No one in Argen Hollow remembered the road being there the evening before, and that simple, undeniable fact unsettled the village more than thunder without rain or the occasional tremor that sometimes rippled through the distant hills. The field at the eastern edge of town had always been a quiet stretch of land where tall grass bent obediently beneath the wind, where children raced each other barefoot until dusk painted their laughter gold, and where the old oak tree stood like a patient guardian watching over generations that came and went without disturbing its roots. Yet when dawn broke and the first light spilled across the valley, the field was no longer a field, and the oak tree no longer stood at the edge of grass but at the edge of something pale, wide, and impossibly deliberate.
No one in Argen Hollow remembered the road being there the evening before, and that simple, undeniable fact unsettled the village more than thunder without rain or the occasional tremor that sometimes rippled through the distant hills. The field at the eastern edge of town had always been a quiet...