The forest smelled of wet dirt and rot. Venn sat on a mossy log, his eyes scanning the floor for anything worth selling.
He saw the first one near his boot. It was a pale, thin mushroom with a cap as white as bone.
It didn't look like the others. While the rest of the fungus grew in messy clumps, this one grew in a perfectly straight line.
Venn stood up and followed the line. He stepped over a fallen branch, his breath coming short in the damp air.
Every few feet, a new white stem popped up from the mud. They were all pointing in the same direction, tilting their caps toward a dense thicket of black thorns.
"Just a trick of the light," Venn muttered to himself.
But the mushrooms didn't care about his doubt. As he pushed through the brambles, the ground began to hum beneath his feet.
It wasn't a sound, but a feeling, like a low pulse deep in the earth.
The white line grew thicker, turning into a bright web that covered the roots of the old trees.
Venn reached the center of the thicket and froze.
The fungi had formed a circle around a slab of grey stone. It wasn't just a rock. It had a handle made of rusted iron.
There was no wall around it. There was no house.
It was just a door, standing upright in the middle of the woods, held up by nothing at all.
Venn reached out a shaking hand.
He knew that if he turned the knob, the forest would never be silent again.