An Isekai Story

The Ironwood Forest broods beneath a canopy of gnarled, slate-colored trees that tower like ancient sentinels. Their bark is dark and smooth as forged steel, branches knotted into strange, arching shapes that blot out the sun. The air carries a metallic tang, thick with damp earth and the hum of unseen insects. Footsteps echo faintly against the hardened forest floor, where moss grows in thin silver tufts and rust-colored lichen clings to the trunks like old bloodstains. Wind through the trees groans like distant hinges turning, and every shadow seems to shift just a bit too slowly. Few dare the winding paths that cut through the forest, for those who enter often speak of haunting silhouettes, sudden silences, and a sense of being weighed or watched. Deep within, whispers speak of ancient dwarven ruins—lost keeps and forge-shrines swallowed whole by the grove’s relentless growth. Whatever lingers there, it is patient, and iron never rusts.

The Ironwood Forest looms like a fortress of nature—dense, tall, and unnervingly quiet. Trees rise like blackened spires, their bark gleaming faintly under the filtered silver light that bleeds through the canopy. Shadows stretch in odd angles across a forest floor of cracked roots and patchy, iron-hued moss. Distant fog lingers between trunks, and faint glimmers of metal flicker beneath the underbrush like buried secrets waiting to be unearthed.