The path eastward was no path at all—just a slow descent into wilderness that forgot it had ever known man. Tarn's Hollow faded behind them like a dream, and before them rose the tangled, shimmering threshold of the Breachwood.
The forest was alive in ways that defied sense. Its air hummed faintly with Rift-energy, enough to make Haraza's skin prickle and his breath fog even in warm light. The trees were taller than they should've been, their branches braided like antlers, bark slashed with spiral scars and veins of faint blue light that pulsed in time with something unseen. Leaves whispered not in wind, but in chorus. Some grew in perfect hexagons. Others blinked like eyes.
By midmorning, the sky had vanished behind the canopy.
Light filtered down in columns, amber and green and sometimes violet, though no sun cast it. Haraza couldn't tell if it was morning or afternoon anymore. Time unraveled around them like loose thread, and the deeper they went, the more the air felt heavy with memory.
Lyssira moved with purpose, placing copper-threaded glyphs at certain intervals—stones marked in ash, carved into bark. Anchors, she called them. Haraza asked once what would happen without them.
("Your thoughts would become trails," she said, without looking back. "And trails here like to wander.")
They passed a grove where the trees had no bark, only mirror-smooth skin that reflected nothing. Haraza paused before one, seeing only endless void in its surface. His glaive hummed—a warning—and he stepped away.
Further in, they encountered the first Echo. A creature made not of flesh, but of thought. It floated above the moss like a shiver made visible—vaguely humanoid, but constantly reshaping. Its face became his own. Then Lyssira's. Then something monstrous, all teeth and sorrow.
Haraza raised the glaive. Lyssira hissed at him to wait.
The Echo stared at them with un-eyes, then opened a mouth that was more absence than shape and said in a voice that was his own: "This way bends toward hunger."
It drifted aside, vanishing between trees.
Haraza exhaled only once it was gone. ("What was that?")
Lyssira's expression was grim. ("A warning. And a test.)"
("Of what?")
("Whether you'd listen.")
He said nothing more. But the way the glaive pulsed against his back told him that had he struck, the forest would have responded in kind—and not with kindness.
Later that day, they found a ruin overgrown with vines that hissed when touched. Stone arches half-buried in earth, covered in script that shimmered when read aloud. Haraza traced one line with a gloved hand.
("What does it say?")
Lyssira squinted. ("It's Old Weave. I only know a few glyphs… Something like, 'Within the bend of thought, memory becomes blade.")
( "Comforting.")
They didn't linger.
That night, they camped near a pool that reflected the sky accurately—stars moving in real time, a map overhead and below. Haraza sat by the fire, sharpening the glaive, though it didn't need it. The rook-cloth from Tarn's Hollow hung from the haft, still stained with ash.
("Why do the Echoes take familiar shapes?") he asked, not expecting an answer.
But Lyssira surprised him.
("They don't. The Rift shows you what you already fear. Or want. Or miss. The Echo just reflects it back.")
He looked at her. ("So it's all in my head?")
She shook hers. ("It's worse. It's half in your head. That means the other half can still kill you.")
They sat in silence. The forest made sounds like breathing. Far off, something called out in a language Haraza didn't understand—but which made his eyes water and the glaive's core spark blue.
He dreamt that night—not of battles or Earth or loss, but of choices not yet made. He stood before three doors, each one pulsing with Riftlight. One burned. One wept. One bled.
He heard his name again, spoken with reverence and terror.
Haraza Genso,Breaker or Bridge.
He reached for the burning door—
—and woke with the glaive already in hand, blade glowing faintly, the fire dead and the morning still dark.
Lyssira stood across from him, already awake.
("You felt it too," )she said.
He nodded. ("The Rift?")
She pointed east, beyond the grove. "No. The Gate. It's close now. We'll reach it before noon. And once we do, there's no turning back."
("What's behind it?")
She hesitated.
("Not a place," )she said. ("A question.")
He stared at her.
She didn't blink.
And the forest listened