Marble Hornets Your POV

P11. Void

And just like that, I can't fight it anymore. My feet move before I can think, drawing me toward the trees, toward whatever lies in the darkness.

Tim's voice sharpens behind me, but it feels distant, like a radio playing from another room. My pulse is a drum in my ears, each beat syncing with my footsteps as I follow Brian or whatever he's become, deeper into the trees.

The air changes the moment I step past the first line of trunks. It thickens, heavy with the scent of damp earth and something metallic. The darkness here is absolute, swallowing the moonlight, wrapping around me like a living thing.

A branch snaps underfoot, and I freeze. The figure ahead of me stops too, as if responding to my hesitation.

"Brian?" My voice comes out weak. "What's going on?"

The figure doesn't reply. Instead, he lifts his arm again, pointing deeper into the woods. The whispering voice returns, weaving through the trees like a breeze that shouldn't exist.

Come. Follow.

I want to turn back. I want to listen to Tim, who's still calling my name, growing more panicked with each second. But I can't. Something about this moment, about the figure before me, keeps pulling me forward.

Another step. Another.

Then, without warning, Brian moves. Not walking but gliding, as if his feet never touch the ground. The sound around us warps, the whispering growing louder, more insistent. Shadows shift in my peripheral vision. Shapes that shouldn't be there.

I should run. I should scream. But all I can do is follow.

The trees begin to change. Their trunks stretch unnaturally tall, gnarled branches curling overhead like grasping fingers. The darkness deepens, a void rather than a lack of light.

And then, suddenly, the figure stops.

I stumble to a halt just a few feet away. My breath clouds in the cold air. Silence falls, thick and suffocating.

The silence presses in, weighty and unnatural. Even my breath feels too loud, each exhale a fragile disturbance in the suffocating stillness.

Brian or whatever he is now stands motionless, his back still to me. The whispering voice has stopped, but the air hums with something else, something just beneath the threshold of sound. It's like the trees themselves are holding their breath.

Then, slowly, he turns. His mask disappearing into thin air.
I don't want to see his face. Every part of me screams not to look, but it's too late.

It is Brian, but his eyes are wrong. Too wide, too dark, like twin voids swallowing the faint glow of the night. His mouth moves, forming words that never quite reach my ears. The forest shifts around us, the shadows twisting in response, bending toward him as if drawn by an invisible thread.

I step back, but the ground beneath my foot isn't solid anymore. It gives, soft and wet, and my stomach lurches. A glance downward sends a bolt of horror through me—what should be earth is something else entirely, something shifting, writhing. Hands, pale and grasping, pushing up from below, their fingers sinking into my shoe, pulling.

A sharp cry rips from my throat as I yank my foot free. I spin, ready to run but a hand catches my wrist. Cold. Unyielding.

Not Brian's.

My gaze snaps to the long fingers curled around me. They belong to something standing just beyond the trees, something that isn't human. Its form flickers, like a bad signal, shifting between shadow and flesh. Its him....

Tim followed us from a distance and saw the scene in front of him.
Tim's voice shatters the silence. "No! Get away from them!"

The grip tightens. The thing, even tho it has not face, a smile formed on its head.
And then, the ground opens up beneath me. I plummet.

The world around me shreds into streaks of darkness and sickly light, twisting as if I'm falling through a living thing. Wind rushes past, or maybe it's something else—something whispering, clawing, dragging at my skin. I hit the ground hard. Or at least, I think I do.
The impact knocks the air from my lungs, but the surface beneath me isn't solid. It shifts, breathes, pulses like muscle stretched too thin. A rancid smell fills my nose...blood, decay, something older than either.

I push myself up, my hands sinking into the grotesque earth. My head throbs, vision swimming as I try to make sense of where I've landed.

There is no sky here. Only an endless, undulating void, thick with unseen movement. The trees—if they can even be called that—are jagged spires of bone, their surfaces etched with twisting symbols that seem to move when I'm not looking directly at them. The air hums with the same low vibration from before, settling deep in my skull like an infection.
A sound. Footsteps.

I twist around, my pulse a drumbeat in my throat. Brian stands a few feet away.
And then I see it. The thing that grabbed me. It stands just beyond Brian, its faceless head tilted as if observing. It no longer flickers. Here, in this place, it is whole.

I try to move, but the ground latches onto me, sinewy tendrils wrapping around my legs like muscle tightening against bone.

A voice slithers through the air, sinking into my mind like a splinter.

"You followed."

Brian or what's left of him smiles.

"Now you belong."