The Hollow opened like a wound beneath the world.
Isabella stood at the edge, boots sinking into damp moss that pulsed faintly beneath her heels. No birds sang here. No wind stirred the leaves. The air was listening.
She tightened her grip on the dagger at her hip—not because it would help, but because it grounded her. The hilt was carved from blackwood, smooth and warm from years of being held. It had belonged to her mother.
Her real mother.
Not the Root-borne matron who raised her in the Bloomfields, all smiles and sacred dogma.
No—her mother had died screaming, dragged into the vines when Isabella was five.
And even now, the Hollow remembered her blood.
Isabella stepped forward.
The trees grew stranger here. Bent, bowed, almost kneeling. Their bark was carved with tiny mouths—hu
