The next morning, the sky was a bruised, sickly grey. I wasn't alone; Surjo, my childhood friend, was with me. "Kashem, this place feels wrong," Surjo whispered, clutching his camera bag. We stepped into the forest line, and the temperature dropped instantly. These weren't normal trees; their trunks were twisted in agony, stretching out like skeletal fingers.
"Do you hear that?" Surjo stopped dead. "No birds. No crickets. Just... our breathing." The silence was predatory. Every snap of a dry twig sounded like a gunshot. Then we saw the carvings on the bark. 1884. 1884. 1884. Thousands of them, as if the trees were keeping a tally of souls. We stumbled into a clearing—an ancient cemetery where tombstones were tilted at impossible angles. In the center sat the Hermit, smeared with grey ash, his eyes glowing like dying embers. "The clock is ticking," he cracked the silence. "Can you feel the iron beginning to bleed?"