Chapter 1: The Rhythm of Breaking

Chapter 1: The Rhythm of Breaking

Sunday, 8:00 AM. The ritual began.

Leo Vance locked the door to his small, meticulously ordered apartment. The click of the deadbolt was the starting pistol for the only part of his week that felt truly his. His data analysis job was a sea of predictable patterns, which he appreciated, but it was sterile. Confined. The trail was different. It was a living system, but a reliable one. A rhythm he had memorized.

He stood at the trailhead of the Northwood Preserve, the gravel crunching under his hiking boots with a familiar, satisfying sound. The worn wooden sign, its letters faded by years of sun and rain, was an old friend. He tapped his wrist, activating the screen on his fitness watch. Heart rate: 72 bpm, resting. Perfect. He took a deep, deliberate breath of the cool autumn air, letting the scent of pine and damp earth reset his mind.

For the past three years, this was his church. Every Sunday, same time, same path. A 4.7-mile loop he knew as well as the layout of his own apartment. He knew every twist, every incline, every root that tried to snag an unwary ankle. This predictability was his shield against a world that was too loud, too chaotic, too random. His anxiety, a low-frequency hum that buzzed beneath the surface of his life, always went silent out here.

The first mile was a gentle ascent, a corridor of sun-dappled birch trees. Leo’s pace was steady, his breathing falling into the cadence of his footsteps. This was the warm-up, the shedding of the week’s accumulated stress. He nodded to the fallen oak at the first mile marker, its massive trunk resembling a sleeping giant. Everything was as it should be. The world made sense.

It was around the second mile that the rhythm first faltered.

It wasn’t something he saw, but something he didn’t hear. He stopped, cocking his head. Usually, this was where the sound of Jasper Creek began, a cheerful, chattering rush of water over smooth stones. It was the soundtrack to the next half-mile of his hike. But today, there was nothing.

Silence.

Not just the absence of the creek’s sound, but a deeper, more profound quiet. The wind, which had been whispering through the leaves, seemed to have died completely. The chirps of chickadees and the scolding of a squirrel—gone. The silence was so absolute it felt heavy, pressing in on him, absorbing the very sound of his own breathing.

A prickle of unease, the first dissonant note in his Sunday symphony, ran down his spine. He dismissed it. A dry spell, perhaps. Strange for this time of year, but not impossible. He was a man of data and logic. There was always a rational explanation.

He walked on, his boots now seeming unnervingly loud against the dirt path. The silence was a blanket, suffocating the normal, comforting noises of the forest. He reached the bend where he always caught the first glimpse of the creek. His heart gave a hard, painful thud against his ribs.

The creek wasn't just silent. It was gone.

Where a wide, shallow bed of rocks and flowing water should have been, there was only unbroken forest floor. Not a dry, dusty creek bed, but rich, dark soil from which ancient-looking ferns and thick-trunked maples grew, their roots tangled and deep as if they had stood there for a century. There was no sign a creek had ever carved its way through this land.

“No,” Leo whispered, the sound deadened by the oppressive quiet. “No, that’s not right.”

Panic, cold and sharp, began to cut through his carefully constructed calm. He pulled out his phone. The GPS app loaded, and a wave of relief washed over him as the blue dot pulsed steadily. It showed him standing exactly where he should be, a bright blue line indicating the official trail running directly through the impossible grove of trees in front of him.

The data is correct, he told himself, his mantra against the rising tide of fear. The GPS is correct. I’m just… disoriented.

But he wasn't. He knew this trail. He had walked it over one hundred and fifty times. His memory was eidetic when it came to patterns, to maps. The creek was as fundamental to this hike as the trailhead sign.

His logical mind scrambled for purchase, for an explanation that didn’t involve his own sanity fraying at the edges. Had the park service rerouted the trail? Diverted the creek? It seemed impossible. There would have been signs, notices. The ground here looked ancient, undisturbed.

He decided to turn back. The ritual was broken, the peace shattered. He just wanted to be home, behind his locked door, where the world behaved as it was supposed to. He spun on his heel, his eyes tracing the path he had just walked.

And his blood ran cold.

The path wasn't there.

Behind him, where a clear, well-trodden dirt trail should have been winding back through familiar birch trees, stood a wall of dark, menacing pines. They grew in a dense, impenetrable thicket, their lower branches knotted together like grasping claws. They weren't the trees he had just walked past. They were older, darker, their bark the colour of dried blood. It was as if the forest had sealed the way shut behind him.

His heart hammered in his chest, a frantic drumbeat against the all-consuming silence. 72 bpm was a distant memory; his watch was probably screaming at him now. He was trapped. The path ahead was a lie, and the path behind was gone.

He stared at his phone again. The blue dot still pulsed, insisting he was safe, insisting he was on the trail. The map showed the gentle, looping path, a perfect, logical shape. But the world around him was a nightmare of impossible geometry.

He took a hesitant step forward, into the grove where the creek should be, following the phantom trail on his phone. The air grew colder, the light dimmer, as if the sun couldn't penetrate the canopy of these alien trees. The silence deepened until he could hear the rush of blood in his own ears. It was the only sound left in the world.

That’s when he felt it.

It wasn't a sound or a sight. It was a pressure. A shift in the static nothingness around him. The feeling of a gaze settling upon him. It was the ancient, patient awareness of a predator that has just noticed the mouse stumbling into its domain. The forest had been a passive, beautiful system. Now, it felt like an active, malevolent intelligence.

My sanctuary is gone, he thought, the words a cold shard of ice in his mind. It has been replaced by something else.

And it has just started to notice me.