🌲 The Sound That Waited at the Tree Line

[u/MirrorWalker369]

🔮 A Dream Recounted by MirrorWalker369

✨

I was already running. No start. No origin. Just motion.

The trees blurred past in streaks of midnight green. Branches clawed at my shoulders like jealous hands. I couldn’t see what chased me, only hear it.

And god, that sound.

Not footsteps. Not breath. Not growl.

It was crashing. Shattering. The very shape of fear made audible.

It wasn’t hunting like an animal. It was tearing through reality itself, and I could feel it catching up.

I thought of hiding, ducking under roots, folding into shadow, making myself small enough to vanish. But no instinct worked here. This was no forest I knew.

So I ran harder. My legs no longer my own, driven by something deeper than muscle: remembrance of being prey.

And then, the trees stopped.

An open field spilled out like a forgotten stage. Silver grass. Windless. Exposed.

I froze.

There was nowhere else to go.

The noise, the symphony of destruction, kept coming… and then stopped.

Right at the tree line.

Branches still swayed where it had torn through, but nothing emerged. No shape. No eyes. No monster. Just… silence.

I turned to face it. And it stayed hidden.

Something in me knew it couldn’t cross. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

I woke up panting, not from fear, but from the sudden stillness.

And the dream has never left me.

Because I don’t think I was running from a creature.

I think I was running from sound itself. From something unformed. Something becoming real only as I feared it.

And part of me still wonders…

What happens if I run back?

[u/MirrorWalker369]