Everyone Who Came Back Wrong

Tomasz looked at her for a long moment. Something in his expression opened — not wide, not dramatically, but in the way of a window cracked after a long winter, just enough to let the air change. He’d spent years keeping himself tightly catalogued, I realized. Every mistake itemized, every feeling filed under a reason. The wood had found the gap in that system and called to him through it.
And he’d almost gone.
But he’d also, in the end, stopped.
We walked back to Colwick Street together, the four of us, in the grey beginning of morning. The city sounds came back gradually — a distant siren, a delivery truck, someone’s alarm going off in a high window above the road. The ordinary world reassembling itself around us, indifferent and solid and real.
Behind us, Veltham Wood settled back into its patient quiet. Forty acres of old growth in the middle of the city, waiting, as it had always waited, for the next person who came in carrying something they hadn’t admitted they’d lost.

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About the Author

Morwenna Hexweaver — Morwenna knows 77 spells that must never be spoken aloud. Her spellbook, the “Hex Codex,” is alive and constantly rewrites itself.

— Morwenna Hexweaver

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Categories: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy

Tags: 10min stories, atmospheric horror, city magic, dark forest, doppelganger, fantasy, friendship, short story, supernatural, urban fantasy

August 2, 2026

10min-stories