🕯️ The Nightly Storyteller Presents🌿 Marked: The Green Man’s Claim(From the Grimoire of Skin)

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🎙️ Monologue — “The Forest That Remembers”

> “Every season sheds its skin, but the earth never forgets what was buried in it.  
> You can carve cities from its bones, pave its veins with asphalt and oil—  
> but the old roots still pulse beneath.  
> Some say the Green Man is only a symbol of rebirth.  
> Others know better.  
> He was never reborn.  
> He was never dead.  
> He was only patient.”  

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🌿 The Hollow Church

They called it The Hollow Church—a ruin of ivy and stone swallowed by the countryside, just beyond the last standing farmhouse.  

Elias Crane had read about it in a local folklore forum: a place said to be haunted by carvings that watched you when you weren’t looking.  

The legend fascinated him. The Green Man—an ancient face of vegetation and decay—was carved into cathedrals, garden walls, and grave markers across Europe. Leaves spilled from his mouth, vines curled from his eyes.  

He wasn’t a god, not exactly. More like the memory of one. A whisper left behind by a world that refused to die quietly.  

Elias didn’t just want proof. He wanted communion.  

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🌘 The Descent

It started as a research trip for his blog, Roots of Old Gods. He’d already written about the Horned One, the Harvest King, the Wicker Man.  

But the Green Man? He was different. Too many versions. Too many sightings. And one account that chilled him—dated 1904, written by a parish groundskeeper:  

> “He walks when the ivy blooms. His eyes are hollow knots. His breath smells of soil and rot. The vines listen when he speaks.”  

Locals refused to go near the Hollow Church. They said vines grew faster there, twisting into the shape of faces at night.  

Elias laughed it off. But he still packed his camera, flashlight, and notebook.  

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🌒 The Arrival

He arrived near dusk. The air hung thick with the smell of wet moss and fungal decay.  

The church walls were almost gone—just ribs of stone around a patch of creeping ivy. Carvings lined the archway, all depicting a man’s face with leaves bursting from his mouth.  

“Finally,” Elias whispered, setting up his camera.  

Then something rustled. Not leaves, but the sound of bark scraping stone—heavy and wet.  

He froze. “Hello?”  

No answer. Just the creak of wood and vine shifting under the weight of something moving.  

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🌑 The Encounter

He raised his flashlight.  

A shape stood among the ivy—tall, humanoid, but wrong. Bark for skin. Moss for hair. Hollow sockets filled with crawling roots. Its chest pulsed like it was breathing.  

The Green Man turned its head. Leaves fell from its mouth.  

Elias stumbled back, tripping over broken stone. His flashlight flickered, and for a moment, he saw faces—hundreds of them—half-buried in the ivy-covered walls. Every one bore the same expression of silent terror.  

He ran.  

Branches clawed at his arms. Roots rose from the ground, tangling his feet. His footsteps echoed wrong—delayed, doubled, like something else was walking just behind.  

Something cold brushed his shoulder—a whisper of damp leaves and decay.  

> “Leave… me…” he gasped, slashing at the vines.  

The voice followed him—deep, rustling, ancient, yet somehow directly in his ear.  

> “I am not memory, Elias Crane. I am the silence between breaths.”  

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🌑 The Marking

He reached the road. The air shifted—sharp and clean again. The church vanished into shadow behind him.  

He didn’t stop running until he reached his car.  

When he finally looked in the rearview mirror, a handprint smeared across the glass—green, wet, pulsing faintly.  

Elias touched the mark without thinking. The residue burned cold.  

By the time he got home, his fingertips had turned pale green. The color wasn’t creeping—it was veining, like tiny roots finding purchase under his skin.  

He tried to wash it off. It didn’t work.  

He tried to sleep.  

He dreamed of roots splitting through his flesh.  

In the morning, the mark had spread. Tiny leaves unfurled along his arm. By noon, they had turned toward the sun.  

He felt a faint, constant thirst he knew water wouldn’t satisfy.  

The skin beneath them whispered softly in a voice that wasn’t his.  

> “You found me, Elias Crane. Now you will grow with me.”  

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📜 Fragment from the Grimoire of Skin

> “The Green Man does not hunt. He waits.  
> He grows through memory, through soil, through touch.  
> Those marked by him do not die.  
> They bloom.”  

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🎙️ Closing Words — “The Breath Beneath the Leaves”

> “We pretend we own the earth, but we only borrow it.  
> Every step, every grave, every seed is part of a cycle that never asked for our permission.  
> The Green Man waits in the cracks, in the walls, in the things we call forgotten.  
> And when he touches you…  
> you remember whose roots feed your flesh.  
> If you’ve ever touched ivy and felt it cling too long… you’ve already begun.”  

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🌿 End of Chronicle

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Email. thenightlystorytellerblog@gmail.com
  
And if you dare… tell me what you’ve seen growing where it shouldn’t.  

We’re just getting started—and things are about to get dark.  

thenightlystoryteller.blogspot.com  


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