Explore the forest

The deeper Velvet Vixen walks, the quieter it gets.

No birds. No insects. Not even wind through the leaves. Just the sound of her boots crunching on damp leaves and her breathing—slow, deliberate, a little less confident with every step.

“Okay… either this is where the disappearances happened…”

“…or I’ve wandered into someone’s weird fantasy novel.”

She raises her flashlight, casting the beam along gnarled bark. It catches on a particularly twisted trunk, and she gasps—

“Was that… a face?”

The bark twists just enough in the beam to look like a sneer. She shakes her head. Keep moving. You’re a detective heroine now, remember?

That’s when she sees it: a trail, winding deeper through the trees. Lined with lanterns, soft orange light flickering along the path like something out of a ghost story.

“Oh, this is definitely cult stuff.”

She pulls out the black phone McKenna gave her, thumbing the emergency contact.

“McKenna’s going to love this. Or hate this. Or—”

SNAP.

A rope loops tight around her ankles.

“Wha—!?”

Before she can react, she’s yanked into the air, legs flailing, cape fluttering like a startled bat. Her phone flies from her hands. The flashlight tumbles end over end and lands with a dim thud somewhere in the underbrush.

She hangs there upside down, ropes tight around her ankles, her mask now slightly askew, cape tangled around her shoulders. Blood rushes to her head.

“Mmmmph! Hello!? Who—?!”

That’s when the trees move.

Bark splits. Limbs creak. The gnarled trunks bend forward, ancient and groaning, eyes opening in the knots of their wood. Faces. Real faces.

One of them—a squat maple with a monocle carved into its knot-hole—leans in.

“CUSTOMS INSPECTION!!!”

Velvet Vixen’s eyes go wide.

“Wh—what?!”

“DECLARE YOUR TRAVELING GOODS!” another roars. This one’s shaped like an old sycamore, hunched and looming with a strange tangle of moss that looks suspiciously like a beard.

“ILLEGAL ENTRY! SHE’S GOT CLOTHES, BOOTS, A MASK, AND—OH MY! A CAPE!” says a third, its voice a mixture of creaking branches and grumbling bass.

The upside-down heroine wriggles and flails, cheeks red, mask slipping.

“Y-You can’t be serious!”

“ALL SUSPICIOUS ITEMS SUBJECT TO SEIZURE,” booms the maple with the monocle. “INCLUDING SMUGGLED FABRICS!”

The trees begin to argue amongst themselves. One suggests she might be a spy. Another insists she’s just a wandering witch. A fourth thinks she’s from the city zoning board, here to assess their roots.

“I’m a superheroine!” Kendrick shouts.

All the trees pause.

Then—snort.

Then full, groaning laughter echoes through the woods like the sound of a collapsing timber yard.

“SHE’S A WHAT?”

“A caped city-dweller with delusions of grandeur!”

“SOMEONE GET THE BUREAUCRATIC VINES!”