Whispers in the Woods

The hours slip by as you push deeper and deeper into the Black Woods. The moon overhead casts a silvery light through the dense trees, illuminating the path you are following. The tracks continue on a slow, deliberate pace. No sign of distress, only steady steps. it is also quite obvious that the person you are tracking had company. A second set of prints, with a shorter gait. The two must have walked together for hours, moving at a leisurely pace as if they weren't worried about being followed. The only problem is that you are always a few steps behind, and there is no way to know how far you would need to walk before you catch up with them.

You press through the night, following the tracks deeper into the heart of the forest. When morning finally comes, you understand why it is called the Black Woods; the canopy is so thick and tangled that the sun barely touches the forest floor, leaving everything below in a murky, perpetual twilight.

Along the way, you find subtle signs that your quarry paused to rest: apple cores tossed into underbrush, patches of trampled grass where someone once sat down. As the hours pass, the tracks merge with an old, nearly forgotten trail, barely more than a trace in the undergrowth.

The path leads into an even darker part of the forest, where dense stands of ancient fir trees cast everything into near-night despite the rising sun. The ground here is soft and spongy with thick carpets of pine needles, killing most plant life save for clusters of pale fungi that thrive in the damp.

Then, through the mist and branches, you see it, a ring of thorny brambles, twisted into a crude palisade fence. Inside, nestled in the clearing's center, stands a massive gnarled tree with windows like hollowed eyes and a heavy wooden door carved straight into its trunk.