Chapter Twenty-Nine
The forest was quiet during the day.
Too quiet.
It wasn't the peaceful kind of silence that followed a soft spring rain or the gentle arrival of sunrise. It was the kind of silence that crawled under your skin, cold and spindly, coiling tight around your spine until your breath hitched in your throat. It was the silence of a predator holding its breath. It was the kind of silence that warned you something was about to shatter, and that when it did, the shards would be impossible to gather back up.
