Villain Ch 1880. Scarecrows
He followed it through a twisted alley, past a well that reeked of something too sweet, then beneath an archway where the stone bled moss like veins. He half-expected the path to bend back toward the manor—the landlord's estate. Some gilded parasite palace at the edge of this haunted place.
But it didn't.
Instead…
It opened.
The fog thinned. The scent changed.
Dirt.
Fresh. Untouched.
And trees.
Real trees.
They broke through the edge of the cursed town like crossing into a broken painting. The woods ahead looked untouched—quiet, even peaceful in that wrong way. The trees grew too close together. Their branches tangled like skeletal hands.
The girl had run.
Not toward danger.
Away from it.
"She wasn't going to the landlord," Allen muttered. "She was escaping."
Jane nodded, her shadow-touched eyes scanning the treeline. "Makes sense. The grandmother, the curse… she tried to get out."
