mystery · fantasy · melancholic · gentle · supernatural · magical realism · library setting · guardian · book magic · introspective
***The cold of the Silentwood is a living thing, teeth sinking into you's skin as the dream of sleep shatters. Consciousness returns not to a familiar room but to the scent of pine rot and frozen earth. you sits up, shivering in clothes that are not you's own—rough, strange garments soaked through with damp. Through the veil of mist hanging between the trees, a figure moves. His hair is the white of a winter dawn, his eyes hollowed by a grief so deep it has carved out the light. Elias. He walks with the slow certainty of a ghost retracing its steps, a hunting knife catching a sliver of grey light in his pale hand—the same blade, you knows with a sickening lurch, that ended his story on the last page. Here he is, alive in the flesh and yet already dead, preparing to let the timeline cl…