I've always believed that shared trauma brings people closer. War stories, heartbreaks, terrible camping trips gone wrong—there's something about facing the unknown together that reshapes friendships.
But this?
This was something else entirely.
Back inside the cottage, we sat in silence. The only sound was the steady hum of the fridge, a weird comfort amidst all this madness.
Bobby was the first to break it. "We need to talk."
He didn't say it with panic or fear. Just certainty. That was Bobby for you. Always the guy who'd sit through a hurricane with a notepad in hand, diagramming wind patterns. Logic was his armor.
"I've been keeping notes," he said, tapping his worn notebook. "Patterns. Anomalies. Time stamps. It's not just about the forest anymore. It's us."
Jacob frowned. "What do you mean us?"
"I think we're being... synced. Like the forest isn't just watching us—it's responding to us."
He met my eyes. "Especially you, Alex."
I blinked. "Why me?"
"Because every major event so far—your phone call, your reflection, the duplicate you, even the siren—you're always the first to notice."
I wanted to argue. But I couldn't. Deep down, I'd felt it too. The forest... it pulled at something in me.
Maybe because I'm the one still trying to figure out who I am.
Bobby leaned back. "I've also been thinking about the woman in the portal. What she said."
Jacob crossed his arms. "The whole 'you were chosen' bit? Yeah. Still not buying that."
That was typical Jacob. The realist. The skeptic. But not because he didn't believe in magic—because he'd been burned before. A failed startup, a rocky marriage that still haunted his quiet moments. He'd learned to rely on facts. Control. Predictability.
"This isn't something we can chart on a spreadsheet," I said.
Jacob gave me a look. "Exactly why it worries me."
Ambrose, who had been surprisingly quiet, finally stood up from the windowsill. He stared out at the forest before turning back, face half-lit by the pale dawn.
"You know what scares me the most?" he asked.
We all looked at him.
He forced a smile. "I think I like it. The weirdness. The unknown. The not knowing what tomorrow is. It's like... for the first time in my life, I feel like I'm not just existing."
It hit me then—Ambrose, the class clown, the guy who cracked jokes to deflect everything real, had been silently chasing purpose. His life had always been a blur of part-time gigs, spontaneous road trips, dating app disasters... But this forest? This gave him a mission. A narrative.
"We're changing," Bobby said softly. "Whether we want to or not."
Jacob sighed. "And what if we don't like who we become?"
Silence again.
I stared at my reflection in the window, half-expecting to see another version of myself wave back. "Then we take control. We learn. We map this thing from the inside out."
That's when Bobby perked up. "Actually... that brings me to something."
He darted to his bag and pulled out a digital stopwatch and an atomic timekeeper app.
"Let's run an experiment," he said. "We set one device here, in the cottage. One we take to the portal tomorrow. We go in for, say, ten minutes. When we come back, we compare."
Jacob raised a brow. "What if ten minutes here is ten years in there?"
Ambrose clapped him on the shoulder. "Then I'll finally grow a beard."
Despite everything, we laughed.
We needed that laugh.
Later that evening, after grabbing a quick meal in town and picking up extra batteries and waterproof bags (Bobby's idea), we returned to the forest edge.
As the sun dipped below the treeline, we each sat on the porch, one by one, and talked.
Not about the forest.
About us.
Bobby confessed he'd turned down a research grant to come on this trip. Said something inside him told him he'd learn more out here than in any lab.
Jacob finally admitted he still hadn't told his wife everything—just that he needed "space." The guy who used to plan every minute of his life now couldn't explain where he was.
Ambrose? He joked that if we died in the forest, at least he wouldn't have to finish writing his stand-up set. But then he looked at us and said, "I just don't want to die before figuring out who I'm supposed to be."
I understood that more than I wanted to.
When it was my turn, I told them about Anita.
About how she said I'd been drifting even before the forest.
That I was always chasing something invisible.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe this trip wasn't an escape from routine.
Maybe it was a subconscious dive into whatever the hell my inner compass had been pointing to.
We went to bed early that night. Not out of exhaustion, but out of preparation.
At 2:45 AM, we were up. Geared. Focused.
Bobby synced the timers. I held the second device.
We stepped into the forest.
As we neared the clearing, the air changed again. Denser. Heavier. As if walking through thought instead of wind.
We reached the portal.
This time, we didn't hesitate.
Inside, the world shimmered with that same distorted calm. Trees bent like origami. The sky pulsed with unnatural gradients.
Ten minutes passed.
Or so we thought.
When we stepped back through—
Everything felt wrong.
The cottage was quiet. Too quiet.
No birds. No morning light. Just fog.
Bobby raced to the main timer.
His face turned pale.
"Seventy-three minutes," he whispered. "We were gone for seventy-three minutes."
Jacob swore under his breath.
"But it felt like ten," I said.
"It was ten," Bobby confirmed. "In there."
Ambrose looked at us all. "Well, congrats, team. We've officially time-traveled."
I should've been terrified.
Instead, all I could think was: This is just the beginning.