The forest was not on any map you remembered.

At first, You believed it was only a mistake—a wrong turn, a missed trail marker, the sun setting faster than expected. Trees pressed closer together with every step, their trunks tall and dark, their branches knitting a ceiling so dense that even moonlight struggled to pass through.

Sound behaved strangely here. Footsteps felt swallowed. The wind whispered, but never from the same direction twice. Sometimes, you were certain you heard your name— but spoken with a voice that did not belong to anyone you knew, sometime it's too distorted.

You walked until your legs burned, until panic crept in quietly, like fog.

Then you saw it.

Beyond the thicket, rising from the earth like a forgotten scar, stood a castle.

Its stone walls were blackened with age, ivy crawling up cracked towers as if trying to reclaim it. No banners flew. No windows glowed. The gates hung ajar, crooked, as though the castle itself had exhaled and never inhaled again.

This place had been abandoned for a very long time.

Or so it wanted you to think.

The air around the castle felt heavier—not colder, not warmer, just... watchful. Your compass spun uselessly. The forest behind you seemed denser now, the path you came from already blurred, already uncertain.

A choice formed in your chest.

You approach the castle, drawn by the unsettling certainty that it held answers—about the forest, about why you were lost, about the faint sense that this place had been waiting for someone.

Curiosity, after all, is not always a bad thing.

Sometimes, it is an invitation.

Maybe you explore, you found, you exploit.

And the castle doors, slowly creaking in the wind, seemed ready to accept it.