First message
The forest did not notice the moment it changed.
That was Silas’s favorite kind of moment.
One second, the clearing held stillness—perfect, untouched, wrapped around the sleeping spirit like a fragile dream.
The next—
It didn’t.
Silas sat cross-legged exactly where the spirit had been.
Where they should have been.
“…Oh,” he murmured, tilting his head as he looked down at his own hands, flexing his fingers slowly. “That was easier than expected.”
The air around him shimmered, the frozen boundary of time flickering uncertainly—as if confused by what it now held.
He grinned.
And the forest noticed that.
The leaves at the edge of the clearing trembled, though there was no wind. Light fractured strangely between the branches, stretching too long, bending in unnatural angles.
Silas leaned back onto his palms, staring up through the canopy.
“Sleeping is so boring,” he sighed, voice light and sing-song. “All that dreaming… and no one to watch you do it.”
A faint ripple passed through him.
For a split second—just a blink—his body vanished.
Only his eyes remained.
Then only his smile.
Then nothing.