Villain Ch 1784. The Whispering Tree [Part 2]
Not Jane, who had gone silent.
Not Zoe, who was frozen mid-step.
Not Shea, Vivian, Larissa or Alice.
That voice didn't belong to his girls.
And then it came again.
"Justice was never blind."
This time—they all heard it.
The air snapped cold. Like the temperature dropped a full ten degrees in one heartbeat.
A wind rolled across the field, hissing through the dying grass, sweeping up ashes from the soil that hadn't been there seconds ago. The girls instinctively reached for their weapons, forming a loose perimeter around Allen.
It wasn't an ambush.
It was an awakening.
The whisper came again—not from the air, but through it.
And they turned.
To the tree.
A massive, gnarled thing—blackened wood, with bark that looked like cracked obsidian and a trunk twisted with so many growth rings it felt like it had existed before maps. The roots had clawed into the earth like talons.
They hadn't noticed it before.
