MidnightScreams

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The wind howled like someone really upset through the bare branches of the old trees. Each gust sounded like a sad sigh, making the Silent Woods feel even more lonely. For Lieutenant Kaelen, a soldier who’d seen a lot of tough times, getting lost here felt worse than any battle. He and his guys were chasing some bad guys and ended up deeper and deeper in this forgotten part of the kingdom. Then, out of nowhere, a crazy blizzard hit and vanished just as fast, leaving him all alone with a bunch of tourists who were just chatting away.

They were wearing bright clothes that looked silly against the grey and white of the winter forest. They were talking about how pretty it was and the cool plants, their happy sounds not fitting with the quiet, sad feeling of the woods. Kaelen, in his worn leather armor, felt more and more uneasy. Something felt wrong here, a heavy sadness that seemed to be in the air itself.

The scary stuff started small, like a quiet whisper you almost don’t hear. One of the tourists, a friendly shopkeeper named Elara, suddenly stopped talking, her eyes getting all sad. “My son…” she mumbled, her voice shaky like she was about to cry. “I… I feel his pain.” Her son was far away, safe at home. The others looked at each other, confused, and just thought the woods were making her feel weird.

Then it was Gareth, a young student, who started talking about all the things he regretted, the chances he missed and the things he didn’t say. He was usually so cheerful, but now he seemed really down. Kaelen watched them, his soldier senses telling him something was very wrong. This wasn’t normal. This was… something else.

He felt it too, a little prickle in his mind, a small pull towards feeling gloomy. Pictures of his dead friends, of battles they lost, flashed in his head, but bigger and more upsetting than they really were. He tried to fight it, his trained mind like a strong wall against the growing darkness. But the sadness kept coming, like a wave trying to wash away his strength.

He soon figured out that it was coming from a really old, twisted oak tree in the middle of a small open area they’d accidentally walked into. Stuck in the tree trunk was a necklace, made of a dark, strange metal, with symbols carved into it that looked like they were moving in the faint moonlight. As they got closer, the heavy sadness got worse, and the whispers in their heads got louder and more pushy.

One of the guides, a local guy named Bram, looked really scared. He stammered, “The Crying Tree… they say a deal was made here a long time ago. A life for power… and when the deal was broken, sadness itself got trapped in this place.”

The sad, ghostly thing didn’t show up as a monster with sharp teeth. It attacked in a sneakier way. It went after their weak spots, their regrets, the things they were most afraid of not being good enough at or losing. It made them see scary things in their minds, twisting their memories to hurt them. Elara saw her son dying, Gareth relived his biggest mistakes, and the other tourists were all stuck in their own personal sad nightmares.

Kaelen felt the thing trying to poke around in his own head, looking for what scared him the most. It wasn’t dying, and it wasn’t pain. It was slowly losing himself, his memories fading, not knowing who he was anymore. He’d seen it happen to other soldiers, guys who weren’t hurt badly on the outside, but whose minds were broken by the war, their identities gone. That thought scared him more than any sword.

The thing’s presence was always there, like a heavy blanket of sadness you couldn’t shake off. The forest itself seemed to twist and change in their minds, the paths they knew disappearing into confusing mazes. The wind didn’t just feel cold; it sounded like the crying of a thousand lost people. Shadows flickered at the edge of their sight, looking like sad, fleeting shapes.

Kaelen knew they were being hunted, not just to be killed, but for who they were. The thing wanted to drown them in sorrow, to break their spirits and take their identities into its own endless sadness. He fought back with everything he had, holding onto the memories of his friends, the feel of his sword handle, the strong sense of duty that had always guided him.

He saw Bram, the guide, holding a small bottle with a stopper. Inside was a thick, glowing liquid. “My grandma… she knew about this place,” he whispered, his voice shaking. “She said… a potion of clarity. It can keep the shadows away, for a little while.”

The potion helped for a bit. As they each took a sip, the heavy sadness went away, the scary visions disappeared, and the forest looked real and wintry again. But the thing wasn’t gone. Kaelen could still feel its sad presence, a cold fear that settled deep inside him. It was just… watching.

Bram remembered an old story, a whisper about a secret path, a forgotten way out used by people who were foolish enough to wander into the Crying Tree’s land. It was said to be behind a waterfall at the north end of the woods, a place hidden in mist and old stories.

Their walk to the waterfall was a desperate run against the thing’s growing power over their minds. The potion didn’t last forever, and the sad, ghostly thing was getting bolder, its mental attacks becoming stronger and more direct. Kaelen watched as the tourists, their initial fear turning into a tired sadness, struggled to stay connected to reality.

Getting to the waterfall was hard. The water crashed down like an angry beast, and the air was full of cold spray. Behind the wall of water, they found it – a narrow, mossy tunnel leading into the darkness of the ground.

One by one, they slipped through the opening, the sound of the waterfall hiding the sad cries of the wind. Kaelen was the last to go in, stopping for a moment at the entrance. He could still feel the thing’s sad eyes on him, a weight of ancient sadness that threatened to pull him back into the woods.

As he stepped into the tunnel, the air got warmer, and the heavy feeling lifted. They followed the twisty passage for what felt like forever, the darkness only broken by the flickering light of Bram’s torch. Finally, they came out into a sunny field, a completely different world from the sad woods.

They had made it. They were safe. But the experience had changed them. The tourists were quiet, their laughter gone, their eyes holding a bit of the sadness they had seen. Kaelen felt really tired, like he had fought not just something outside of him, but a darkness inside himself too.

Then came the shock.

As they stood in the field, catching their breath, Elara, the shopkeeper, turned to Kaelen with a strange, empty smile. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” she said, her voice not warm like he remembered. “For leading us. The sadness… it was quite beautiful, wasn’t it?”

Gareth, the student, nodded, his eyes looking distant. “The regrets… they felt so real. So… comforting.”

A cold fear went through Kaelen. He looked at Bram, the guide, who was also smiling, his eyes like the others’. “The Crying Tree… it shows you what’s really in your heart,” Bram murmured, his voice soft and creepy. “It doesn’t take… it shows.”

Kaelen’s mind spun. The sadness hadn’t been an attack. It had been an invitation. The thing hadn’t been trying to control them; it had just made their own sadness, their hidden regrets, stronger. The scary visions hadn’t been forced on them; they had come from their own deep thoughts.

He looked down at his hands, his tough soldier’s hands. Had he felt the sadness less because he didn’t have as many regrets, or because he had just buried them deeper? Had his fight against the thing been a fight against facing his own pain?

The secret path… it hadn’t been a way to escape the thing, but a way to get closer to its power. The sunny field felt more sinister than the dark woods.

He was the only one who felt the unease, the lingering fear. The others seemed… happy, lost in a peaceful, shared sadness. Had he been the only one really fighting? Or had he just been holding back what was going to happen anyway?

He looked back at the dark opening of the tunnel, a scary thought hitting him. The lie wasn’t that they had escaped. The lie was that there had ever been a chase. The sad, ghostly thing hadn’t been hunting them. It had been waiting for them to accept it. And they had. All except him.

He was alone, not in a forest, but in a world where sadness wasn’t a weapon, but a comforting truth. And he, the soldier who had faced so many dangers, was the only one untouched, forever an outsider in their sad paradise. He had survived the thing, but in doing so, he had become truly lost.