Crooked Tree Novel Novels & Stories

My plan was simple: Live like a slacker until Travis became a rich, successful CEO. Then sit back and enjoy life as a pampered young lady. During my major course, I was hiding in the back row scrolling on my phone when the original Jennie’s best friend, Linda Lander, texted me and asked if I wanted to join a mixer party. That’s when I remembered. In the original novel, this was the scene where Nancy flirted with three high-quality male leads at a bar. It caused a ripple across the entire storyline.

Leo’s treehouse began to take shape in the sturdy arms of an old Douglas fir, a whimsical castle accessible only by a rope ladder Liam vowed to make “pirate-proof.” Spring softened into early summer. The garden Maya had written about exploded in a profusion of color—poppies, lavender, and hardy beach roses that thrived on salt and neglect. She stopped writing about the garden and began a new project, tentatively, secretly. A children’s book. About a little fox who builds a too-big, wonderful den in a storm-washed log, and learns that home isn’t about size, but about the secrets it holds and the love that fills it. One afternoon, a delivery truck from the city labored up their long driveway.

The canopy overhead swallowed most of the moonlight, leaving us moving through patches of silver and shadow. And then I saw it. A break in the trees up ahead. A clearing. But not just any clearing. The ground was blackened, scorched like a fire had raged through here long ago. At the center stood a single, twisted tree—its bark charred, its branches bare. The fire inside me pulsed wildly. This was it. “The next flame is here,” I said, stepping forward. Lena gave me a skeptical look. “Where? Because all I see is a creepy dead tree.”

Several Elves were tying up the sleeping vampire warriors and hauling them out to a dungeon. Suddenly, the ground shook, it felt like an earthquake, and one that made everything fall around it. The air had a putrid smell like barf mixed with feces. I look over at Nicolas, who mind links me, saying, "Oh Crap! Trolls and Goblins”

Like something was pressing down on my ribs from the inside. “Anything?” Lucian asked, glancing back at me. “Wrong,” I said. “Everything. But… nothing specific yet.” We crested a slight rise—and saw it. The tree. It grew slightly bent, trunk twisting on itself like it had tried to grow straight and been forced into a curve. Its bark was darker than the others around it, almost black in some places. Symbols had been carved into it—crude but familiar. Circles with three slashes. Lines intersecting like crossed threads.

Nevertheless, I swallowed my reservations and gave an affirmative nod. “Thank you.” He whispered and continued with his analysis of the map. Giving him space, I walked up to the said tree and touched its bark. It was so cold - I wondered how many degrees it was out here. “The Cold Valley,” I muttered, tapping the tree as I waited for Zadok. Suddenly, the tree moved, and I nearly fell on my butt. “What in the world-” I cussed, alarmed at the sight happening before me. I watched with a slightly opened jaw as the tree reset itself, turning into a door made of the tree with odd scribblings.

The time I was wasting. Evans was still out there. I straightened and stepped over the unconscious outlaws, looking around. I noticed it then. A tree. In the center of the clearing, there was a single, enormous oak. The wood underneath was scarred with something that made my stomach turn, and its bark was split. Blood. Not merely splashed. Not merely smeared. **Sculpted.** Three sharp, deep phrases that seemed to have been sunk like inhuman claws into the wood.

Setting: The Bone Orchard --- The field stretched endlessly under a starless sky, its earth cracked and pale as old scars. White trees clawed upward in jagged silhouettes, their bark not wood but bone—calcified remnants of the First Brood who defied Vaelros Seraxa. Each tree leaned as if in pain, branches frozen mid-scream, their roots burrowed deep into the soil where ancient blood still seeped. No Elder dared walk here, for the Orchard remembered betrayal. It remembered the Crown That Bleeds.

"Was my great-aunt’s. She went rot back in '72. Folks said she was cursed. This proves she wasn’t. She was just like us." He opened it, laying it flat on the floor. Scribbled pages. Notes. Drawings. Maps of the woods. The shadowline. The black tree. "She called it the tether," Atlas whispered. "Said the tree feeds off it. Off love left unspoken. Love that dies quiet." Nova traced a finger down the drawings. "That’s why the rot hits when folks fall in love. Because the tree don’t want us to. It feeds off the hurt." "We ain't in love," Wren said quickly. "We just... care. And maybe that’s why the dreams came. The tree's just keepin' tabs on us."

, he continued and pointed into the darkness. Nueva tried to widen her eyes to see the log he was talking about, but she could only see blackness in front of them. But just like that, an old weathered tree trunk appeared resting in the soft dunes. Behind the tree trunk, grew a half-circle of shrubs, creating a shelter from the cold winds. The shrubs sharp pointy branches looked like evil hands against the midnight sky and a feeling of nervousness and eerie mixed into a new emotion deep down in her gut. Nueva swallowed hard as they sat down together on the smooth wooden surface. They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, watching the moon that seemed to be admiring its reflection on the lak