The Village of Witherby
Nestled in a forgotten valley where the sun seemed to hesitate to rise, the village of Witherby wore a permanent shroud of mist. Ivy-crawled stone cottages leaned like old men toward the earth, and the church bell hadn’t rung in decades. Only a few dozen souls remained, and all of them feared the woods—especially after dusk.
Emily Blackthorne was the only outsider in Witherby. A writer seeking seclusion, she had rented the old Rosemoor Manor on the edge of the forest, despite the villagers’ hushed warnings. She was curious, even drawn to the ominous beauty of the land, its silences, its secrets. Her days were filled with dusty libraries and the scratch of pen on paper, but her nights were filled with something else entirely.
A light.
Every evening, just after twilight, a solitary lantern would flicker in the woods beyond her window, swaying gently as if carried by an unseen hand. It never approached, never retreated—just waited.
Emily felt it was watching her.
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