He laughed nervously. Must be a glitch. He tried to zoom out, but the map showed only the clearing, the house, and a dense grey static where the forest should be. No roads in. No roads out.

Mark’s hand trembled as he put the car in reverse. The engine revved, but the wheels only spun. He looked down. The gravel of the clearing had become something else: a tangle of pale, root-like fibres, already winding around his tires.

Mark killed the engine. The silence was total—no birds, no wind, no distant highway hum. He picked up his phone to check the map. The screen flickered, then displayed a single line of text: Wrong turn downloaded successfully.

Download complete. Welcome home.

The first sign of trouble was the fence. Not a rustic split-rail, but a sagging chain-link topped with rusted barbed wire, stretching into the trees on both sides. The GPS guided him straight to a gap where the fence had been peeled back like a tin can lid. “Your destination is ahead.”