WHISPERS OF THE FOREST（Serpentine Obsidian Bracelet）

The day the snow finally stopped, Biancana saw the serpent again.

It rested upon a towering tree deep within the violet forest, its immense body gleaming like silver bathed in moonlight. Beneath each scale flowed a faint lavender radiance, soft and alive. It was so vast that its tail disappeared into the dark lake below, and every slow movement sent ripples across the water like drifting constellations.

No one in the village had ever seen it.
Only Biancana knew the serpent truly existed in the depths of the forest.

She had first encountered it at the age of six.

A blizzard had swallowed the world outside that night. She sat curled in the corner of the wooden cabin, listening to her grandfather arguing with a stranger while the fire in the hearth slowly died. Beyond the windows, the cold felt powerful enough to freeze the entire world apart.

And then, suddenly, she saw it.

A violet forest appeared beyond the snowstorm.

The falling snow became drifting purple petals.
Dead branches bloomed with transparent leaves.
And from the deepest shadows of the woods, the serpent emerged in silence.

It never opened its mouth.
Yet somehow, Biancana still heard its voice.

“Do not be afraid.”

From that moment on, whenever the real world became too cold, too sharp, too heavy to bear, the forest would return to her.

Sometimes at dusk.
Sometimes deep into the night.
Sometimes in the brief silence between two wandering thoughts.

And the serpent was always there.

It moved slowly through the violet woods, its silver scales shimmering beneath drifting lavender light. Whenever its body brushed against the trees, the forest answered with soft chimes, delicate as distant glass bells. Swarms of glowing butterflies circled around it, settling upon its scales like fragments of living starlight.

One day, Biancana asked softly,

“Why am I the only one who can enter this place?”

The serpent fell silent for a long while.

“Because the world has long forgotten how to dream.”