The air changed as they crossed into the depths of the Spiritwild.
Not heavier. Not colder. Just… different.
Like the forest no longer trusted their lungs with permission to breathe it.
Kaelion tasted metal on his tongue and something older than rust beneath the moss. The light dimmed without reason. There were no clouds overhead, no sun filtering through a canopy. Just a haze like dusk had gotten lost and settled into the branches.
"This path feels... wrong," he said, stepping over a stone that hummed beneath his boots.
"It's not a path," Wren replied, not even looking back. "It's a memory."
He frowned. "You mean like the Echo Tree?"
"Worse," she said, eyes scanning ahead. "This is Spiral Hollow. It was removed from the Archive's safe-zone grid a decade ago. The forest loops here—time folds, names vanish, things remember you that shouldn't."
"This place is dangerous," Umbrix whispered. "It was part of my prison."
"Wait… you were locked here?"
"Not locked. Sunk. In roots. In stone. In silence."
Kaelion felt it then—the way the trees pulsed slightly with each step. The roots shifted beneath the moss, like a giant was sleeping just beneath the surface.
"You've been here before," he said quietly.
"I never left."
That wasn't ominous at all.
They pressed on, the trail narrowing to a tunnel between gnarled trunks and glowing fungi. Mist curled around Kaelion's ankles like it recognized him.
Occasionally, the wind would carry faint sounds—a child's laughter, a whisper that knew his name, the fluttering of a thousand unseen wings.
He said nothing.
So did Wren.
Eventually, the mist peeled back, revealing a clearing so still it felt like it had never moved at all.
At its center stood a creature that didn't belong to this world anymore.
A spirit. Or what remained of one.
A skeletal stag stood beneath a tree that wept glowing sap. Its antlers had been cracked in several places, and moss clung to its bones like a second skin. The air around it shimmered slightly, like heat rising from pavement—but cold. Ancient cold.
It turned its head toward Kaelion, slow and deliberate, eyes like smoke-wrapped glass.
"The shadow returns… and wears a new face."
Kaelion stopped mid-step.
Wren reached for her dagger, but Nyro chittered once and flicked his tails—warning, not attack.
"It's a Feral-Seer," she whispered. "Once a guardian spirit. They only wake to deliver echoes."
Kaelion took a cautious step forward. "You… know me?"
The stag's bones groaned as it moved. Every twitch sounded like a funeral dirge.
"I remember what you were. Not yet. But soon."
Kaelion's mouth went dry. "I don't remember any of it."
"Good," the stag rasped. "Memories rot those who hold them too long."
Umbrix stirred sharply inside him.
"It recognizes the Spiral Crown," the serpent said. "This one watched the fall."
Kaelion's heart skipped. "Then it knows what happened."
The stag turned its gaze on Wren. "You walk beside him… blade-bearer, fox-bound, whisper-born. Will you stay when he breaks?"
Wren didn't answer. Her fingers twitched, but she didn't draw her blade.
The stag lowered its head slightly.
"The Gate awakens."
Kaelion stiffened. "Gate?"
"Bone-grown. Spiral-sealed. Buried beneath memory and root. It holds what should never be named."
"The Gate of Bone," Umbrix said, voice suddenly small. "I thought it was sealed permanently."
"It was," the stag replied, as if hearing the thought. "Until you returned."
Kaelion stepped closer. "What's behind it?"
"You."
That shut him up.
The stag's breath rattled, and with it, the leaves shook though there was no wind.
"The world wrote you out. Carved your name from the stones. But the forest never forgets. And neither do the dead."
"Then why warn me?" Kaelion asked. "Why not stop me?"
"Because if you are strong enough to hold it… you might save what comes next."
Wren exhaled, just once. Not relief. Dread.
Kaelion swallowed hard. "And if I'm not?"
The stag's voice dropped.
"Then you will do what the Spiral King did before you. Burn the world to remember who you were."
Then its legs gave out. Slowly, like a tree falling in a dream.
The stag collapsed, ribs rising one last time before stilling entirely.
Nyro padded over to it and bowed his head.
Kaelion didn't move.
He just stood there, watching the bones fade into ash.
Wren approached him. "Come on. We can't stay."
Kaelion followed. But as he passed the spot where the stag had died, he heard it again—faint, buried in the wind:
"Choose soon… before the choice is made for you."
They walked for hours without speaking.
The forest didn't shift anymore.
It waited.
By twilight, they reached a slope of pale stone veined with silver. A ruined waygate, half-crushed by roots, marked the edge of a long-forgotten road.
They made camp there, tucked beneath the broken arch. Nyro warded the area in slow, tight circles. Wren laid out supplies, always methodical, always aware.
Kaelion sat with his back to the stone, watching the dusk settle.
"You okay?" she asked eventually.
Kaelion didn't answer right away.
He stared at his hands.
He didn't glow anymore. The shadows didn't flicker at his fingertips like before.
Now they pulsed beneath the skin.
Like his veins had been rewritten.
"I think I saw something," he said at last. "In the stag's gaze. Fire. Crowds screaming. My own voice, but not mine. I was… ruling something. No. Commanding it."
Wren didn't speak. Just listened.
"And I was cold," he whispered. "Not angry. Not cruel. Just... certain. Like I didn't care what had to burn, so long as they remembered me."
"You think it was a prophecy?" she asked softly.
Kaelion looked up. "Do you?"
"I think you're terrified it's true."
He let out a shaky breath. "I don't want to be that person."
Wren nodded slowly. "Then don't be."
He looked at her, startled.
"It's not that simple—"
"It never is," she cut in. "But the forest doesn't test those who can't pass. It only whispers to the ones who have a choice."
"She's not wrong," Umbrix added. "The last host cracked because they refused to decide. They were torn between who they were and who they could become."
"And me?"
"You're still both. But not forever."
Wren rose and offered him a water flask.
He took it.
Their hands touched—briefly—but it grounded him more than anything else had all day.
"We rest," she said. "Then we find the archivist. If the Gate is waking, we need to know why now. And what's still sealed behind it."
Kaelion nodded.
But even as he lay back on the cool stone, letting exhaustion pull him under...
...he felt it.
The Gate wasn't waiting.
It was calling.