bạn hear a lonesome bird call as bạn wander out of the forest. It is dull and misty. The sky is concrete, bạn can taste rain in the air.

Fell it on the breeze.

But bạn don't care, bạn keep waking. Walking into the opening where the trees grow ever thêm sparse. Where the woodland meets the grassland and all that remains are the twigs and trunks the forest had coughed out. Your bate feet slide over the greenest dewy grass. And here bạn arrive with a sense of peace despite the chilly drizzle that has just begun to fall. A few thêm steps have bạn standing in the center of an earthy ring. bạn are surrounded bởi stumps of all shapes and sizes. Some are spindly, white, and knobby with think fingers that seem to swirl the mist. Others are thick, rough, and deep brown. Some are smooth and tan and seem to reach the sky as if they want to touch the stars as badly as bạn do. And others have been tampered bởi the faefolk. These are mostly the tall and tan ones. They carve intricate and swirly runes into them. bạn haven't learned to decipher them. And at the topmost part of the tree, wood of other trees (pine, willow, fir, and birch) are tethered in such a fashion that has them looking like a wooden version of a feathered war bonnet.

The land is very nearly empty of everything else, save for a boulder hoặc two. bạn don't even pay the boulders much mind, but bạn notice the twin-protector seals. Three vertical slashes and a horizontal line through the middle with a dot on the bottom corner--the ngày protector. And on the other rock are four horizontal lines with two diagonal slashes through the middle and a dot on the upper corner--the night protector. They glow faintly orange. Someone has left the feather of a white faced owl--bound with the stem of heather--at the foot of the stone. bạn have arrived at your destination.

A few early rising fireflies are already gathering at the base of the stumps. These are đã đưa ý kiến to be the spirits of the faefolk. Of the elven. Of the nymphs and druids. And of the trees themselves. That makes sense, after all, that's what this place is...

A graveyard for the kin of the forest. For natures purest creations. bạn know this because the nàng tiên have told you. bạn had followed them here.

But they have not told bạn why.

Somehow bạn get the feeling that the forest and the magic are dying. For thêm and thêm skeletal structures seem to be pooping up on the hillside with their billowing smoke and grating noises. And with them thêm woodsy structures erect here in the clearing. bạn breathe in, resin fills your nostrils, bạn can practically taste it. But there's something else.

Something is laced in the mist.

It's poison.

The old world is dying and you're standing on its resting ground.



The drizzle grows into a shower.