It felt like more than the game was looking back. The hounds abruptly stopped short and fell silent. The trees themselves felt like they were gazing back into his very soul.

This was no longer the welcoming woods, but the entrance to something unnamed. They had traversed too far and the warning from the old traveler woman rang through his head like a lost memory found, “The line of birch is the gate ye cannot pass. For only death lies beyond the fae’s territory.”