The Wounded Grove

There was a time when the forests were silent under the moon.

In those early days, before the feywild bled into the world, Fenros, god of the untamed and the unseen, watched Selaveth from the boughs of twilight. He saw in her the beauty of shadow and flame, the ache of longing wrapped in silver light. And he loved her—not with possession, but with wild wonder. She was the stillness his stormy soul had never known.

So he made her a gift.

From seed and soil, he shaped a grove like no other. Flowers bloomed only under her gaze—soft-lumined and delicate, yet untamed. Vines twisted in sacred spirals. Trees whispered lullabies drawn from the deep places of the world. When Selaveth walked among it, moonlight itself bent to kiss each petal. Fenros said no word—only offered the grove with open hands and a hopeful heart.

But Selaveth, beautiful and sorrowful, could not return his love. Her heart belonged to other tides. She touched his brow with gratitude, her smile full of mourning, and turned away.

Fenros did not rage.

He let the grove die.

He willed each flower to fade, each leaf to curl, and where beauty once bloomed, rot took root. But in that decay—amid the loam of his sorrow—something else awakened. A breath not his own. A place between places.

The first doorway opened: a wound in the world, from which the feywild was born.

Now, the Wounded Grove lingers in whispers. It appears when the moon grieves. It calls to the heartbroken, the lost, the wild. Some say Fenros still walks there, not in anger, but as the silent guardian of a place made from love unreturned.