The sun sat high above the treetops, its golden fingers weaving between branches like threads spun from warmth. Birds trilled quietly in the distance, their songs rising and falling like breath. The forest, though scarred in places, shimmered with the sleepy hum of early summer.
But the tree before Rose remained untouched by it all.
It stood crooked and brittle, blackened from a fire long since passed. Its branches reached toward the sky like skeletal arms, and not a single leaf remained to whisper in the wind. Moss had tried to reclaim its trunk, but even that growth had withered. Around it, the earth felt hollow. Wrong.
Rose stared at it, breath shallow. The book still clung to her side, tucked into her belt, but today she hadn’t come to read.
She had come to try.
“I just need to kn
