Chapter 183 Searching

• Celine POV
• I move fast, following the trail, but the forest shifts around me, warping and twisting. The trees stretch impossibly high, their shadows lengthening across the ground, closing in. The faint glow of my path flickers, then vanishes.
• Stopping, my chest rises and falls as my pulse thrums against my ribs. The weight in the air changes, pressing down on me, thick and cloying, like something unseen is crawling beneath my skin. A slow, familiar dread seeps in, a darkness I haven’t felt in years—one I buried, one I thought I had escaped.