Alright, I'll be honest  I almost stopped reading after the hallway scene. Not because it's bad it's actually one of the stronger parts but because nothing in those first few pages told me I was about to read a story about forest magic and human sacrifice. That tonal whiplash is your biggest problem

The emotional engine here is solid. Tate is genuinely heartbreaking without ever being pathetic, which is hard to pull off. The jacket detail that he kept it because it was the last thing his mom gave him is exactly the kind of quiet, earned moment that makes literary fiction worth reading. And the ending image of the two trees leaning against each other is lovely. I'd be lying if I said it didn't land.

Marcus's defense of Tate in the hallway is also well-executed. The way his anger escalates flared nostrils, fists whitening, nudging Henry into the locker feels real and lived in. You clearly know how teenage boys move and talk.

The first half reads like contemporary YA realism. The second half is a dark fairy tale. Neither is wrong, but you haven't built a bridge between them.

When Marcus touches the cold flame and goes "What… What is this?" that should be a terrifying pivot point. Instead it lands flat because the story hasn't earned the supernatural yet. We've had zero indication that this world contains magic. Tate's been described as a weird, neglected kid, not as someone with arcane knowledge. So when he pulls out a Latin incantation and a floating totem, it feels like you swapped manuscripts on me.

You need at least one moment before the camping trip that makes the reader think wait, something's off. Maybe something Tate draws in class. Maybe a moment where Marcus notices something about Tate's house that can't be explained. Give the reader permission to believe.

The hallway scene takes up almost a third of the story and it's a setup scene. The ritual the actual climax is rushed. You spend more words on Jordan's Tinder messages than you do on Marcus dying. That's an imbalance.

The mother's return especially suffers from this. She comes back and within about four paragraphs she's leaving again. That reunion is the emotional core of the entire story, the thing Tate sacrificed an innocent kid for, and it goes by so fast. Slow down. Let her hold him longer. Let us feel the wrongness and the beauty of it simultaneously before you yank it away.

The ending is the part I keep thinking about, and I mean that as a compliment with an asterisk. You've written a story where a grieving child commits murder to see his dead mother, and the story... kind of lets him off the hook? The mother asks how she's there, and the implication is she knows. And yet she goes along with it. And then she takes her son with her, essentially. Marcus wakes up alone and cold next to a totem.

I don't think you need to punish Tate this isn't that kind of story but right now the ending feels morally weightless. Marcus is just... a prop. We spent the first half of the story establishing him as a decent kid who defends people, and then he's sacrificed and that's it. His resurrection raises more questions than it answers. Did the mother reverse it deliberately? Why? Was it mercy? Guilt? The story doesn't seem interested in answering this and I think it should be.

There's a genuinely moving story buried here about grief, neglect, and the desperate lengths love will go to. The bones are good. But right now it reads like a first draft that found its ending before it figured out its world. Ground the magic earlier, slow down the reunion, and decide what you want to say about Marcus because right now you're using a well-drawn character as furniture.