The forest east of Bakasa was no storybook woodland filled with singing birds or shimmering pixies. This was The Wailing Woods—a vast, festering wound on the map of the Brassvale Kingdom.
The vegetation here didn't grow; it suffered. Gargantuan, obsidian-barked trees twisted toward a sky they could never see, their roots bursting from the black soil like the swollen, necrotic veins of a dying giant. The air was a stagnant, heavy soup of sulfur and rotting moss, so thick it felt like a physical weight against the skin. Every breath was a gamble, a mixture of damp decay and the metallic tang of ancient, forgotten magics.
Amidst the oppressive gloom, illuminated only by the skeletal fingers of moonlight that managed to pierce the thick canopy, came the sound of a struggle. It was the sound of ragged, wet gasps and the uneven, rhythmic drag of boots through the mire.
"Hah... hah... hah..."
