Elias had just finished rewrapping his heel. The blister had darkened from angry red to a sullen purple; it still hurt when he flexed his toes, but at least it had stopped weeping. He was halfway through lacing his boot, fingers fumbling with the stiff leather, when a shadow blocked the entrance to his root-hollow.
"Blade-bearer," a voice said. "The Elders call."
He glanced up. It was one of the scouts from the Threadfall run. The Leshei stood there, moss-patterned armour stained with dried mud, fingers drumming a restless tattoo on the curve of his bow. It wasn't fear exactly, but the agony rich tension of a house of cards expected to fall.
"Give me a second," Elias said.
He yanked the knot tighter than was comfortable; he needed the support, and pushed himself upright. His knees popped again, his back chiming in a second later. Sleep had been shallow; every time he’d drifted off, his brain had displayed fragments of memories he’d spent years trying to bury.
The sword waited against the root-wall. It had behaved itself since the Sporevault – no humming, no intrusive visions, just quiet, expectant. The silence made the hairs on his arms rise in anticipation.
He slung it over his shoulder. Leaving it behind wasn’t an option. You didn’t walk into a reckoning without the burden you were being judged for.
Movement near the bench resolved into the little Fennroot, still stubbornly unnamed. It clambered down from its perch and padded over. It bumped its head against his boot, then clamboured up his leg, wriggling up and onto his shoulder with an ease that suggested it had been practising while he slept.
"You’re coming too?" Elias muttered.
The mushrooms on its back pulsed once, soft green. Yes.
The scout watched this interaction with a tilt of his head. Approval? Wariness? Hard to tell with half his face hidden behind bark-plating.
"This way," the scout said.
They didn’t go back to the main hollow.
Instead, they took the high roads – root-bridges that swayed sickeningly under their weight. The air up here was cooler, but still thick enough to glue Elias’s shirt to his spine. Spores drifted in slow, glowing curtains between the trunks, catching the amber light of the lantern pods.
They passed a cluster of open shelters. In one, Elias caught a glimpse of a healer bending over a still form: Veyra.
Her braids were spread out on clean cloth. One arm was bound to her chest. Another healer was checking the bandage at her side, hand hovering just above the skin, sensing the heat. Her chest rose and fell – slow, but regular.
Elias let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.
"Don’t stare," the scout said, not looking back. "She doesn’t need your eyes on her as well."
"Right." Elias pushed his gaze forward.
They reached a narrower tree near the eastern edge of the grove. Thick roots coiled around its base in a tight spiral, leaving a dark, gaping mouth in the centre.
"Down," the scout said.
Elias looked at the gap. The air rising from it smelt of damp stone, mildew, and something metallic, like old blood or warm iron.
"Of course it’s a hole," he muttered.
The Fennroot nudged his jaw. Get on with it.
He ducked and stepped into the dark.
The tunnel was a claustrophobic squeeze, barely wide enough for his shoulders and the sword if he turned sideways. Vines pressed against his sleeves, and spores dusted his hair. The floor was a treacherous mix of dirt and old sap; his boot slipped, sending a jagged spike of pain up from his bad heel.
The passage twisted – once, twice – then spilled him out into the chamber.
It was massive.
The ceiling arched overhead, a dome of interwoven roots and fungal sheets. Bioluminescent threads ran along them like veins, shedding a pale, watery light that suggested shapes rather than revealing them. The air was thick with the smell of boiled bark and something sharp – medicinal and astringent.
The floor was a wide disc of packed earth, marked with a sigil carved in overlapping lines that resembled stylised roots. At its centre waited a shallow depression, shaped to hold a blade.
The Elders were waiting.
Pale Root stood with her staff, her eyes like old amber. Stone-Arm flexed his fingers – half-flesh, half-rock – resting his weight on his back foot. Mossmother looked solid and tired, her hands clasped.
Around the edges of the chamber, other Leshei stood on raised roots. Elias guessed they were Ritual Weavers, their bark-wrapped hands resting on the root-lines running through the walls, their eyes half-lidded.
He felt another presence, too. A weight pressing down from above. The main grove was directly overhead. The tribe was listening through the floor.
"Blade-bearer," Pale Root said. Her voice carried unnaturally well in the acoustic dome. "Step into the circle."
Elias wiped his damp palms on his trousers and walked forward. The sigil underfoot felt warm, not hot, but alive. A low-grade fever in the stone.
"Place the weapon," Stone-Arm ordered, pointing to the central depression.
Elias unhooked the strap. His fingers didn’t want to unclench. After Ashenveil, after the Forge, letting the sword go felt like setting down a grenade with the pin pulled.
He forced his hand open.
The blade settled into the stone with a dull clack.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then, the carved lines lit up – a faint, sullen glow, like embers under ash.
A vibration ran up his legs, settling in his skull. It felt like a lock tumbling, or dice about to land.
"That’s reassuring," Elias muttered.
"What did it say?" Mossmother asked sharply.
"Just that this is a bad idea. Roughly."
A few of the weavers’ mouths twitched. Pale Root did not smile. She touched her staff to one of the glowing lines.
"Do not lie," she warned. "Do not hold back what you are because you fear what we will see. The roots feel the difference. They will pull harder if you resist."
"Good to know." Elias swallowed against a dry throat.
"Stand there," Stone-Arm indicated a spot behind the sword. "Hands open. Feet bare."
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
Elias hesitated, then bent to unlace his boots. The floor was cool and gritty against his skin. The fennroot skittered down and sat just outside the circle, its mushrooms pulsing a nervous rhythm.
He stood and held out his hands.
Roots uncoiled from the edge of the circle. They moved slowly, giving him time to flinch, but he didn’t. They wrapped around his wrists and ankles—firm, but not cutting off the circulation. It felt like being held by someone who wasn’t entirely convinced he wouldn’t run.
Pale Root nodded.
"Begin."
The first sensation was pressure.
Not on his limbs—that was merely physical. This was a weight behind his eyes, a pressure at the base of his skull, as if the room had tilted and poured itself into his nervous system.
The light on the floor flowed outwards, climbing the walls in thin streams. It spread into the dome, forming a web. Spores drifted through it, lighting up like dust in a projector beam.
The wall opposite him darkened. Images formed—not sharp pictures, but silhouettes cut from smoke.
He saw himself from behind, shoulders hunched, wearing a uniform that wasn’t armour. A pack. A rifle. A desert horizon. Distant pops of white light where flares climbed and died.
His chest tightened.
"Oh," he said quietly. "This."
The scene stuttered, then resolved.
He was kneeling in sand beside a screaming man. Blood pooled under the casualty’s back, black in the moonlight. His hands moved without his consent, muscle memory replaying the failure: tourniquet, pressure. Don’t look at the face, look at the wound.
The ritual chamber smelled suddenly of dust and antiseptic, cutting through the damp wood.
One of the weavers flinched. Mossmother’s hand tightened on her staff. They were feeling it—the panic, the sick determination, the rage when the bleeding wouldn't stop.
"Enough of that part," Elias hissed through his teeth. "You get the idea."
The roots didn’t listen. The silhouettes rippled.
Another scene.
Dark stone. Red banners. The Crimson Bastion.
The altar. The Child.
The Hallowed Child.
They didn’t show her clearly—just a small outline in light, unnaturally still. The focus remained on him: his shape, held by two Knights, throat raw from shouting; his refusal; his failure.
Heat crawled up his neck.
"Yeah," he muttered. "That one too."
Stone-Arm drew a sharp breath. Pale Root’s jaw clenched. Mossmother’s shoulders sagged, as if the weight of the memory had physically transferred to her.
"Your thread fights the flame," Stone-Arm said, his voice rough. "Even when the flame held you."
The wall shifted again.
A simpler shape this time: a sword lying in ash. His hand reaching down, fingers closing on worn leather. The moment Ash-Edge went from a relic to a curse.
The air in the chamber cooled. The spores pulsed an uneasy green.
"Did you know what it had done?" Pale Root asked.
"No," Elias said. Honesty was easier than invention. "Not then. I just knew it felt wrong leaving it there, like… abandoning a loaded weapon in a crowded room."
"Now you know," Mossmother said.
"Now I know."
The roots around his wrists tightened. The web above flared.
A new shape crawled up the walls.
The clearing. The Rootsinger. The circle of Knights. The blade rising.
He felt the cut again, heard the quiet remember in his bones.
But this time, it was different.
The memory didn't play from the killer's eyes; it fractured. It showed the view from the bound Rootsinger—the circle of watching helms, the weeping trees, the exhaustion. Then from a Leshay child hiding behind a root. Then from the forest itself, feeling a single, deliberate cut sever a thread that should never have been touched.
The room swayed. The roots at his ankles dug in to keep him upright.
The swordsman’s shadow—his shadow, now—expanded on the wall, its edges bleeding into the chamber, filling the air with the taste of rust.
"Hold," Stone-Arm said quietly.
The roots didn't listen.
The memory surged.
Elias’s heart hammered. The world narrowed to that raised blade.
Remember this, blade. Remember what they do.
The command surged through him. The sword stirred, tugging along the quiet thread the Emberkeep had woven into his thoughts.
His vision blurred. He wasn't in the chamber. He was in the clearing, his hands sticky with sap. The knights surrounded him.
"No," Elias said, his voice echoing off the dome. "Not like that. I’m not your executioner."
The sword pushed harder. The memory threatened to close over his head like water.
Roots tightened until his bones creaked. Spores spun a thick fog around his face. His lungs burned. Above him, the Rootsinger’s shape stretched, pulled toward him, toward the weapon, toward the shared wound.
"Stone-Arm!" Mossmother snapped. "It’s overreaching!"
"I’m trying!" Stone-Arm grunted, the runes on his stone limb flaring.
It wasn't enough. Something was going to break—the sigil, the blade, or Elias's skull.
He did the only thing he could think of: he stepped sideways in his own head.
He remembered.
Not the killing. Not the blood.
He remembered the way the Rootsinger had met his gaze in the memory. Tired. Gentle.
Remember what they do. Not be what they are.
The difference hit him like a wave of mountain water.
He grabbed it and held on.
"I remember," he rasped. "I remember they killed you. I remember they twisted your rites. I remember they turned your death into a sermon. I’m not here to swing the blade for them again. I’m here because you refused to go quietly. So either help, or stop pulling!"
The pressure shifted.
The Rootsinger’s silhouette shuddered, then steadied. The sword’s shadow shrank back into the metal. The glowing threads overhead snapped, one by one.
Spores rained down.
Elias coughed, choking. His knees buckled. The roots held him up, but only just. His vision narrowed to a multi-hued speck.
The Fennroot moved.
It scampered into the circle, ignoring the flaring sigil, and placed its tiny hands on the carved lines, pressing its forehead to the nearest root.
Green light flared—not the sickly hue of corruption, but the steady, bright colour of new growth.
The spores changed. Dark motes brightened, then dimmed, falling as harmless dust. The pressure in Elias’s lungs eased.
The web stopped tearing itself apart. The silhouettes on the wall steadied, held at a distance now.
The sword's hum faded to a low, grudging throb.
Elias sucked in a breath. It tasted of wet bark, but it was air.
Pale Root let out a sound like a sob. Stone-Arm slumped. Mossmother pressed a palm to her chest.
The Rootsinger's shadow on the wall bowed its head in acknowledgement.
The chamber settled.
The roots withdrew. Elias's legs buckled as his weight came down, and he caught himself on the floor, breathing hard. The Fennroot trotted over and climbed his leg, nestling on his shoulder. Its mushrooms glowed softly in his peripheral vision.
Pale Root stepped into the circle. She looked older, more worn.
"You carry more than steel," she said. "The Rootsinger's last refusal sits in your bones."
"I noticed," Elias rasped. "Not exactly a quiet houseguest."
Stone-Arm joined her. "When the Order took our Singer, they tore a thread from the Cycle and wove it into their own pattern. Your blade was the nail. That anger, that grief—it had nowhere to go. It lodged there."
Mossmother stepped up. "You survived what it showed you. Now you carry a piece of what was stolen, not by right, but by chance—by stubbornness."
"That tracks." Elias's legs stopped shaking, but his fingers hadn't.
"The roots could feel your choices," Pale Root said, "not just in the clearing, but the way you held dying men, the way you refused the flame, the way you stepped between our hunter and death. You are not clean, Blade-bearer. None of us are, but you are not theirs."
Elias exhaled. "So what does that make me?"
"A carrier," Stone-Arm said, "of a deep wound and the tool to close it. It is not fair, but fairness left this realm a long time ago."
Mossmother drew a circle in the air with her staff.
"The ability you just used—that dampening, that refusal of rot—that is not ours. We never learned it. They did not have time to teach us before the blade fell. You carry it now."
Elias looked at his palm. It didn't feel like a gift; it felt like yet more weight. A low, verdant aura buzzed beneath his skin—a refusal of rot that wasn't his but was now part of him.
[ABILITY ACQUIRED: SAPROOT CLEANSING]
"Good," Elias muttered, rubbing the back of his neck where the tension had knotted. "I'd hate to think that was standard procedure."
The Fennroot chittered in his ear.
"You felt the root-sense," Mossmother said, "the way the ground tightened before the memory lashed out."
"Yeah," Elias said, his voice rough. "Felt like the air pressure dropping before a storm hits, or the split second before a bone snaps."
"The roots flinch before they break," Stone-Arm rumbled. "They sense the rot coming. Now, share that knowledge."
Elias exhaled, testing his weight on his bad leg. "So it's a warning system, an instinct for trouble."
"It is survival," Stone-Arm said. "Do not ignore it."
"You needed tools," Pale Root said. "You have them. Now we ask you to use them."
Stone-Arm laid his hand on the floor. The glow rippled.
"Go to the Graveborn Hollow. There, the rot does not cling to living bark—it has taken hold of the dead, in the trenches where the Order’s victims were piled high. They walk, and they do not know they should lie down. If you can turn that cleansing against their corruption, you may give them the rest we could not."
"And if I can't?"
"Then you die there," Mossmother said, "and the Hollow keeps what it has broken."
"No pressure," Elias cracked his neck. "Any advice? Besides 'don't get bitten'?"
Pale Root snorted. "Listen to the ground. If your senses prick, do not argue. Hollowborn wait under the soil. Cryptskulls gather where prayers were spoken. Echo Husks burst when they fall. Use the cleansing on the corruption, not the bone. The Cycle needs stillness, not more shattered remains."
"And the Briarwolves?"
"Claws and steel," Stone-Arm said. "Your new tricks will only annoy them."
"Figures." Elias paused. "Veyra?"
"She lives," Mossmother said. "For now. If she walks again, it will be her choice. When you return, you may speak to her. If you do not return... she will know that someone tried."
The Fennroot squeezed his shoulder.
Elias stooped to pick up the sword. The hilt was cool, tacky with sap. As his fingers closed, the blade hummed—not in anger, but in gritted-teeth acceptance.
"Fine," he whispered to the steel. "We do it your way. But try to wear me like a glove again, and we’re having words."
He straightened. The Elders stepped back, clearing the path to the tunnel.
"Tomorrow," Pale Root said. "At first light. Rest while you can. Once you step into the Graveborn trenches, rest will not feel safe."
Elias nodded. His stomach rumbled, loud in the quiet chamber.
"Do you people have anything resembling food? Or is the trial to see how long I can run on fumes?"
Mossmother’s eyes glinted. "We will send broth and root-bread. You are not useful to us as a corpse. Yet."
He turned toward the tunnel. At the mouth, he looked back. The silhouettes were fading, but the Rootsinger’s outline lingered—a suggestion of antlers and tired eyes.
For a heartbeat, he felt a phantom hand on the back of his neck: weightless, steadying.
Then it was gone.
He ducked into the darkness, the Fennroot's warmth still on his shoulder, the sword heavy on his back, and the knowledge of what awaited in the Graveborn Hollow settling around his ribs.
Sleep would come hard tonight, but at least, he thought as he climbed, there was a direction.