The Dark Willowdale Forest

The Dark Willowdale Forest is what the Withering left behind. When the outer Heartgrove Willows failed during the fourth decade of that age, the spirits that had withdrawn through the Spreading Boughs returned to land they did not choose to share. Three generations of spirit-held country have produced something composed rather than wild. The trees beyond the last grove do not resemble forests that grow.

The outer reaches are subtle enough to dismiss. Birches stand close, roots tangled across the path, mist gathering at the boots and refusing to lift before midday. Past the Mist-Shrouded Path and the Corridor of Hollow Birches, the oaks blacken and split, and the willows that grow here drip with rot rather than offer shelter. What lives in the forest scales with depth: wolves and dire boars and lynx in the outer woods, sprites and will-o’-wisps and spriggans past the Sentinel Stones, and deepest of all, where neither bird nor insect moves, draugr in rusted armor and wraiths that take from the living what cannot afterward be recovered.

Three volumes of Bronwen Fellward’s field notes survive in the settlement archive. She walked in and was carried out thirty-one days later with broken ribs and a notebook that ends mid-page. New Valenra are told to read them before doing anything else, usually by someone who has already been in once and decided once was enough.