ELLIE’S POV
The forest breathed around me, but it was a shallow, uneasy breath, as if the life within it had been thinned out, stretched to breaking. The familiar symphony of birdsong and the quiet scurrying of small creatures beneath the underbrush had faded into an almost perfect silence. Even the wind seemed reluctant to move, dragging a cold edge through the air that clung to my skin and settled in my bones.
It was the kind of silence that wasn’t peace.
It was the kind that came before something worse.
My fingers traced the deep grooves carved into the bark of an ancient ash tree near the eastern border. The cuts were fresh, the wood was raw and pale against the dark, the trunk were weathered. The symbols were jagged, almost violent, their shapes sharp enough to feel even without t
