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Terror clenches Liska's innards as gritty river water fills her nostrils, darkness above and below as she is pulled down, down. The river is far deeper than it looks, and through water-blurred vision, she can see the pearly flashes of bones lining the riverbed. Panic seizes her, followed by a delirious sort of amusement. 'That's it, then,' she thinks. 'I will die and become ghastly décor'.

But something inside her resists. It wakes with the flutter of a thousand trapped wings, shoving painfully against the cage of her chest. Her magic, responding to her panic. It shatters through her skin in a bloom of blinding light, taking its usual shape: butterflies, a cloud of them, whirling and erratic. The burst of power shoves away the rusalka, but not before her nails rake painfully across Liska's throat. Liska does not waste a moment—she kicks off the demon's chest, propelling herself toward the bank, and breaks the surface with a gasp. Shuddering, she scrambles onto the rocks, barely pausing to cough up putrid water before righting herself on the sticky bark of a pine tree. She looks over her shoulder, expecting pursuit, but there is nothing.

The rusalka is gone. The wood is still.

Liska staggers into a run. She does not stop, not even when she leaves the comfort of the river's moonlit clearing. Sweat coats her neck, and her pulse roars to the nauseating thrum of magic hammering at her chest. She needs to get away, away from that horrible river. Yet no matter how far she runs, she cannot find relief. These are the stories of her childhood given life, transformed from nightmares into reality.

She cannot even find comfort in her magic. It protected her this time, yes, because it chose to—unlike the last time, when it left blood on her hands and death in her wake. It can never be trusted. She needs to end this, and soon. But where is the flower?

As if hearing her question, a familiar shape appears in a copse up ahead, its antlered head angled toward her. The stag! Liska starts toward him, but the creature vanishes in a swirl of mist. "Wait!" she exclaims, panting, then laughs at her own folly. "You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?"

There is no answer, only the sound of her own ragged breathing as she turns to survey her surroundings. She now stands on the edge of a shallow ravine, the sides plunging steeply into the maw of a gully. Surrounding her are nine peculiar trees forming a semicircle, their trunks bulging with strange lumps. At first glance, the lumps seem to be no more than burls, but as she looks closer, she realizes they are 'pulsing'.

Liska presses her hands to her mouth, backing away, but it is too late.

Cracks fissure down the middle of each lump, the bark pulling apart to reveal bloodshot eyes. 'Human' eyes. Human eyes that weep yellowed sap as they fix upon Liska.

The wood has seen her.

She backs away, but there is nowhere to go. Her heel slips on the lip of the ravine, and suddenly the ground is crumbling beneath her feet, the earth giving way beneath her.

Her flight is short. Her feet strike a crooked sapling, the impact tossing her to the ground. What follows is an uncontrolled slide. She gropes desperately for anything to slow her fall as her knees scrape brutally over stones and sharp branches. When she finally reaches the bottom, she collapses onto the ground.

She lies dazed for a moment—one single, bleary moment, the air knocked out of her, body aching. Then she forces herself to her knees, her hands scraping against something hard and& entirely out of place.

Cobblestones, laid side by side.

Startled, Liska scrambles upright. Ahead of her, a cobblestone path snakes into the dark, cracked and moss-eaten and haphazard. She stares at it apprehensively. A part of her is relieved to find a sign of civilization, but another is unsettled—she has heard of roads used for traveling through the spirit-wood, but this one seems too narrow to fit even the smallest cart. Yet if it is not one of those, then& where does it lead?

She finds her answer soon enough. Despite its size, she barely notices the manor in the gloom, tucked between the trees like a slumbering giant. It is not really a manor, anyway, more the memory of one—shattered windows and flaking paint and a crooked tower that barely remember how to be a home anymore. All is caged by a stone wall, veiled in ivy and fronted by a gate guarded by statues of stags. The gate might have been beautiful once, but now it hangs limp on its hinges, the spires a mess of rust and iron. The whole radiates a sort of miserable resignation, as if the manor has offered itself up as a calf to be slaughtered by the Driada.

The gate hinges give a squeal of protest when Liska pushes them open, startling her. Beyond, the gardens are a jungle unto themselves, overgrown hedges corrupted by briars. Only the flagstone path remains unveiled, littered with leaves and twigs. It meanders across the courtyard, leading to a small clearing where a fountain might have stood, had this estate belonged to the human world.

But it does not. It belongs to spirits and demons.

So in the middle, Liska does not find a fountain. Instead, she finds a fern, sprawling and lush and unnaturally green, so green it seems to glow.

And there, nestled in the halo of its fronds, is a single flower.