Prologue
The trees brushed against each other, the whisper of their leaves creating a hushed orchestra of sound. The great oaks, and birches and many other trees Freya did not know the names of crowded close together, pressing into her. Nothing dared enter The Forest this late at night, not even the light from the moon braved entry. There were no sounds of scuttling creates, no flutter of wings, merely the ominous sound of the autumn leaves. Her breath rose in the air in front of her, a white cloud of tiny droplets. It hung in the air, frozen. A shiver crept its way down her spine, murmuring tales of children going missing in the dark depths of The Forest. She shook herself, steeling her nerve. The tales that rang in her head were nothing more than that. Tales. Stories her old grandmother would tell her to keep her out of trouble, and out of The Forest. But trouble had coming looking for her when that thing had taken her brother. She wrapped her fingers tightly around her knife, anger and vengeance warming her slightly. The furs draped over her shoulders might not do very much to keep the cold out, but her fury would. She would not allow them to keep her brother, to turn him into one of them. Gripping her knife in her palm, blade facing out into the dense Forest, and whatever may lurk their, she dove forwards into the place of her nightmares.
