It begins in the roots.
Not with pain.
Withabsence.
The kind of stillness that doesn’t wait for silence—itissilence. The kind that fills a space where something sacred used to live.
The bond is unraveling.
The threads between me and the ward tree stretch thinner every hour. What once felt like a pulse beneath my ribs is now a flicker—dim, uneven, fading like the last coals in a forgotten hearth.
I press both hands into the base of the tree, kneeling in the hollow like I’m praying.
But nothing answers.
The light along the bark—those runes carved generations ago—barely glows anymore. The Grove’s once-thriving hum, its ancient breath, its soft-spoken knowing… it’s slipping.
And I can’t stop it.
Even now, surrounded by centuries of magic, I can feel the rot.
It isn’t in the wood.
It’s inme.
I failedthem.
Because I let myself want.
Because I let myselfpause.
I should have stood when the inspector first stepped near the boundary line. I should have revealed myself the moment the Grove first dimmed. But I waited—stuck between a man’s heart and a sentinel’s orders—and now the cost is coming due.
If the ward tree dies, the Grove dies.
And with it, me.
I whisper to the dirt, “You held longer than I deserved.”
There’s no reply. No ripple in the moss. No curl of vine reaching for my fingers.
I’m alone.
More alone than I’ve ever been.
And I can’t tell if the pain in my chest is grief, or the beginning of the end.
Night falls heavy.
The moon spills silver through the canopy, soft as breath. The Grove holds its silence like mourning cloth.
I stand in the glade where she used to sit, her sketches spread like offerings to something she barely understood but still loved. The earth remembers her footsteps. The moss still curves where her knees pressed into it. But the warmth she brought—it’s fading with every hour I keep myself hidden.
I breathe in the memory of her.
Then I speak.
“I know you came looking for me.”
