Silence followed them, not as a companion, but as weight. The knight’s blood-soaked clothes clung to his body, sticking and tearing free with each step.
The fog lay at their backs. Ahead, through thinning mist, rose a single, towering tree. Its dead branches were pale, drained of color, as though the meadow had tried and failed to starve it.
He hoped it marked an end.
He feared it marked a beginning.
A twinge of regret came uninvited. Brought by the Questions words.
Will he send for you?
The answer was already there. The king would not. The knight knew he could survive without this place—wander these lands, help the lost, endure as the Question has.
There would be pain, but he would be free to do as he pleased. Free to move on.
He expelled the thought. Finding the princess. Finding Sir Draven. These were not duties, but choices. And once it was done, he could live a life free from pain and suffering, until the Question could finally see his end.
He hoped the Question would turn to tell him his journey would soon be over. Then, another thought came to him.
“Question,” he said, “can you not deliver me to the horde where the crown lies?”
“I can,” the Question replied, neither looking back nor slowing.
“But you will not.”
“No.”
The knight scowled, which softened as he spoke. “Do you not wish to see my end? Would that not hasten it?”
The Question stopped abruptly, turning to face the knight, once again kneeling and leaning in close. The knight hated the feel of its breath as he hated the void within his own shadow.
“The end means only as much as what came before it. And yours, unyielding knight, is one I intend to savor.”
“And suffering makes it sweeter?” the knight asked, ire on his tongue.
The Question rose and turned its back. “Not the suffering. The perseverance.”
The Question moved, and the knight trudged along with little choice but to follow.
The tree grew with each step, though the distance between them never seemed to shrink. The branches stretched overhead like grasping hands, and the air beneath them felt colder, heavier.
Hopeless.
He felt uncertain.
“What is that?” the knight asked.
The Question glanced back but said nothing.
The knight noticed a shift beneath his boots. Soil flowed slowly, drawing him forward. When he looked down, roots coiled around his ankles, then his calves, tightening with a patient conviction.
He struck at them. His blade rebounded, hardly chipping away and producing only splinters. The roots held firm. Looking up again, the Question had taken to the air, hovering above.
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The tree creaked, like an entire forest groaning at once.
Roots pulled him forward with increasing urgency. Branches like castle towers reached down, surrounding him like a forest hanging from the sky, swallowing him whole. From the branches, parchment fluttered as he whipped passed.
He stopped suddenly, swaying violently forward. He quickly righted himself.
A gray wall of timber stole his vision with its presence.
“The Tree of Misgivings,” the Question’s voice whispered. It hung from a branch by a single foot and hand.
“What does it want?” the knight demanded.
“It wants you to know.”
The knight grew tired of the cryptic Question. He scowled, then shouted, “To know what?”
Running a long finger gently across a hanging sheet of parchment, the Question replied, “Its fruit.”
The knight followed the parchment with his eyes. Hundreds of them swayed from the branches—yellowed, brittle, blank.
“My fate,” he said. “How do I free myself?”
“Choose,” the Question replied.
“These are blank,” he said. “If they are blank, then the choice is meaningless.”
The Question tilted its head. “Is it?”
“You said the fruit is fate. Fate implies certainty. I see nothing of the sort.”
“It implies outcome,” the Question replied.
The knight exhaled through his nose. “This is not a choice. It’s theater.”
The Question smiled. “All choices are.”
As the roots tightened, the parchment began to stir.
Not blank now, but stained with faint impressions, like words once written and long erased.
He leaned closer despite himself.
You took what wasn’t yours.
The letters faded, replaced by another line.
You made what wasn’t meant.
His jaw tightened. It was given, not taken. He made nothing but a future he believed in.
“This is not fate,” he growled. “This is memory.”
The tree creaked.
He reached for one, then stopped. His fingers trembled. He thought of the dungeon.
Eight years had taught him the truth of eternity. Not its length—but its feeling. Days that scraped instead of passed. Hope that dulled instead of faded. The dungeon had not frightened him because it hurt. It frightened him because it continued.
If this tree trapped him the same way, if knowing became another kind of waiting—
“If I take it—”
“Take it,” the Question said softly, “lest it take from you.”
He chose the one closest to his heart, the one trembling, and plucked it free.
Ink bled from the torn stem, spreading like veins, shaping itself into letters as it crept inward. Words formed. The knight read them, and a tired smile drifted across his face.
The parchment burned with a low violet flame, dissolving into pale ash. The knight could swear it carried the scent of lavender.
“What did it say?” the Question asked.
The roots loosened, and the branches drew back. At the tree’s center, the trunk split open, forming an archway. Through it, the knight found only into darker woods beyond.
“You would not wish to know,” the knight replied.
The Question dropped to the ground, blocking the passage. “What did it say?”
The knight met its gaze, his voice light despite the weight in his chest.
He had expected a date, or a name, but instead found only a few simple words.
They drew a boundary. Made a promise that something, at last, would stop.
He had not smiled because he wished it true, he smiled because now he knew he would get what he wanted.
“I die.”
The Question recoiled, then turned sharply toward the tree.
“You lie.”
“I do not.”
“How?” the Question growled as it took flight, hovering in front of the tree, searching.
“Which way?” the knight asked. “Once through, which way? You are to guide me.”
“How?”
“Question! You’ve been bound!” the knight scolded.
The Question latched onto the tree and shot its gaze back at the knight. Its eyes burning bright a hot.
“Forward. I will find you,” it snarled. It scurried along the rough bark, searching still for an answer.
The knight passed through the arch. Behind him, the Question pondered
“How,” it muttered. “There must be more.”
It was only a few meager steps, yet he had passed through the span of a kingdom. On the other side, the forest pressed in close, dark and waiting.
“Forward,” he whispered.
“Helpful.”
A subdued smile came suddenly, then went all the same.
