At the edge of Ashwood Forest, just beyond where the fireflies thinned and the brambles crept like eager fingers, there stood a ring of scorched stones. The Ashwood Circle. To most in the town of Briar Hollow, it was nothing more than a tale passed down from older siblings and jittery schoolteachers. But to five children, it was a tradition. A secret. A ritual.
Every year, on the first night of summer, they returned. Lanterns clutched in trembling hands. Pockets filled with trinkets. Voices low, like the woods might overhear.
They called it a game — to keep from being afraid.
This year marked the fifth. The last.
It began, as it always did, with a whisper.
“Circle’s waiting,” said Lena, the de facto leader. Taller than the rest, thirteen now and wrapped in hand-me-down leather and fearless eyes.
Behind her came the others — Max, wide-eyed and quiet, always with his camera; June and Joelle, the inseparable twins who only spoke in half-sentences and always seemed to know more than they should; and finally, Leo, who used humor as armor but showed up every year anyway, arms loaded with snacks no one ever ate.
They walked in silence, feet crunching on dry pine needles. Fireflies blinked like uncertain stars. The path, faded and overgrown, still knew them. It opened.
“You think it’s still here?” Leo asked.
Lena shot him a look. “It’s always here.”
And it was. A clearing marked by a ring of stones, blackened and cracked. No moss grew on them. No insects crossed their border. The Circle breathed its own kind of stillness — the kind that hummed beneath the skin.
“Everyone brought their offering?” Lena asked.
They nodded, one by one.
Joelle placed a feathered mask she’d worn for a school play. June brought a music box with no key. Max unwrapped a dead moth preserved in resin. Leo, reluctantly, produced his favorite action figure — head missing.
Lena, last, pulled out a matchbook from the Briar Hollow Diner. “This year, we light it.”
“We always say that,” Max whispered.
“This year we do it.”
They didn’t remember why it started. Some said the Circle granted wishes. Others said it kept something asleep. The oldest tale — the one Lena’s grandfather muttered before slipping into silence — claimed the Circle had once belonged to a coven. Five witches. Five offerings. Five voices calling the dark to listen.
“Repeat after me,” Lena said.
They sat around the stones, knees touching scorched earth. The offerings sat in the center, arranged with nervous precision.
Lena cleared her throat.
“Circle of ash, fire and bone…”
“Circle of ash, fire and bone…” the others echoed, voices wavering.
“By our blood and breath and name…”
“Wake the one who waits alone.”
Silence.
Then, a sound. Subtle. Wrong.
The wind shifted. Trees leaned inward.
Max’s camera, strapped to his neck, clicked without warning.
“What was that?” June asked, voice barely a breath.
“Probably just—” Leo began, but stopped.
The offerings were gone.
In their place sat a perfect spiral of ash. Still warm. Smoking.
“I didn’t move them,” Lena said.
“No one did,” Joelle whispered.
The forest, moments ago indifferent, now watched. You could feel it. Like breath on your neck. Like the pause before thunder.
“I think something answered,” Max said.
“It’s never answered before,” June replied.
“That’s what’s different,” Joelle added. “We completed it this time. All five years. Five offerings. Five voices.”
“Five kids,” Leo said slowly. “One for each stone.”
They looked down at the stones again. Five, arranged like a star. Cracked but solid. Empty but waiting.
“We should leave,” Max said, getting up too quickly. His foot crossed the outer ring.
The trees screamed.
It was not sound — not exactly. But all five of them felt it. A pressure behind the eyes. A taste like burnt sugar and metal. Max stumbled back into the circle, nose bleeding.
“Don’t cross the line,” Joelle said. “Not until it’s done.”
“What’s done?” Leo barked. “We said some words and gave up some junk. That’s it. It’s over.”
“No,” Lena said. Her voice was different now. Hollow. “It started something.”
Max was crying now, blood dripping onto his shoes. “I want to go home.”
Joelle looked at her sister. “It chose him.”
June nodded. “The one who stepped out.”
“What?” Max looked between them. “What does that mean?”
Joelle’s eyes were dark. “Something’s coming for you.”
They tried to run. Paths twisted. Lanterns died. Max’s camera snapped every few minutes, showing flashes of shadows with too many limbs. The woods no longer knew them. Every trail led back to the Circle.
“We’re trapped,” Leo panted, hands on his knees. “It’s a goddamn maze.”
“It’s him,” Lena said, pointing at Max. “He crossed the line.”
Max shook his head, frantic. “I didn’t mean to! It was an accident!”
“That doesn’t matter to it.”
“To what, Lena? What the hell is coming?!”
The twins stood by the Circle’s edge, unbothered.
“It’s the Keeper,” June said.
“The one who watches,” Joelle added.
“The one we woke.”
It came at midnight.
The trees bent back like curtains. The sky split without lightning. And from the center of the ash spiral, something rose.
Tall.
Ragged.
Not a creature — a shape. Humanoid only in suggestion. Cloaked in bark and cinders, with a crown of hollowed eyes. Its mouth was a vertical slit that pulsed with lightless fire.
“Do not speak,” Joelle warned.
“Don’t run,” June added.
But Max screamed. It was too much — the pressure in the air, the ache behind his eyes, the knowledge of being seen.
He ran.
The creature moved once — a twitch — and Max was gone. No noise. No scream. Just absence.
Leo collapsed to his knees.
“What do we do now?” he asked, staring into the smoking earth.
Lena turned to the twins.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Joelle shrugged. “We just wanted answers.”
June smiled faintly. “Now we have them.”
The next morning, the Circle was empty.
Four children walked out of Ashwood Forest. Only one was questioned — Leo, who couldn’t stop crying, who couldn’t explain where Max had gone. He didn’t remember most of it. Only ash and screams and whispers in his teeth.
The others said nothing.
They never would.
One Year Later
Lena stood at the edge of the woods. Alone.
The others hadn’t spoken since the night. Leo moved away. The twins disappeared — literally. Vanished from their beds one rainy October night. No footprints. No sounds. Just empty pillows.
Now it was only her.
She hadn’t meant for it to go this far. It was supposed to be pretend. A summer game. A way to make the woods feel like theirs.
But it had answered. And she’d heard it since — in her dreams, in reflections, in the silent corners of her house.
A promise.
A debt.
She stepped into the Circle, barefoot. In her hand: the final offering.
Max’s camera.
The spiral formed as she knelt.
“Circle of ash, fire and bone…” she whispered.
The wind returned.
“By my blood and breath and name…”
The trees groaned.
“Take what’s owed.”
The earth split.
Ash rose in a slow spiral.
A hand reached through.
Lena smiled.
This time, she would be the one to answer.
