The air around the giant silver tree felt too still. It was the kind of eerie quiet you get right before lightning crashes down. Julian didn’t move. His hand stayed pressed against the tree’s warm bark—it almost felt like skin. He kept his eyes on the small red door. The door looked like it belonged in any regular house, but this one was growing right out of a tree that seemed to stretch for miles.
A thin hand reached out from behind the door. Long fingers, skin marked with dark ink that would never wash off. It wasn’t a monster’s hand. It looked like the hand of a man who writes books.
“Julian… help me,” someone whispered from inside the tree.
Julian’s heart skipped. He knew that voice. It wasn’t Maya’s big, powerful Goddess voice. It was human—and he hadn’t heard it in a long, long ti
