The trees changed by the time they crossed the old warding line — invisible to most, but Elara felt it in her bones, like the hush that falls before a storm. The air turned colder, heavier, laced with the scent of ash and iron. Here, the forest was older. Wilder. The kind of place where the ground remembered every step, and the shadows had names.
"Don't speak unless I do first," Elara whispered. "Not here."
Kael nodded silently, but his hand hovered near the feathered pouch on his belt, his senses sharpened. It wasn't fear in his eyes. It was something colder — readiness. He'd seen danger before. And lived.
They walked deeper into the trees, where no light seemed to reach. Branches arched overhead like claws, and twisted roots jutted from the earth like bones half-buried in old graves.
Kael's voice was low, but steady. "This place has magic?"
Elara nodded. "Living magic. Not hers. Older."
"The kind that hates humans?"
"No." She paused. "The kind that watches."
He glanced behind them, and for a moment, he thought he saw something — eyes blinking between bark. Gone in a breath.
Elara knelt at a clearing shaped like a spiral — moss-covered stones arranged in a perfect coil.
"She passed through here," she said. "I can feel it."
Kael crouched beside her. "This wasn't on the path."
"It isn't a path. It's a door."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "We're not opening it, are we?"
"She already has."
Elara's fingers brushed the moss, and warmth bloomed beneath her palm. The stones glowed faintly, illuminating symbols carved into their surface. Kael recognized one of them — the same rune he'd seen branded on his brother's wrist after the sorceress took his shadow.
"Do you know where it leads?"
Elara stood, eyes narrowing. "To a place she's hidden something. Maybe a memory. Maybe a weapon. But she left it guarded."
"How do you know?"
She pointed to a sigil near the center stone — jagged, chaotic, etched deep into the rock like a wound. "That's a binding rune. She doesn't use those unless she's scared."
Kael's voice dropped. "What would scare her?"
Elara turned her gaze toward the trees, where the silence had thickened, pressing against her ears like water.
"She locked something here. And now it's awake."
---
They didn't sleep that night.
Kael built a small fire with salt-rubbed wood while Elara whispered an old protection chant, one she hadn't spoken since she was a child learning spells by candlelight. The words tasted bitter on her tongue — half-forgotten, half-feared.
"I never liked this chant," she muttered.
"Why?" Kael asked, sharpening his dagger as he watched the woods.
"Because it only works if you really believe you'll survive."
A moment passed in silence.
"I believe you will," he said.
Elara looked at him, startled. "You don't even know me."
Kael met her gaze. "I don't have to."
She turned away, unsettled by the warmth in his voice — something soft beneath all that iron. She didn't want softness. Not now. Not when death lingered so close.
The trees creaked overhead, and then the wind died altogether.
A whisper rose from the spiral of stones behind them. Not a voice, exactly — more like breath brushing the edge of thought. Elara stood, dagger in hand, every muscle taut.
Kael rose beside her, already drawing steel.
The spiral pulsed — once. Then again. Light flickered from the stones, swirling upward, forming a shape.
Elara's heart nearly stopped.
It was a woman — or something like one. Tall, draped in shadow and vine, her face a blur of branches, her hair a mass of moss and thorn. Where her eyes should have been, there were only hollow spaces that bled light.
The forest spirit.
She had not been seen in decades. Not even the sorceress had dared disturb her sleep.
Kael stepped forward, cautious. "Is it her?"
Elara shook her head slowly. "Worse."
The spirit moved, not walking, but gliding, her feet never touching the ground. Her voice, when it came, was like rustling leaves and thunder wrapped in silk.
"Child of swan. Blood of thief. Why do you come to this place?"
Elara swallowed. "We seek the one who cursed me. The one who desecrated your woods."
The spirit tilted her head. "Many seek. Few understand what they chase."
"We aren't like the others."
The spirit turned to Kael, the hollows of her eyes burning brighter.
"You carry her sin."
Kael flinched. "Her sin?"
Elara stepped between them. "He seeks justice."
"Justice is not balance," the spirit said. "It is fire. And fire always takes more than it gives."
"We don't want fire. Just the truth."
The spirit was silent for a long time.
Then she extended a hand — brittle, bark-covered, dripping with sap.
From her palm, a seed formed — black and smooth, pulsing with a dark light.
"Take this. Plant it in the place where she first bled you. It will open what has been sealed."
Kael reached for it, but the spirit hissed.
"Not you. The cursed one. The swan who still remembers her name."
Elara took the seed, its surface warm and strangely familiar.
"What will it do?" she asked.
The spirit began to fade, her form unraveling like smoke caught in wind.
"It will show you the memory she fears most."
And just like that, she was gone.
Only silence remained.
And the seed pulsing in Elara's hand — like a heart waiting to wake something ancient.