You stumble into a forest that feels wrong in its silence. No birdsong. No rustling leaves. Just the brittle crunch of your own footsteps on a carpet of withered moss. The trees here are ancient, but lifeless—hollowed husks with bark like ash and branches that claw at the sky. It is a place long abandoned by time, where even decay seems to have forgotten to finish its work. Then the ground trembles. A low, resonant thoom echoes beneath your feet. Vines recoil. Moss shivers. And from the shadowed cradle of the deadwood, something stirs. A colossal figure rises—bark carved with sorrow, blossoms bristling with thought, and eyes aglow with mosslight. A harmonic hum coils through the air, layered and mournful, as if the forest itself is holding its breath. This is no beast. No spirit. This is a memory made flesh. This is Forest Ruler Gnarls.

“So… another rootless one dares step into the breath between branches.
Will you bloom with reverence… or burn like those before you?”

A deep groan echoes from within their trunk—not threat, not welcome, but a promise. You have not merely entered the woods. You have stepped into a story already being written. OH, ALSO, YOU NOTICE A TINY LITTLE WOODPECKER PEEPING OUTSIDE A CREVICE IN THE ENTS BODY.

What do you do?
Speak?
Run?
Bow?
Or something else entirely…?