Chapter 52. But No One Was Home.

There was one last path.

Ydoc had been staring so long at the blue-painted dragons that he almost missed it—
the final trail
just behind the post,
tucked slightly off to the side,
as if it had been forgotten on purpose.

He turned slowly,
and the air around him changed.

No wind.
No birdsong.
No gentle hums from pixies or frogs.

Only the soft groan of distant, hollow trees.

The signpost here was wrong.

Not just old—
wrong.

It was a different wood entirely,
a sickly gray-brown that curled at the edges,
like it had been burned into place
by someone who didn’t want it remembered
but couldn’t bear to tear it down.

The pictograph that once marked this trail
was shattered.
Literally split down the middle.
Whatever was there had been scraped,
gouged,
shattered with something sharp.

Not broken by time.
Broken by emotion.

Hate.
Malice.
Grief, maybe… or fear.

At the very top of the jagged wood,
a few nails still clung—
like teeth—
holding up splinters of a symbol that could no longer be read.

This was not a trail made for walking.
It was a scar left open.

And yet—
the path stretched on, dark and thin,
gray as a ghost.

The forest surrounding it was...

wrong.

The trees were all bare,
not just from season,
but as if they'd given up.
No leaves, no moss.
Just cracked bark and warped arms
that reached like broken bones
to a sky that no longer looked back.

There was no mist here,
no fog.
Just a dry hush.
Like the world had paused.

Even the Divide itself,
that ever-living, ever-breathing forest,
seemed to wither.

The colors were gone.
The magic that hummed in rivers and glowed in rain—
snuffed out.

The ground beneath Ydoc’s feet didn’t feel right either.
It wasn’t soft.
It wasn’t dirt.
It was dust.
Ash, maybe.

And overhead, the sky seemed to fade
into a flat, cloudless grey.
Not storm-gray.
Not even rain-gray.

Just…
emptiness.

Nothing here moved.

Not even the wind.

And at the far end of this lifeless path,
just barely visible beyond the cracked limbs and crooked brush—
a sign.

Simple.
Small.
Crude.

It had been hammered into the trail with twine and teeth,
as if done in silence, by hands that trembled too much to carve words.

But a face had been painted there.

A sad face.

Round, two dots for eyes.
A curved, downturned line for the mouth.

It wasn’t childish.
It was universal.

A message so bare and simple,
it hurt more than words ever could.

This path is mourning.

And yet...

And yet,
Ydoc knew this path.

Not by memory.
Not even by logic.

But by ache.

That unbearable pull in his chest.
The dizzying spiral in his head.
The nosebleed still dried at the edge of his nostril.

This road was his.

Or had been.

Or maybe…
he had done something terrible here.

“I know this place…”

The words left his mouth like a ghost.
Like he hadn’t said them—just breathed them aloud.

His feet didn’t move forward.
They couldn’t.

Because this was not a path he could walk.

Not yet.

Because this wasn’t the Forest of Fall.
Or the Village of Eggs and Laughter.
This wasn’t the blue trail of dragons trying to love again.

This was something else.

This was a part of the Divide that the Divide itself
didn’t want to talk about.

This was the Gray Divide.

And it would wait.

Because it always had.

The trees here weren’t just bare—
they were blackened,
like old cathedral beams left out in the rain too long.
Their twisted branches stretched skyward,
not like arms,
but like forgotten gods,
still reaching for stars
that hadn’t come home in centuries.

The bark curled like old paper,
and the roots rose above the earth—
writhing, tangled, like veins of a buried titan.

Ydoc took a few steps in.

Just a little further.
A little closer to the ache in his chest—
the one that had grown louder,
deeper,
since the first glimpse of that sad painted face.

He breathed out.

And the rain, ever so gentle,
fell like ink.

Then—
“Ow!—Danm IT!.” 

Something caught his shin—sharp.
A jagged edge sticking up from the soft decay of the trail.

He hissed in pain and stepped back.
It wasn’t a root.
It wasn’t a stone.

It was wood.

And not just any wood.
The same wood.

The same wrong wood
as the splintered sign nailed to the post.

He knelt down slowly, brushing aside dead leaves,
wet soil,
and something like char.

There it was.

A half-rotted, deeply gouged plank,
the other piece of the sign.

He picked it up with cautious hands.
It was heavier than it should be.
Soaked with rain, but also something else…

Memory.

The carvings on it—
no, the wounds—
matched the top piece exactly.
They were made in fury,
in sorrow,
in a moment of such violence
that the wood itself seemed to recoil.

But still…

He brought the pieces together, carefully.

One in each hand.

And even though they didn’t perfectly align,
they ached to be whole.

Ydoc’s thumbs moved along the carved lines—
no, the gouges.
He traced them, one after the other.

Felt them.

Felt the rage.
The shame.
The grief.

But then—
he did something simple.

He imagined what it might have looked like before.

What it was,
before the pain.

He let his fingers smooth over the broken ridges.
Let his mind stitch them whole again,
the way children do with dreams.

One line…
two curved edges…
a little peak…

A house.

Yes—
a house.

Nestled in a clearing of trees.
A tiny silhouette.
A roof with smoke curling from a chimney.

And there…
in the window,
he saw a shape.
A round shape.
Wide-eyed.
Sharp-beaked.

A bird.

A creature with feathers…
...A mask?
No—a face.

A tall, lean figure,
always covered in cloaks,
holding a ladle, or a broom,
or maybe a pipe with scented herbs.

He blinked.

And something deep in his soul
shuddered.

“A house… in the woods.”

His voice cracked.
He wasn’t sure why.

“That was home to a bird person…”

The words felt silly.
Like a child’s guess at a bedtime story.

But his body reacted before his mind could argue.

A sob.
Sudden.
Small.
But real.

“...Was this… mine?”

The pieces of the sign clattered to the ground.

And he stood there,
in the slow-falling rain,
holding his arms to his chest,
as if trying to hug the missing piece of himself
back in.

The air was heavier now.

Not with rain—
but with memory.

He knew this place.
Even if the trees wept in silence,
even if the colors had drained,
even if the dirt was packed with a century’s worth of forgetting—

He knew it.

This—

This was before the bruises.
Before the wineglass shatters.
Before the mocking voice at the door.
Before Edwards painted his world with smiling poison.

This was a before.

And it ached.

Ydoc turned.

There—
Just beyond the ruined post.
Roped off.
Almost hidden by the curve of the road—

A telephone booth.

So violently out of place,
it might as well have fallen from the sky.

A single orange light bulb hummed above it,
casting warm color over the clear glass sides
and the black rotary phone within.

The Divide around it remained gray,
quiet,
mourning.

But that booth…
it glowed.

As if it remembered hope.
As if it still believed someone would answer.

A sign was pinned to it.
Old cardboard, softened from rain.
Taped corners sagging.
The marker faded—but still legible.

“Call for help…”
please…
we love you.

The last line was nearly smudged away.
But the word please—
that hit the hardest.

It didn’t feel like a sign meant for everyone.

It felt like a sign meant for him.

Ydoc stood frozen.
His feet, soggy in his boots.
A sharp breeze pulled at his jacket.
Somewhere behind the hills,
a crow called once.
And then silence.

He looked to the door.
Closed.
But unlocked.

The orange glow spilled across the puddle at his feet.

He stepped forward.
One hand on the glass.
His breath visible now.

And just before opening the door—

“This is the story…”

He whispered it.
Not for drama.
But for truth.

“A house… in the woods.”

His house.

His story.