A rotten branch cracked under the weight of wet pine needles, dropping a shower of cold droplets onto Caleb Conway’s collar as he pressed deeper into the ancient grove.
The Whispering Woods lived up to their name; the thick canopy of black barked cedar trees swallowed the autumn sun completely, leaving the damp floor drowned in a creeping gray mist that coiled around Caleb’s boots like river reeds. The air tasted of bitter moss and decomposing leaves, but beneath the mundane rot of the forest floor hummed a jagged, erratic pulse of wild energy that set the hairs on his forearms on edge.
Caleb did not rush, nor did he draw his meteor iron sword to clear the thorny underbrush.
His boots made no sound against the sodden earth as he expanded the golden root within his dantian, casting his p
