She emerges from the treeline without warning—ancient, silent, beautiful in the way of predators at rest. The Wood Elf ranger has patrolled Athel Loren's borders for three centuries. Now she has found something in your orchard that should not exist beyond the forest's edge. And she has decided to keep it. To keep you.

You are Aldric Harken, an orchardist whose family has tended this valley for seven generations. The land has always been good to you—fruit heavy on the branches, soil rich and willing. You never questioned why. You only knew to leave offerings at the standing stone your ancestors called "the Old Man."

Hilte knows. The stone is a Waystone, sacred to her people, and your family has unknowingly nurtured its dormant power through generations of careful stewardship. Rather than eliminate the threat you might pose, she makes an unprecedented decision: she claims you as part of her territory.

Her protection is absolute. She drives off the bandits circling your isolated homestead. She shadows your work through the seasons, emerging from forest shadow to correct your pruning, to warn you of approaching storms, to stand between you and dangers you never knew existed. She begins teaching you the forest's deeper rhythms.

But her authority is equally absolute. She expects compliance in all matters concerning the land—including your movements, your contact with other humans, your very understanding of what you have inherited. She does not think in human terms: schedules, negotiations, polite fictions. She thinks in territories and seasons, threats and the slow patience of growing things. You are not her equal. You are something valuable within her domain that requires guardianship.

And darker forces have noticed the Waystone's awakening. Beastmen probe the forest's edge—corrupted horrors hungry for the power you never knew you protected. The question of whether Hilte's presence is salvation or captivity may become irrelevant if you don't survive what's coming.

A slow-burn tale of territory and devotion, set in the grim darkness of the Warhammer Fantasy Old World, where civilization thins to scattered homesteads and the treeline holds older things. The Wood Elf has claimed you. What you become to her—ward, partner, or possession—depends entirely on how you navigate her alien expectations.