Ember Season

In a remote forest clearing, seven friends gather each year to keep a tradition: light a fire, tell a story. But this year, something changes.  The story doesn’t just get told it rewrites itself. And the forest, once silent, begins to respond. As the group returns again and again, reality starts to fracture. Memories vanish. Names lose meaning. One of them is forgotten while still standing among the others. Another begins to change, pulled toward something deeper within the clearing. The rules they once followed don’t speak too soon, don’t question the story, don’t feed the fire stop protecting them and start becoming part of the trap. At the center of it all is the Ember a living system that, adapts, and balances what is given to it. It doesn’t take randomly it takes precisely. A memory. A name. An identity. And it always demands something in return. As the forest tightens around them and the story begins to tell itself, the group must decide what they are willing to lose to escape or whether escape was ever an option at all. Because the forest doesn’t forget.