Forbidden Forest Border – Sector 4. Midday – Day One of the Expedition.
The Forbidden Forest was not the whimsical woodland of fairy tales where princesses sang in harmony with colorful birds. It was an emerald tomb, a sprawling green hell where the laws of civilization were buried beneath centuries of rotting mulch.
The trees here did not merely grow; they surged upward like frozen explosions of wood and bark, their trunks as thick as apartment blocks. Roots the size of pythons coiled across the forest floor, slick with phosphorescent moss that glowed with a faint, sickly light. The canopy above was so dense that the sun was a distant memory, reduced to a few pathetic needles of light that failed to pierce the humid, heavy gloom.
The air carried a scent that was simultaneously sweet and nauseating—the smell of overripe tropical fruit fermenting in the heat, mixed with the metallic tang of dried blood and the earthy aroma of decomposition hidden within the thickets.
