These weren’t stray shots. This was a volley. Alex started counting without realizing it. Four, five, six. He stood up, feeling a knot of tension tighten in his chest. This couldn’t be written off as an accident.
No hunter fires that many times into the exact same spot. No marksman hits that deep, over and over. Footsteps behind him made him turn around.
Two guys from the crew approached, then another. Curiosity had drawn them to the tree that was taking too long to process. Ethan stared with wide eyes, clearly not knowing whether to be excited or spooked.
“Are those bullets?” he asked quietly.
Alex nodded, not looking up.
“Old ones,” he added. “Very old.”
Hank Miller, the oldest logger on the crew, walked up. He was well into his sixties. Short, stocky, with a gray beard as stiff as wire. His face looked like it had been carved from oak—deep wrinkles, a heavy gaze. Hank rarely spoke on the job, preferring to observe.
In his youth, he’d survived a bad accident in the deep woods that killed his partner, and since then, Hank avoided idle talk. He knelt by the cut and stayed silent for a long time. His fingers slowly traced the deformed growth rings and the edge of the cavity.
He saw the bullets, but he didn’t ask a single question. His gaze lingered on something deeper than the metal. Then he stood up.
“Not your business,” he said softly. “Not ours, either.”
He turned and walked away without looking back. That exit said more than any explanation could.
Alex knelt by the trunk again. He worked more carefully now, not like a logger, but like a man uncovering a hidden history. He peeled back another layer of wood, following the cavity deeper down the trunk.
And then something else appeared. Not a bullet. The metal fragment was long, curved, and encrusted in rust. Alex cleared away the wood chips and realized he was holding a link of a chain. Flattened and fused with the fibers of the tree, it had become part of the organism. A chain.
He froze. This couldn’t be explained by hunting or chance. You don’t shoot chains into trees. You wrap them, bolt them, or secure them intentionally. Alex looked at the trunk as a whole, and the picture began to clarify.
The burls on the bark corresponded to the places where metal had been pressed against the living wood. The tree had grown, enveloped it, and hidden it. Not because it wanted to, but because it had no choice. He extracted more fragments; they didn’t all come easily.
Some had to be freed slowly, layer by layer. The chain led downward, as if guiding him to the base. The crew gathered again, but they kept their distance now.
The atmosphere had shifted; curiosity had turned to dread. No one was laughing; no one was taking pictures. Even Ethan stood silent, his face pale…
