I step closer, vines winding down my arms like armor.
“I am the Grove,” I say.
“And you don’t belong here.”
He stares at me like I just cracked open the sky.
Not moving.
Not blinking.
The scanner still smokes at his feet, its enchantments scrambled beyond repair. The Grove hums with layered power, every branch and bloom alive with a resonance no instrument could ever quantify.
ButI?
I’m something else.
I step fully into the light.
For the first time.
No shadows or tree limbs cloaking my body.
Just me—formed of bark and stone and spellwork etched in the marrow of this land.
The light of the sun catches on my shoulders, dapples my skin like gold across old oak. My runes glow—not faint now, but steady. Whole.
He takes a half-step back, breath shallow.
“I didn’t believe,” he whispers. “I didn’tknow.”
“You weren’t meant to.”
I take another step forward, and the ground beneath me blooms—wildflowers bursting from the soil with every movement, like the Grove is greeting its guardian.
“This forest doesn’t need your belief,” I tell him. “It never did.”
He opens his mouth to argue—but no words come.
Because for the first time, the Grove isn’t just visible.
It’s undeniable.
And I am no longer hiding.
I sense her before I see her.
The air changes, sharpening like the breath before a storm, only gentler. Warmer. The Grove leans forward, every leaf angling slightly in her direction.
“Thorn?”
Her voice, soft and shaking, cuts through the clearing like music.
I turn.
And she’s there.
Mouth parted, chest heaving like she ran the entire trail just to find me. Dirt smudged across her cheeks, her hair a mess of wind and wildflowers. Her eyes land on me—and theywiden.
