But I waited.
Because of her.
She walked at their center, staff in hand, her crimson robes bright even in this gloom. Her hair, gold as flame, caught the pale traces of moonlight that filtered through the canopy. The stories had not lied—she was fire incarnate. Yet as I studied her face, I saw more than divine fire. I saw strain. The faint tightness around her golden, glowing eyes. The way her shoulders stiffened each time the darkness pressed too near. She carried herself like a goddess, but beneath it she was a woman weighed by fear she refused to name.
That fascinated me more than her light ever could.
I tested them first, as I always did. A tendril uncoiled from the ground, swift as a snake, wrapping around the ankle of the rear guard. His cry cut the silence, sharp and human. The Paladins reacted instantly, shields raised, blades flaring. Their captain barked commands, his voice steady, trying to impose order on chaos.
But the forest does not heed commands from men.
The shadows surged at my bidding, slipping between shields, coiling around arms, dragging one Paladin sideways into the undergrowth. His scream cut short as the darkness swallowed him. Another was lifted bodily into the canopy, his sword flailing once before the tendrils cinched tight.
Their blades struck true now and then, searing away the limbs of shadow that lashed at them, but every strike only bought them seconds. For every tendril burned, two more rose.
I did not kill them. Not outright. Not anymore.
A century ago, I might have. When rage was fresher, when solitude pressed more cruelly against me. But the memory of that first slaughter—of Meryn broken beneath a Paladin’s hand, of my wrath unleashed without measure—still haunted me. I remembered too well the taste of blood, the silence after their screams. It had not lessened my curse. It had only deepened it.
So now, I toyed. I misled. I captured, scattered, sent them home broken rather than dead. It was enough to sate the forest, enough to remind Solaris why they feared me.
But tonight was different. Tonight she was here.
The Phoenix.
I tightened my grip on the forest’s pulse, bending it with more precision. Roots split the ground between her and her soldiers. Shadows dropped like curtains, isolating her in a circle of gloom. The Paladins shouted, blades raised, but their voices grew muffled, distant, like echoes carried down a long corridor.
She spun, staff blazing, her golden light pushing back thedark in bursts. Each flare lit the trees in stark relief, casting long skeletal shadows. Her power was formidable—stronger than I remembered from the skirmishes at the edge of my domain. But she was not inexhaustible.
I watched her fight. Watched her hold her ground as Paladins were dragged into the roots around her, one by one. She called fire with every breath, her voice commanding, desperate. Yet even as she burned my tendrils away, I could see the toll it took—the slowing of her stance, the way her shoulders sagged between strikes.
She was fire. But even fire consumes itself.
The captain of the Paladins fought like a man possessed, his blade a beacon. I nearly admired him. He tried to hold their line, tried to anchor her in the storm. But when my shadows yanked his soldiers apart, even he faltered.
I felt the shift in the forest as her last defenders vanished into the dark. Silence claimed the clearing. She stood alone now, her staff trembling faintly in her hands, chest heaving with exertion. The light radiating from her flickered, not extinguished, but strained—like a flame guttering in heavy wind. Slowly, she slumped against a tree trunk, sliding down to the ground as if it hurt too much to stay upright.
And still, she did not flee.
That stubbornness… it made something tighten in my chest.
The Sun Paladins’ voices echoed faintly through the forest, their golden light flickering in the distance like far-off stars, too dim to reach us here.
And she—she sat beneath one of the great trees, slumped against the trunk, her crimson robes stained with mud and torn in places from the fight earlier.
Exhaustion was etched on her face. Her usual glow, the fierce light of the Sun God that radiated from her, was flickering, weak.
I knew I should have turned away—but something in mecouldn’t.
I stepped closer, invisible to her eyes, the forest bending to conceal me. She spun once, twice, staff raised, trying to find the source of her enemy. She could not see me. But I saw her.
Up close, her beauty was not divine, not perfect. It was human. Sweat streaked her brow. Dirt stained her robe. Her hair clung to her cheek, loose and tangled from battle. The great High Priestess of Solaris, unmasked at last by exhaustion.
And yet she was still radiant. Perhaps more so for her imperfection.
I should have struck then. Should have bound her in shadows as I had done to so many others, dragged her deeper into my forest, silenced her fire before it could rise again.
But I hesitated.
