The air tasted like old copper and rotting bark. Each step into the glade sank slightly—spongy with decayed roots that pulsed with something that wasn't sap. Draven felt the earth give beneath his boot-heels, then rebound with a faint, unpleasant throb, as if the ground itself possessed a stubborn heartbeat. A faint, sick-sweet odor bled out of that living mulch, coating his tongue like spoiled honey.
Overhead, a ceiling of tangled branches choked out much of the dawn. The few shafts of light that did pierce the canopy looked bruised, their gold dulled to bruise-violet by drifting spores. Those spores spiraled in lazy eddies, catching lamplight and turning the air into a snow globe of corrupted pollen. Draven marked how they stuck to skin—first a sheen, then a film—before sloughing away in greasy flecks. Whatever spell animated this place wanted to cling, to cling and infect.
