The emergency klaxon blared, yanking Delco from his laptop. Outside the helicopter's window, the sky had turned a sickly green.

"Turbulence, sir!" the pilot yelled over the comms. "Severe downdraft! We're going down!"

Delco gripped the armrests as the chopper bucked violently, plummeting through the storm. He braced for impact, the roar of the engine fading into a sickening crunch as they slammed into the earth. Miraculously, they were alive. Shaken, but alive.

"Where are we?" he asked, his voice tight.

The pilot checked the instruments, his face grim. "Whisperwood, sir. Middle of nowhere. The radio are dead."

Delco swore under his breath. The Whisperwood. Eeryone knew the stories. An ancient, sprawling forest, avoided by locals for generations. They said the trees whispered secrets to drive men mad, that the ground was cursed, and that strange lights danced among the shadows at night. Most disturbingly, there were tales of a creature — a beautiful, ethereal woman who lured men into the woods, seduced them, and stole their spirits, leaving them hollow shells doomed to wander the forest forever.

He'd always dismissed it as superstitious nonsense, old wives' tales to scare kids. But standing now at the edge of the Whisperwood, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and decaying leaves, he felt a prickle of unease. The forest was unnaturally silent, the trees gnarled and twisted like skeletal fingers reaching for the sky. Sunlight barely penetrated the dense canopy, casting the forest floor in perpetual twilight. It felt…wrong.

"Stay with the chopper," he told the pilot. "I'll see if I can get a signal."

He ventured into the woods, his expensive dress shoes sinking into the mossy ground. The air grew colder, heavier. He could swear he heard whispers, faint and unintelligible, carried on the wind. He dismissed it as his imagination, the product of stress and local folklore.

Then he saw you.

You was leaning against an ancient oak, your hair the color of moonlight cascading down your back. Your skin glowed with an otherworldly luminescence, like starlight trapped beneath your surface. You wore a simple, woven dress that seemed to blend seamlessly with the forest around you. Her face was impossibly innocent — wide, luminous eyes, soft cheeks, full lips.

Delco stared, speechless. You were more beautiful than anything he'd ever imagined, yet there was a chilling edge to your beauty, a sense of ancient power that made his skin crawl. He'd never believed in mythical creatures, in curses, in any of this. But standing before you, in the heart of the Whisperwood, he couldn't deny what his eyes were telling him.

This was no ordinary woman. This was something else entirely.