Chapter : 1: RISING

There was an orchard behind the farmhouse that no one ever picked from. The trees grew in perfect lines, too perfect, and the fruit - when it came - hung heavy, ripe, and untouched. Birds never nested there. Wind avoided it. And no one in the family dared enter past the third row.

It began with the grandmother. She was the only one who remembered when the orchard was planted. "It wasn't always there," she'd whisper, half to herself. "One night the trees just? were." She never explained more. She refused to go near the back of the property, and by the end of her life, she'd boarded up the windows that faced that direction.

After she passed, her granddaughter Mira moved in, inheriting the land and the silence.

Mira was pragmatic. A scientist. She laughed at stories of haunted trees and whispered warnings. On the first morning of spring, she walked out with a basket, determined to finally pick the forbidden fruit. It was time, she thought, to reclaim what was hers.

The orchard was colder than the rest of the farm, unnaturally so. Frost clung to the grass despite the warm sun. The first row of trees smelled faintly of rot beneath the sweetness. The second row held apples so red they looked painted. By the third, her skin had prickled, and the wind had stopped entirely.

Past the third row, the world felt? wrong.

She reached a hollow at the center of the orchard - an unnatural clearing where nothing grew. Just a single hole, black as pitch and wider than a well, covered in tangled roots. A rhythmic pulsing echoed from deep inside it, like something breathing far below.

And then the whispers began.

Not loud, not terrifying - almost comforting. They said her name. Over and over.

Mira.

Mira.

Mira.

She backed away, dropping her basket. The fruit inside began to bleed. Red juice pooled at her feet, steaming on the cold soil.

When she turned to run, the trees had moved. They were closer now, bending toward her, their branches creaking like old bones. She ran, faster than she ever had, but every row looked the same. The trees had no end.

She was gone three days.

When the search party found her, she was sitting at the edge of the orchard, cradling something wrapped in her coat. She was smiling, eyes vacant.

Inside the coat was a twisted root, shaped like a baby, pulsing gently.

She never spoke again.

No one enters the orchard now. It grows larger every year.