A cold wind combs a black‑pine ridge as an antlered effigy smolders to ash. A compass arrives in the mail—mud‑stained, still ticking toward somewhere no map admits. Four friends hike to bury an old debt; a mountain village greets them with masks, closed shutters, and a festival that moves like a prayer you’re not meant to hear.

Cairns multiply, birch bark peels into runes, and the tree line tilts as if the world is remembering differently. Nightvision clips blink: a bell with a bone clapper, footprints circling the tent from the inside, a doorway opening onto bark. In the chapel of roots, someone kneels and something stands. When dawn finally comes, it brings tracks too large, and a voice that sounds like a friend. The last frame: an eye between branches… and the forest inhales.