They say there’s a clearing in the forest where no birds sing, and no wind moves the trees.

No trail leads there. No GPS can mark it. You have to find it by accident — or invitation.

At the center of the clearing is a circle of twelve black stones, each carved with symbols older than language. When the moon is high and your name has been whispered by someone desperate, the air between the stones ripples. And the Gamekeeper appears.

He is always dressed in gray. Gloves. Hat. Mouth covered in cloth that doesn’t move. His voice, when he speaks, comes from behind you, no matter where he stands.

He offers a single phrase:

“Play, and win what you cannot have. Lose, and pay what you cannot afford.”

The game is simple. A challenge. A task. A question. A hunt.

But it’s always tailored perfectly to you. The thing you swore you’d never do. The person you swore you’d never become. The truth you’ve hidden even from yourself.

Some players are asked to find someone they abandoned, in a place that no longer exists.

Some must carry a box sealed with hair and teeth across seven nights without opening it, even as it weeps.

One girl, trembling and grief-blind, was told:

“You must speak with your mother one more time. But you must not believe she’s real.”

The stakes are absolute.

Win — and you are given what should be impossible: a dead lover returned, a future rewritten, a wound erased.

Lose — and the Gamekeeper takes something from you.

Not your life. That would be mercy.

He takes your courage, so you wake each day hollow and afraid of your own breath.

Or your laughter, so even joy tastes like dust.

Or your shadow, so you walk in the sun but never feel warm again.

The worst players are those who win but don’t know it. Who ask for one thing and get another. Who finish the game, return to their lives — and realize too late what they truly gave up.

Some try to go back. But there’s no way back.

Once you leave the clearing, the path vanishes behind you. You can’t find it again.

Unless you’re called. Unless someone speaks your name — with love, or hate, or grief sharp enough to tear a hole through the trees.

And the Gamekeeper listens.

Always.

He’s listening now.

____________________

© Secret Agent Man
info@secretagentman.net