The pines close behind you almost immediately.

You do not hear them close — there is no creak, no snap of branch — but when you turn to check, the tree line is already ten metres back and the gap you walked through has sealed itself into uniform dark. The needle carpet underfoot swallows every footfall. The forest is not silent: you can hear something rhythmic and low, like breathing, but with no clear source and no clear direction.

The trees here are old. Their trunks are wider than you could wrap your arms around and they grow so close together that you navigate by the thin channels between them rather than any path. There is no undergrowth because there is no light for it. Just bark and roots and the soft floor.

After perhaps twenty minutes of walking — though your sense of time has become unreliable — you reach a small clearing. In its centre stands a single tree unlike the others: wide enough to be a house, its bark pale silver. Something is carved into it at chest height. You lean forward to read it.

You have already been here before.

You step back. The carving is fresh. The wood around it is still wet.

The menu will take you somewhere else. Whether that helps is unclear.