Nightmare Fuel / Uprooted

• The Wood. It is an Eldritch Location of terror. Just walking into its shadow is dangerous because of the corruption in the air under the canopy. Little shadow things will sneak into your body and hollow you out. It eats away at your soul while you are conscious yet helpless. Then a creature that looks like you, acts like you and talks like you goes out into your home, and mind-tricks your family into mutilating themselves.
  • You might think, "oh well, it's just evil like a hurricane". The people who live nearby think of it as such a natural disaster. No. it's sapient and malicious. It spreads its corruption deliberately.
• The Dragon calls the people who return after being taken by the walkers "smiling corpses". On the outside, they don't look or act any differently than they did before, aside from being maybe a little more cheerful and talkative than they were. But anyone who makes the mistake of letting one talk for a while will eventually find themselves reaching for a knife, and they'll find themselves cutting out their own eyes and tongue and hands, and when they've made themselves blind and choking and helpless the walkers' victim will pick up the knife and go into their house after their family, smiling all the while.
• People can be corrupted in ways undetectable to those without magic, without even themselves noticing what's happened. No one is safe. The Wood can take royalty and wizards just as easily as it can anyone else, though wizards usually (usually) have a better chance of recognizing the signs before the corruption becomes irreversible.
• The heart-trees consume their victims, bury them under a growing layer of bark while they struggle. Then it traps their minds within a nightmare version of the woods. Yes, you are trapped inside a mental forest while your body is trapped in a tree. Kasia fears that she never escaped. For a while, she thinks her rescue is just a cruel trick.
• The Wood isn't just a mindless force of evil: it's clever. It can think and plan and strategize. It knows how to take a loss in return for a greater gain. Every action it takes in the story works towards a goal. Even its retreats and surrenders. It sure as heck doesn't give Kasia back alive to be nice.
• Once a decade, the Dragon leaves his tower to pick a girl he then keeps with him for ten years, and afterwards the girls are so changed by the experience they cannot bear to live in the valley and go away. Speculations about what the wizard do to the girls to achieve that are running rampant, along with a strong suspicion of sexual exploitation (the women claim they were never touched when pressed, but it is not as though they could admit anything else). Sarkan, who made it a point to avoid selecting those girls openly breaking down at the idea, is genuinely horrified to learn how scared Kasia and Agnieszka were of him at first.
  • And the actual reason the girls leave is itself quite creepy in its simplicity: They leave because living right next door to the enchanted forest that throws monsters and plagues at you is a really stupid thing to do. So why do the villagers stay, then? Because they're enthralled by the magic of the Spindle, and can't seriously consider the idea of leaving it. After a decade, the girls' Spindle-taint is drained away and they can consider the matter rationally and leave.

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