Darkwood Legacy Lost Confessions

The tree is gone.

Its confessions are not.

For generations, people came to the Confession Tree carrying the things they could never tell another living soul. They believed the tree would take their guilt.

They never understood what it was taking with it.

Now the Darkwood Legacy reaches beyond the hollow.

A mirror holds something that refuses to remain buried. A caretaker discovers that the land remembers every debt. Something moves through a mountain town's drinking water. A pastor arrives where no church should exist and begins gathering a congregation. Forgotten scraps of cursed wood find their way into ordinary hands.

And before all of them came the first offspring.

The Darkwood Legacy: Lost Confessions - Volume I brings together six stories and novellas from the world of the Darkwood Legacy, including The Offspring, an all-new novella written exclusively for this collection.

For the first time, discover how the Confession Tree learned that its influence did not have to remain beneath its own branches, and how one act of fear, guilt, and betrayal planted something that could survive for generations.

The Offspring
Slivers
The Keeper
The Water Tower
The Shepherd
Cordwood

Some confessions travel through mirrors.

Some through water.

Some through faith.

Some survive in pieces of wood no one thought mattered.

And some take root.

Whether this is your first journey into Darkwood or you have walked these mountains before, remember one thing:

The land remembers.

And sometimes, it remembers us better than we remember ourselves.

R.D. Parrish is an American author whose work blends atmospheric horror, Southern Gothic melancholy, and deeply human storytelling. A Marine Corps veteran and longtime resident of the American South, Parrish draws inspiration from the quiet places-flooded fields, forgotten towns, and the heavy, humid stillness where memory clings to the earth.

His debut novel, Hollow Ground, is an intimate rural-horror tale set in the fictional Mississippi Delta community of Gethsemane Parish, where relentless rain awakens an ancient, listening intelligence beneath the soil. Parrish is known for crafting horror that is slow-burning, emotional, and rooted in character-stories where fear emerges not from monsters, but from misunderstanding, grief, and the fragile ways humans try to connect.

Parrish writes with a focus on atmosphere, psychological depth, and the strange beauty of the natural world. When he isn't writing, he enjoys time with his family, exploring small-town history, and working on the next haunting story set in the world just beneath our feet.

He lives in the United States with his wife, De.