Kit Lapierre stood at the edge of her grandfather's grave, feeling the weight of the forest pressing against her back like an impatient hand. The funeral had been small—just her, the priest, and a handful of locals who'd known the old man. Now even they had gone, leaving her alone with the turned earth and the whispering trees.

  She hadn't expected to inherit anything. Her grandfather had been a recluse, living deep in these woods for longer than Kit had been alive. Her few childhood visits had been strange affairs—the old man watching her with ancient eyes, speaking in riddles about duty and sacrifice and the things that lived between the trees. Her mother had stopped bringing her after Kit turned twelve, calling the visits 'unhealthy.'

  Now her mother was gone too, and Kit was the last of the line.

  'You need to come back to the house,' the lawyer had said over the phone. 'There are things your grandfather left for you. Things that need to be claimed immediately.'

  So here she was, twenty-six years old and suddenly the owner of a hundred acres of primordial forest and whatever secrets her grandfather had hidden in his cabin. The lawyer had given her a key and directions, then made his excuses about pressing business in town. The speed of his departure had been almost comical.

  Kit shouldered her pack and turned toward the forest trail. The trees seemed to lean closer as she approached, their branches forming a canopy so thick that stepping beneath them felt like entering a different world. The sounds of the nearby road faded within a dozen steps, replaced by the rustle of leaves and the distant call of a crow.

  The path was well-worn despite her grandfather's solitude, winding between massive oaks and maples that had to be centuries old. Moss covered everything—the stones, the fallen logs, even the lower branches of the trees themselves. It gave the forest an ancient, dreamlike quality, as if time moved differently here.

  After twenty minutes of walking, Kit began to notice something strange. The forest was quiet. Too quiet. No bird calls, no rustling of small animals in the underbrush, not even the buzz of insects. Just the soft sound of her footsteps and the occasional creak of branches overhead.

  The cabin appeared suddenly, as if the forest had been hiding it and then changed its mind. It was larger than Kit remembered—a sprawling structure of weathered wood and stone that looked like it had grown from the earth itself. Vines crawled up its walls, and mushrooms clustered around its foundation. The windows were dark, but Kit had the unsettling sense that the house was watching her approach.

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  She climbed the porch steps, which creaked under her weight, and fitted the key into the lock. The door swung open before she could turn it.

  The interior was dim, illuminated only by the gray light filtering through dirty windows. But what Kit could see took her breath away. Every wall was covered in symbols—carved, painted, burned into the wood. Circles and spirals, runes she didn't recognize, images of trees with reaching branches and roots that seemed to twist into the shape of grasping hands.

  In the center of the main room stood a table, and on that table lay a single object: an old leather journal, bound with a strap that had worn smooth with handling.

  Kit approached slowly, half-expecting something to happen. When nothing did, she picked up the journal and opened it to the first page. Her grandfather's handwriting stared up at her, the letters sharp and precise:

  If you're reading this, then I am dead, and you are the last guardian. I'm sorry, Kit. I never wanted this burden for you. But the forest doesn't care what we want. It only knows what it needs.

  There are rules you must follow. Break them, and the compact fails. If the compact fails, the Hollow King rises. If the Hollow King rises, everything ends.

  The binding must be renewed before the next new moon. Go to the Heart Tree at midnight. You'll know what to do when you get there. The forest will guide you.

  I'm sorry, Kit. You deserved a normal life. But our family made a pact three hundred years ago, and we are bound to keep it until the last of us falls.

  Kit read the words three times, but they didn't make any more sense with repetition. Guardian? Compact? Hollow King? It sounded like something out of a fantasy novel, not reality.

  But as she stood in that symbol-covered room, with the forest pressing close outside, Kit couldn't quite dismiss it as an old man's ravings. There was something about this place, something that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

  She flipped through the journal, finding page after page of entries dating back decades. Observations about the forest, notes about creatures she'd never heard of, warnings about places where the veil between worlds grew thin.

  And drawings. So many drawings of a figure that made Kit's blood run cold—a tall, skeletal form wearing a crown of twisted branches, its body seeming to fade in and out of existence. The Hollow King.

  A sound from outside made Kit jump. She went to the window and looked out into the forest. Nothing moved among the trees, but Kit had the distinct impression that something was watching her. Waiting.

  She checked her phone. Three days until the new moon.