Oakenbane - The Curse

They say you can still hear the vines whisper when the wind shifts through the trees near Alton.

Long ago, the land belonged to Lord Halward Albright—a man of silks and sharp words, who ruled from a manor high above the village. It was said he wore cruelty like a cloak, cutting down the poor with taxes and laughter in equal measure. When a starving old woman came to his gates one bitter autumn, he mocked her before his guests and sent her away with only scorn.

That night, something changed.

The oak tree near his land twisted. Bark split. Roots bled sap thick and red. Vines emerged, wrapped around the branches as if grown from malice itself.

They say she cursed him: "As each vine tightens, a soul will fall."

The first to die was his footman—found strangled in his bed by green tendrils, though no door was broken. Then the housekeeper. The steward. The guests. One by one, they fell. By the time Halward tried to flee, the tree was groaning under the weight of writhing vines.

He ran to the woods.

And that was where they found only his cloak—impaled on a broken branch, stiff with blood. His body was never recovered.

But the vines kept growing.

Some say they were conjured to hold the curse in place. Others claim they grow from the tree itself, fed by vengeance and old magic. One thing is agreed upon: to touch them is to be marked.

Years passed. The manor rotted. The noble family line thinned. But on foggy nights, villagers reported seeing something moving near the twisted oak.

A tall shape. Wrapped in roots and vines.

Its face, when glimpsed, is pale and regal. Its eyes drip sap. Its hands are bark and bone. And its voice is a whisper of leaf and loam: *"One for each branch... one for each scorn... one for each debt unpaid."

Children call it Oakenbane.

It does not haunt homes. It haunts bloodlines. Descendants of the Albright family report strange dreams—of vines tightening in their chests, of tendrils wrapping their limbs, of being pulled into soil that moans with hunger.

Historians dismiss it. Skeptics laugh. But tourists still dare each other to visit the twisted oak and count the vines.

They rarely agree on the number.

Because it changes.

And somewhere in the forest, the ghost of Halward Albright—Oakenbane now in form and name—waits with root-wrapped patience, watching for the next vine to tighten.