess..."

"Fine." He stretched languidly. "It’s what the forest forgot. Something that tried to drink from its power and choked on it. Now it wants Stories, but can’t make its own. So, it tries to steal them."

Sarissa’s knuckles went white on her spear.

"It’s hunting us."

"Oh no, darling. It’s learning you. And soon, it’ll try to end you. But don’t worry!" He grinned wide. "Endings are rather your thing, aren’t they, my dear boy, Miles?"

And he vanished again.

***

That night, they didn’t sleep, choosing to keep the fire low, and their weapons close. Dee stood guard without being told, back arched, eyes unblinking.

The air around them felt like teeth.

The wind didn’t blow, and yet the leaves rustled.

Miles stood, gripping his club, his breath steady. The pulse inside him flared and sank, but it was not fear.

It was anticipation.

Sarissa stepped to his side, wordless.