Torn Page 310

The edges of the parchment is weathered, and the handwriting of the page is tidy but rushed. Found in Ragne.

"Late Autumn, just before the First Frost

I camped near the edge of Blackwood Grove tonight, foolish as that may sound now.

The leaves here cling to their branches longer than they should. Vibrantly green one day, then suddenly glassy and brittle the next. A frost had begun to form.

The locals warned me of the "Crooked Branch,” but spoke in circles as if they fear naming something aloud.

Near midnight I heard the sound of antlers scraping bark.

Except… it repeated. Too slow, and too deliberate to be an animal.

Each pause between scrapes felt like a breath.

When I finally dared to look, the birch trunks were glowing faintly, coated in a thin hoarfrost that hadn’t existed an hour before. And just beyond them, barely visible, stood something tall, leafless, and twisted... Wrong.

A branching silhouette that moved like a man struggling through deep snow, though the ground lay bare.

I packed before sunrise.

Whatever that thing is, it is the only creature I’ve ever seen that made frost crawl away from it, as though the cold itself was avoiding its touch.

If winter comes early, the creature will move with it.

I pray it stays north.