At the foot of Mount Fuji lies Aokigahara, the Sea of Trees: a forest grown from lava, where birds fall silent, compasses go mad, and some who enter never come back.
Emily Arakawa, an American translator, agrees to guide a Los Angeles film crew into its depths. She hides a secret: in 1987, her grandmother walked into this forest humming a lullaby whose last line she had forgotten. She was never found.
The crew: a director who will do anything for the shot, a burned-out ER nurse, a livestreaming urban explorer, a geologist who trusts only her instruments, and an old volunteer who knows the rules.
Never sleep beneath the trees.
Never cut the ribbons.
Never speak your name.
Then the trail vanishes. The voices of the dead call through the dark. And on the livestream, thousands of strangers see what the group refuses to: one more figure, always walking at the back.
Beneath the moss, something has waited a thousand years to be remembered. First, it must make them forget who they are.
A gothic horror novel where the terror isn't what the forest shows you — it's what it takes.
