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It's then, for the first time, that you start to feel it.

The sensation is very faint at first, and at first you brush it off as just a little shiver in the cool air.

But then you feel it again, a little stronger this time: a tingling just under your skin. You seem to feel it more on your back than on your front, and for a moment, you turn around, checking to see if the wind is blowing strangely.

There's no wind, but the tingling grows more intense, washing through you in waves.

Then, all of a sudden, it stops; as it does, so do the flashing lights. For almost a minute, everything falls completely still.

But just as you're wondering if it's all over, that tingling sensation sweeps through you again with the force of a gale. Your whole body is set alight with it, and this time you can feel it more strongly in your back, as if it's coming from somewhere behind you. It almost feels like an electrical current is passing through your skin, making its way invisibly through the air until it hits you where you're standing.

But you know it can't be electricity. There's only one thing you know that feels anything like this.

Magic.

Turning slowly on the spot, you gaze down the length of the road.

If you started walking now, you'd reach the town in only a couple of minutes. But you know the road goes on further than that. You know that if you followed it long enough, you would eventually reach the forest.

You don't know what this strange wave of magic is, or exactly where it's coming from. But that doesn't stop you from taking a step forwards—and then another. Soon you're walking along the street, picking up your pace slightly when you feel another small wave run through you, as if it's pulling you along. Drawing you towards it.

Buildings and fields slip past you almost without you noticing, as if somehow the time and the distance between you and the forest is compressing, dissolving. One moment you're leaving the town behind—and the next—

You're walking through the forest.

You're not sure how it could have happened—how the whole journey could happen in what feels like a blink, like it somehow slipped your mind—but you don't think about it. You don't question it. You just step through the boundary of the forest and keep moving, smelling fresh leaves and decaying soil and always, always, feeling those same tingles burning just under your skin.

After some time, you realize you've passed the point at which the trees stop feeling like trees and start feeling like forest. Trunks slip by one another, not separate but part of some vast whole that has no wish to be disturbed. You know it well; you've lived in it a long time. But today, you realize you've never felt more like an outsider to these woods. The deeper you walk, the more sunlight is stolen by the covering of leaves, the more you start to wonder just what it is you're walking towards. Whether or not it's something that doesn't want you near.

The forest might be suspicious of your intrusion, but something else is drawing you onwards. And now that you're getting closer, you can feel it even more: the strange, buzzing pulse of some kind of indescribable energy that washes over you—through you—the deeper you go. It even seems to be magnified by the scraps of metal you notice now on the ground around you, as if each one is giving off its own little spark as you walk by. You're not sure why, but you know, somehow, that they're leading you towards whatever it is you need to find.

So you keep walking.

You walk—and walk—and walk, until the trees and the smell of moss are all you know. You don't know how much further. You just know it's close—you know you're getting closer—

Suddenly, you stop.

Ahead of you, there's a soft rustling in the undergrowth.

Curling up your hands into fists, you take a tentative step forwards.

Peering down, you spot a few more tiny bits of metal: screws hidden in the carpet of leaves. But these ones aren't simply lying still; they're twitching, jumping almost, as if shaken up by an earthquake. From where you're standing, though, you don't feel any motion in the ground.

Still, something is making them move.

You're just about to bend down to take a closer look when you hear a crack behind you.

For a split second, you freeze. Then, acting on instinct, you: