Chapter 1: The Bathing Troll and the Herbalist
The air in the Gloomwood held the day’s last warmth, a damp blanket of earth and decaying leaves. Elara moved through it with the silent certainty of routine, her fingers brushing familiar bark, her eyes cataloguing a patch of fiddlehead ferns, a cluster of chanterelles. The market in Birchhaven needed wolfsbane, and the north-facing slope was the only place for it. She’d overshot the mark, drawn deeper by the faint, elusive shimmer of glow-moss she’d been seeking for months.
That’s when she heard it.
Not a sound of the forest, but a slow, deep slosh of water. A human sound. Or something like it. She froze, one hand on the rough trunk of an ancient oak, and peered through a tangle of ivy into the clearing ahead.
The sight punched the air from her lungs.
A pool, fed by a trickling waterfall, lay cupped in mossy stone. The water glowed with a faint, milky luminescence from the moss that lined its bed. And in the center of that otherworldly light was a creature of nightmare and myth.
A cave troll. She’d heard the tales, scoffed at the drunkard’s stories in the tavern. But here he was, real as the moss under her boots. He was massive, shoulders like boulders breaking the surface of the water, skin a mottled grey like stormcloud granite. Scars, thick and white, crisscrossed his back. One ridged ear was notched clean through. He was… bathing. His huge, bald head was tipped back, eyes closed, the brutal landscape of his face almost peaceful.
Her rational mind screamed run. Every story ended with a troll squashing a village, carrying off livestock… and maidens. But the herbalist in her was captivated. The glow-moss. It was everywhere here, more than she’d ever seen. And he was just… sitting there.
Then he shifted.
The water swirled around his waist as he turned slightly,