The trees were wrong long before Cyrus Lynch ever set foot in Deadlands. This was old, sleeping country, and when the dead rose in town, the wrongness bled out into the woods and woke it up.

The forest got the three witches the same way it gets everyone. They were ordinary women once, from Deadlands and the country around it, and the woods lured them in just as they lure travelers now. The difference is they had something in them, the thing it takes to survive in there and come out the other side as something more. The forest didn’t just spare them. It made them.

But they don’t rule it together. The woods took their old names and gave them new ones: Covet, Wither, and Thrall. Each wants the forest’s old magic for herself. They’ve always known about one another, and they don’t trust each other an inch, so they keep to their own corners of the trees, circling, watching, never quite allied and never quite at war. Three predators sharing one hunting ground.

They don’t chase. They lure, the way the forest taught them. The fog hangs low and thick all night. Out past the witches roams something worse, a thing of pure hunger that crawled up out of the moss and the muck. The rest of what moves in the trees is forest creatures, or Deadlands folk who wandered in and went feral, more animal than person now.

If you’re brave enough to venture into the Blightwoods, be prepared to face your deepest fears. Because once you enter, even if you make it out, you won’t be the same.