“These woods hold more than beasts,” Almeric warned, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “They say a dark curse lingers here. The goblins call it the Hollow, and they do not cross it lightly.”
Some around the fire clenched cloaks tighter as gazes roved the surrounding darkness. Others put their hands on weapon hilts. Almeric sat with his staff across his knees. Only Cassian, the youngest among them, laughed.
“Curses and goblins? Is that all, old man? No ghosts? Pfft. We’ve faced worse.”
With Almeric as their guide, the small group had come to the heart of Wilderwood seeking adventure and treasure. Cassian, the swordsman; Marella, the archer; Lista, the bard; and Daegra, the hillman. They’d hired Almeric as their guide, so while he wasn’t one of them, tonight, in these dark woods, they were all of a single mind to get what they came for and to get out.
In the safety of the Stabbing Sword tavern, they had heard tales of witches and shades roaming the woods. But such stories had seemed fanciful and easily dismissed. Now, however, with twisted trees looming over them and fog slithering across the ground like creeping fingers, they found those tavern tales much harder to laugh off. The ancient oaks grew in unnatural shapes here, their trunks bent and gnarled as if frozen mid-writhe in some long-ago agony. Bark peeled away in strips like rotting flesh, revealing wood beneath that pulsed with a sickly phosphorescence. Shadows stretched between the trees, deep and dark as spilled ink, while the forest lay eerily silent but for the soft scurrying of unseen creatures or the flapping wings of a nightbird. Even the air tasted wrong—thick and cloying, with an underlying sweetness like overripe fruit left to decay.
Still full of bravado, Cassian glanced at Almeric and asked in too loud a voice, “You’re certain there’s treasure here?”
Marella hushed him. “Keep your voice down!”
“There better be treasure here,” Daegra grumbled. “We didn’t come all this way to go home empty-handed.”
Almeric’s weathered face hardened in the firelight, each crease and line deepening with grim knowledge. He leaned forward, and the flames cast dancing shadows across his features, making him appear ancient and terrible. “Aye, I’m certain. Three hundred years ago, folk knew Wilderwood by another name—the Verdant Crown. Back then, these trees bore golden leaves year-round, and the forest floor bloomed with flowers that never wilted. The witches who dwelled here were guardians, protectors of the natural order. They kept a vault deep in the forest’s heart, filled not just with gold and jewels, but with artifacts of immense power—relics from the Age of Wonders, when magic flowed through the world like water through a stream.”
He paused, his knuckles white as he gripped his staff. “But one of their own, a witch named Morwenna the Ambitious, grew jealous of the vault’s contents. She wanted the power for herself, to reshape the world according to her vision. When the coven refused her, she struck a bargain with something old and hungry that dwelled beneath the roots—something that had been sleeping since before the first men walked these lands.”
Lista leaned closer, her musician’s fingers unconsciously tapping a nervous rhythm on her knee. “What did she unleash?”
“No one knows its true name,” Almeric continued, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. “The old texts call it the Devourer, the Root-Dweller, the Thing That Waits Below. Morwenna thought she could control it, use it to overcome her sisters. Instead, it consumed her first—body, soul, and magic—and then it turned on the rest. The witches fought desperately, but their spells only fed the creature’s hunger. In their last moments, they wove one last enchantment, binding the creature to the forest itself, trapping it in a prison of living wood. But the cost...”
He gestured to the twisted landscape around them. “The forest absorbed the curse. Every tree, every root, every blade of grass became tainted. The golden leaves turned black and fell away. The flowers withered to ash. And the spirits of the slain witches—along with every living thing caught in the curse’s spread—were bound here, unable to rest, unable to leave. The vault remains, untouched and waiting, but the forest itself has become its guardian. And it remembers its hatred of the living.”
A log in the fire cracked, sending up a shower of sparks, and everyone jumped.
“Why does this suddenly feel like the worst idea we’ve ever had?” Marella asked, shivering.
Almeric grinned, the flicker of fear in his eyes betraying his unease. “Because it likely is.”
A whispering filled the air, faint but unmistakable, like voices carried on a wind that didn’t exist. At first, it sounded like nothing more than the rustle of leaves, but as the adventurers strained to listen, words emerged from the susurration—fractured pleas, half-formed warnings, names called out in desperate longing. Turn back... leave us... so cold... help me... please...
The slithering fog thickened with unnatural speed, rising from the ground in writhing coils that moved with purposeful intent. It rolled toward the campfire like a living tide, and within its depths, strange shapes coalesced. Faces formed from the mist itself—dozens of them, perhaps hundreds—each one more terrible than the last. Hollow eyes stared out from sunken sockets, mouths frozen mid-scream or hanging slack in expressions of abject despair. Some faces were young, frozen in the bloom of youth. Others were ancient and withered. All bore the unmistakable mark of violent death—gashes across throats, crushed skulls, features twisted in final agonies.
The essences faded in and out of sight like images reflected in disturbed water, never quite solid, never quite gone. They drifted closer to the fire’s warmth, drawn to the living heat like moths to a flame. Their movements were wrong—too smooth, too gliding, as if they floated just above the forest floor. They encircled the group with slow, silent movement, watching with those terrible, empty eyes, unblinking and eternal. Their expressions held a mournful quality, as if bound by some ancient sorrow that had long since hollowed them out from within, leaving only the husk of what they once were.
One shade drifted closer than the rest—a woman’s face, beautiful once perhaps, now stretched and distorted. Her mouth moved but emitted no sound, miming the same words over and over: Run... while you still can... run...
Cassian’s hand tightened around his sword hilt until his knuckles cracked, the leather grip gone slick with sweat despite the chill. Beside him, Daegra hefted his warhammer, the weapon trembling in his white-knuckled grip. The hillman’s breathing had gone shallow and quick.
“What are those?” Cassian asked, his earlier bravado stripped away, leaving his voice thin and young.
“Shades,” Almeric whispered, his eyes darting from one spectral face to another, counting them, cataloging them. His hand moved to the charms on his staff, fingers finding each one by memory, as if their touch could ward off the supernatural cold seeping into his bones. “The souls of those who came before us—adventurers who failed to find the vault, or worse.” He paused as a ghastly shade drifted past, its jaw hanging at an impossible angle, tongue lolling. “Those who found it and paid the price for their greed.”
Marella had risen to her feet without realizing it, an arrow nocked but not yet drawn. “There are so many,” she breathed. “Dozens. Maybe more.”
“Centuries’ worth,” Almeric confirmed grimly. “Every treasure hunter, every greedy fool, every desperate soul who thought they could outwit the Hollow. All of them still here, trapped. The curse doesn’t just kill—it claims. It adds you to its collection, to its eternal audience of the damned.”
Lista’s lute had slipped from her nerveless fingers and lay forgotten in the dirt. She watched, transfixed with horror, as a shade that might have been a child reached toward her with translucent fingers. “Can they hurt us?”
“They’re just watching for now,” Almeric said, though his tone suggested this was small comfort. “Witnessing. Recording. But if we show weakness, if we give in to fear...” He shrugged. “Wilderwood warps everything that enters it,” he mused, his voice steady despite the oppressive presence surrounding them. “The living, the dead. Even time bends and twists here. Some say that those who wander too deep emerge decades later or never at all. And we’ll share their fate if we’re not careful—condemned to drift through these cursed woods for eternity, watching others make the same doomed journey.”
The adventurers huddled together, drawing closer to the fire’s meager protection. Yet even as they sought comfort in proximity, they could feel the weight of a hundred haunted eyes pressing down upon them. The shades had multiplied, their numbers swelling from the fog like a silent congregation gathering for some unholy rite. They formed a complete circle now, layered three and four deep, an amphitheater of the damned bearing witness to what they knew would be another tragedy added to their ranks.
The temperature dropped further, each breath now visible as white mist. Frost began creeping across the ground in delicate spiderweb patterns, reaching toward their boots with crystalline fingers. The campfire itself seemed diminished, its flames struggling against an invisible smothering force, the light guttering and weak.
Deep within the forest—far beyond the ring of spectral watchers—a low, echoing voice drifted through the trees. It was neither male nor female, neither young nor old, but something ageless and wrong. The sound carried an unnatural resonance, as if spoken in a vast cathedral, each word reverberating through the twisted wood and into their very bones. It was a voice that commanded attention, demanded a response, and pulled at something primal within them.
“Come closer,” it called, sweet as poisoned honey, seductive as a lover’s whisper. “You seek treasure, do you not? Gold and glory? Power beyond imagining? Come deeper into my embrace. But know this, brave travelers—treasure is never free. Everything has its price, and the Hollow always collects its due.”
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once, bouncing between the trees, wrapping around them like invisible chains. With each syllable, the fog pulsed, the shades swayed in unison, and the forest itself seemed to lean inward, listening, waiting.
Cassian swallowed hard, his throat clicking in the unnatural silence that followed. Despite every instinct screaming at him to stay put, despite the terror clawing at his chest, his body betrayed him. His sword came half-drawn from its scabbard with a whisper of steel, the blade catching the firelight in a brief, defiant gleam. His right foot lifted, moved forward. Just one step, barely more than a shuffle, but a step nonetheless toward that beckoning voice, toward the darkness beyond the shades’ circle.
“The vault,” he murmured, as if in a trance, his eyes glazed and distant. “It’s calling to me. I can hear it. All that gold, just waiting...”
Before he took a second step, Almeric’s hand shot out with surprising speed for a man of his years, gripping Cassian’s arm with iron strength. His fingers dug deep enough to bruise, to hurt, to shock the young swordsman back to his senses. The old man’s staff came up simultaneously, its charms jangling a sharp, discordant note that cut through the supernatural compulsion like a blade through silk.
“Not yet,” the old man murmured, his voice low and urgent, edged with a fear he hadn’t shown before. His grip tightened further, pulling Cassian backward, away from the edge, away from whatever waited in the dark. “The forest is only testing us, measuring our resolve, seeking the weak link in our chain. It wants to separate us, to pick us off one by one. That voice isn’t showing us the way. It’s luring us to our doom.”
He yanked Cassian around, forcing the young man to meet his eyes. “Best sit back down. Now. Keep your eyes on the fire, not the darkness.”
Cassian blinked, as if waking from a dream, then stumbled backward and collapsed onto a log. His hands shook as he resheathed his blade. “I don’t know what... for a moment I thought...”
“Don’t try to explain it,” Lista said quietly, her own face pale. “We all heard it. We all felt it.”
Almeric’s gaze swept over each of them, ensuring they were still present, still themselves. “The shades will keep their distance for now,” he said, though his words carried little comfort. “Rules we don’t fully understand bind them. They can watch, they can bear witness, but they cannot directly harm us. Not yet. Not unless we invite them in through fear or foolishness.”
He lowered himself back down beside the fire, but kept his staff across his knees, both hands wrapped around it, every muscle coiled and ready. “But Wilderwood is home to things far older and fouler than mere shades. Eldritch things. Hungry things. Those are the ones you should worry about. Those are the ones that can reach out and take you.”
As if to punctuate his words—as if the forest itself had been waiting for precisely this moment—a low, mournful wail erupted from somewhere to the north. It was an unearthly sound, twisted and anguished, neither wholly human nor wholly beast. The cry carried through the branches like a physical force, shaking loose dead leaves and sending small creatures scurrying in panicked flight. It rose in pitch and volume, climbing higher and higher until it became almost unbearable, a shriek of rage and loss and eternal suffering that clawed at the inside of their skulls.
Then, just as suddenly, it stopped, leaving a silence more terrible than the sound itself.
The shades scattered like startled birds, their forms dispersing into wisps of fog, fleeing from something that frightened even the dead.
Cassian remained seated by the fire, but his hand never strayed far from his sword hilt. His eyes kept darting to the darkness beyond their camp, searching for the source of that terrible wail.
“What was that?” he asked, his voice barely steady.
Almeric sighed, a sound weighted with the burden of too much knowledge, too many years spent studying the darkness that lurked in forgotten places. He ran a bony finger over the charms hanging from his staff—each one a ward against evil, each one suddenly feeling inadequate. Bone clinked against iron, wood against silver, creating a soft, nervous music.
“That, my young adventurers, is the Witch-King.” The name evoked a renewed chill that swept over them. “Once, long ago, he was a mighty lord of these lands—Lord Caelmir the Resplendent, they called him. His kingdom stretched from the eastern mountains to the western sea. He commanded armies, built cities, and held the loyalty of thousands.” Almeric’s voice dropped lower, barely audible over the crackling fire. “But he was betrayed by his own blood—his twin brother, Aldric, who coveted the throne and conspired with Caelmir’s own court to have him deposed.”
The old man’s eyes grew distant, as if reading from some invisible text written in the air. “They didn’t just kill him. That would have been mercy. Instead, they performed a ritual of unmaking—stripped him of his titles, his lands, his very name. They dragged him here, to Wilderwood, and cast him into the corruption of the Hollow. The forest took him, twisted him, merged his spirit with its own malevolence. Now he’s neither living nor dead, neither man nor monster. He exists in eternal torment, his humanity long since burned away, leaving only rage and hunger and an endless, gnawing need.”
Almeric’s hand trembled as he touched another charm. “They say he still searches for his betrayers, though they’ve been dust for three centuries. He’s drawn to the living, desperate to steal the warmth from their bodies, to drain the life-force the Hollow took from him. I’ve heard his baleful cry a dozen times over the years, and never once—”
The wind gusted, shifting, as if the forest itself drew breath. It brought with it a stench so foul that Marella gagged and Lista covered her mouth with her cloak. It was the smell of open graves, of flesh left too long in standing water, of corruption and rot and things that should stay buried. The temperature plummeted so rapidly that the moisture in the air crystallized, forming a glittering, deadly frost that coated every surface.
The campfire guttered lower, its flames turning from warm orange to blue-green, casting twisted shadows that writhed like living things. Around them, the shadows themselves seemed to thicken, to congeal into something more substantial than mere absence of light. They lengthened impossibly, reaching toward the group with grasping tendrils, darkening until they appeared solid enough to touch.
Then, from the murky depths of the forest, a figure took shape.
At first, it was nothing more than a distortion in the darkness—a place where the shadows gathered more densely, where the fog swirled in deliberate patterns. But with each passing second, it grew more defined, more real, more terrible. A skeletal form emerged, towering at least seven feet tall, its proportions wrong. It wore tattered robes that might once have been royal purple but had faded to the color of old bruises, hanging from its frame in moth-eaten strips that floated as if underwater.
The Witch-King’s body was translucent yet somehow present, his bones visible through spectral flesh that flickered between states of existence—now solid, now vapor, now something in between. Chains wrapped around his torso and limbs, each link etched with runes that pulsed with a faint luminescence. The chains clinked with each movement, a sound like wind chimes made from finger bones.
But it was his face that froze them all in place.
What remained of his skull was locked in a rictus grin far too wide for any human face, the jaw stretched and distended, revealing rows of teeth that seemed to go back too far, too deep. His eyes were the worst. They glowed with an unnatural fire, twin points of crimson light that burned with malevolent intelligence and bottomless hunger. Those eyes had seen centuries pass, had witnessed untold suffering, and they promised more to come. They held a madness so profound it leaked into the surrounding air, a psychic pressure that made rational thought difficult.
On top of his head sat a crown of blackened iron, twisted into cruel thorns that pierced his skull in a dozen places. Spectral blood—if such a thing existed—wept from these wounds, trickling down his face in dark rivulets that evaporated before reaching his jaw.
Almeric’s voice emerged as a trembling whisper, all his scholarly composure shattered. “The Witch-King...”
The creature’s gaze swept across their camp. Where its attention fell, frost formed. Plants withered. The very air seemed to die. When those burning eyes finally fixed on the group of adventurers huddled around their dying fire, a sound escaped him—something between a laugh and a death rattle, a noise that no throat should be able to produce.
“Visitors?” The word slithered out, drawn and distorted, each syllable echoing with multiple voices speaking in unison—young and old, male and female, screaming and whispering. His jaw didn’t move when he spoke. It simply hung open while the words emanated from somewhere deep within him. “In my domain? How delightful.”
He glided forward—not walking, but flowing, his tattered robes trailing behind him like a funeral shroud. With each foot of distance he closed, the temperature dropped another degree, and the firelight dimmed further. Ice crystals formed in their hair, on their eyelashes, coating their weapons.
“It’s been too long since I’ve tasted life,” the Witch-King continued, and his grin somehow widened further, splitting his face almost in two. “Too long since I’ve felt the warmth of a beating heart growing cold beneath my touch. Tell me, which of you will I take first?”
Behind him, emerging from the fog like soldiers answering their general’s call, more figures materialized. Ghosts with hollowed faces and tattered burial shrouds drifted forth, their expressions blank and obedient. And worse—ghouls, their skin pale and stretched tight over skeletal frames, translucent enough to see the suggestion of organs beneath. Their fingers had elongated into claws, their teeth sharpened to points. These were the flesh-eaters, the corpse-devourers, and they snarled with animal hunger as they surrounded the camp. Their eyes glinted with a terrible, mindless appetite as they licked cracked, blackened lips. Strips of rotted meat hung from their mouths, and their breath came in wet, rattling gasps.
The adventurers found themselves surrounded by an army of the dead, with the Witch-King at its head, his crimson eyes burning with promises of eternal torment.
Cassian leaped to his feet, his sword ringing free from its scabbard in one fluid motion born of training and desperation. The steel gleamed in the eerie blue-green light of their corrupted campfire. “Back, fiend!” he shouted, his voice cracking but defiant. He planted his feet in a fighter’s stance, blade held before him in a two-handed grip. “You’ll find no easy prey here tonight!”
Marella’s bow came up smooth and practiced. She drew an arrow from her quiver, nocking it with the muscle memory of a thousand practice sessions. The arrowhead tracked the Witch-King’s spectral form, though her mind screamed that arrows were useless against something already dead. Still, she held her aim steady, waiting for a clear shot, for any sign of vulnerability.
Beside her, Daegra hefted his warhammer with both hands, the heavy weapon rising to his shoulder. The hillman set his jaw, his eyes hard with the stubborn courage of his people. “Come on then, dead thing,” he growled, rolling his shoulders. “Let’s see if you bleed.”
Lista scrambled backward, pressing against a gnarled tree trunk, her hands fumbling uselessly at her belt where no weapon hung. A bard carried songs, not steel. Her breath came in short, panicked gasps, and her fingers clutched at her lute strap as if the instrument could somehow protect her.
The Witch-King tilted his head, surveying them with those burning crimson eyes, and his too-wide grin stretched even further. His amusement was palpable, rolling off him in waves of supernatural cold. “Brave words,” he said, his multi-toned voice dripping with mockery. “Such fire. Such passion. Such... delicious... life.” He savored the last word like a man describing a fine wine. “Too bad they will be your last.”
He raised one skeletal hand, fingers ending in long, translucent claws that looked sharp enough to carve stone. The runes on his chains blazed brighter, pulsing in rhythm with some dark heartbeat. The air itself thickened, pressing down upon the adventurers with physical weight. “Now,” he whispered, and the word echoed through the forest like thunder, “the Hollow will claim its due.”
A wave of cold washed over them—not merely temperature, but something deeper, more fundamental. It sapped their strength, drained their warmth, pulled at their very essence. Cassian’s sword arm wavered. Marella’s bowstring went slack. Daegra’s hammer dipped toward the ground. They could feel the Witch-King’s magic drawing their life-force out, siphoned away like water through a crack, flowing toward the Witch-King’s grasping hand.
Lista’s legs buckled, and she slid down the tree trunk, gasping. “Can’t... breathe...”
“He’s... draining us...,” Marella managed to say, her voice barely audible.
The ghouls and ghosts surged forward at their master’s silent command, moving with terrifying speed. Ghouls loped on all fours like twisted animals, their claws gouging the earth. Ghosts glided above the ground, reaching with incorporeal hands that promised a cold worse than death.
Only Almeric moved to stop them.
The old man’s scholarly demeanor shattered like glass, revealing something else beneath—something ancient and powerful that had been hiding behind a mask of frailty. He surged to his feet with impossible speed, his cloak billowing around him. His staff, which had seemed a simple walking stick, now blazed with eldritch light. The charms hanging from it spun wildly, each one glowing with its own color—silver, gold, crimson, emerald—creating a dazzling display that pushed back the darkness.
“Begone, spirits!” Almeric’s voice boomed with an authority that shook the trees, no longer the wavering tone of an old guide but the commanding cry of a wizard in his power. His eyes blazed white, and arcane symbols flickered across his skin like living tattoos. “These souls are not yours to claim! By the elder laws, by the binding oaths, by the light that came before the darkness—I deny you!”
He shoved past Cassian, placing himself between the adventurers and the advancing horde. His staff rose high, gripped in both hands, and he slammed it down onto the ground with a sound like a thunderclap.
The earth erupted.
A shockwave of pure force exploded outward in a perfect circle, visible as a ripple in the air itself. It caught the ghouls mid-leap and hurled them backward, their bodies tumbling through the air like broken dolls. The ghosts shrieked—a sound like nails on slate—as the wave tore through them, disrupting their spectral forms and scattering them like smoke in a gale. Even the Witch-King staggered, his chain rattling, his grin finally faltering.
The pressure on the adventurers’ souls released, and they gasped, drawing in desperate lungfuls of air. Strength flooded back into their limbs. Warmth returned to their bodies.
“Run!” Almeric shouted, his voice raw with effort. The white light in his eyes flickered, threatening to go out. Sweat poured down his face despite the cold, and his hands shook on his staff. “Run NOW! I can’t hold them long!”
No one needed a second urging. Not even Cassian, whose warrior’s pride screamed at him to stand and fight. Survival instinct overwhelmed honor.
Marella moved first, shoving Lista forward and pulling Daegra by the arm. “Move! Go!”
They ran, crashing through the underbrush with no thought for stealth or direction. Almeric wheeled to follow, but not before slamming his staff down one more time, creating another barrier of force behind them. The adventurers heard him panting as he caught up, his face pale and drawn, as if he had aged ten years in ten seconds.
Led by Almeric’s unerring sense of direction even in his exhausted state, they plunged through narrow, winding trails barely visible in the moonlight that filtered through the twisted canopy. Branches whipped at their faces and roots grabbed at their feet, as if the forest itself conspired against their escape. Behind them, they heard the sounds of pursuit—the clatter of clawed feet on damp leaves, the wet, rasping breath of the ghouls, the keening wails of the ghosts.
And worst of all, the echo of spectral laughter. The Witch-King’s voice followed them through the trees, neither close nor far, seeming to come from everywhere at once. He toyed with them, herding them, while taking pleasure in their fear.
Cassian risked a glance over his shoulder and immediately wished he hadn’t. Through the trees, the Witch-King’s twisted grin glowed like a sinister beacon in the darkness, those crimson eyes boring into him even at this distance. The spectral lord wasn’t running—he didn’t need to. He glided between the trees, passing through them as if they weren’t there, always in sight, always watching, always grinning.
“Don’t look back!” Almeric gasped, nearly stumbling. Daegra caught his arm, supporting the old man as they ran. “Keep moving! We’re almost to the border!”
Lista sobbed as she ran, tears streaming down her face. Marella’s lungs burned, her legs screaming in protest, but she pushed harder, faster. They burst through a wall of thorny undergrowth that tore at their clothes and skin, leaving bloody scratches, but the pain barely registered.
Then, suddenly, miraculously, they broke through.
The forest’s edge appeared before them like salvation itself—a clear line where the twisted, corrupted trees gave way to normal woodland, where the fog stopped as if hitting an invisible wall, and where the moonlight shone pure and clean instead of being filtered through malevolent shadows.
They crashed through the boundary and collapsed on the other side, gasping, heaving, their hearts hammering against their ribs. No one could speak, could do anything but breathe and tremble and try to convince themselves they were still alive.
Slowly, Cassian raised his head and looked back.
The forest stood silent behind them. The ghouls had stopped at the border, pacing back and forth like caged wolves, snarling but unable to cross. The ghosts hovered just inside the tree line, their hollow eyes fixed on the escapees with eternal hunger. And there, framed between two elder oaks, stood the Witch-King.
He hadn’t pursued beyond the boundary. Perhaps he couldn’t because the curse that bound him also confined him. He stood there, perfectly still except for the slow billowing of his tattered robes, watching them with those burning eyes.
Then his voice drifted across the distance, soft as a whisper yet clear as a bell, chilling them to the bone despite their escape. “Remember,” the Witch-King called, his multi-toned voice dripping with malice and dark promise, “the Hollow always takes its toll. You may have fled tonight, but you now carry its mark. You will dream of this place. You will hear my voice in the dark. And one day—perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in ten years, perhaps on your deathbed—you will return to me. They always do.”
His grin widened, splitting his face nearly in half. “Until then, sleep well.”
The Witch-King dissolved into shadow and mist, vanishing between one blink and the next, leaving only the echo of his laughter hanging in the air like a curse.
The adventurers sat in stunned silence, the full weight of their survival—and his promise—settling over them like a shroud. Wilderwood was behind them now, its dark trees swaying in a breeze they couldn’t feel. But they knew with terrible certainty that they’d never truly escape its dark grasp.
For in their minds lingered the memory of the Witch-King’s cold, toothy grin, and the knowledge that somewhere in those cursed woods, he was still waiting... and watching... and remembering their faces.
The Witch-King had let them go.
But it had not released them.
This story and many more are available to listen to on my YouTube channel, Fantasy Audiobooks by Scott Marlowe.
