The Whisperwood, a brooding sentinel on the northern edge of Sunhold City, wasn't your typical forest. Sunlight struggled to penetrate the dense canopy, casting the forest floor in an perpetual twilight. Ancient oaks, their branches gnarled and twisted by centuries of growth, reached skyward like grasping claws. A thick carpet of moss and decaying leaves muffled the sound of footsteps, creating an unsettling silence broken only by the occasional snap of a twig or the rustle of unseen creatures.