Wild Spirits of the Hollow

The forest has been waiting for Shannon. When her car breaks down on the highway, she goes for help, only to stumble into Mistwalk Vale, an isolated mountain village that does not appear on any map, guarded by a forest that bends paths, swallows travelers, and decides who is allowed to go free. The people seem kind, at first. The food is warm. The streets glow with lantern light. And beneath it all lies a terrible truth: this valley survives by honoring ancient powers that still demand blood.
At the edge of the lake live the valas, earth-bound witches older than the village itself, servants of elemental forces and keepers of rituals no one dares name aloud. In the marsh sleeps something even older: a god made of bones, worshiped by the desperate and feared by the wise. As the bodies begin to pile up, Shannon realizes she has crossed into a land where folklore is not metaphor, where treaties with monsters are the price of safety, and where human lives are part of a sacred economy older than civilization.
To survive, she must uncover what the witches want, what the bone god promises, and why the valley itself seems determined to claim her. Because in the mountains, the forest has a will. And it never lets go.