Silence Within the Woods

At first, it was nothing more than a pleasant deviation-a narrow road peeling away from the highway, swallowed by towering pines and crooked oaks. The trees rose like cathedral pillars, their branches weaving together into a dense, green canopy that dimmed the daylight into something older and quieter. The air grew cooler as they drove, heavy with the scent of damp earth and moss. It felt untouched. Forgotten. The kind of place people only visited by accident.