The Mourningwood did not welcome them.
It watched them.
The moment the five crossed beneath the moss-dripping arch of twisted trees, the light changed. Sunlight did not filter here—it staggered, slowed, and then curled into shadows that crawled between branches like they had minds of their own.
The air was wrong.
Too thick. Too still. Every sound—footsteps, breathing, weapons shifting—felt muffled, like the forest didn't want noise to escape. Like it was trying to trap memory, not just bodies.
Elyra was the first to speak.
"It's… quieter than it should be."
Kael glanced at the trees. They weren't silent. Not really.
They were whispering.
But not in words. In names.
They moved slowly along the old hunter's trail, half-overgrown, half-bleeding with vines that pulsed faintly beneath the bark. Kael could feel the leyline currents underfoot—wrong, twisted, pulled through ancient wounds left unhealed.
He had made those wounds.
Not with rage. Not with wrath.With purpose.
He had burned this forest long ago to stop something from crawling out of the glade.A fragment of a god that had tried to escape its own ending.
He had thought it dead. But the Mourningwood remembered.
Lira's voice broke the silence.
"Who names a forest something like this?"
Torin adjusted his lute case. "Because it mourns. That's what they say. That it remembers every battle fought within it. Every soldier who died screaming. And every soul who tried to forget."
"That's just a story."
"Of course it is," he said, grinning. "But stories are where the truth hides best."
Kael's steps slowed.
His foot touched something—soft. Not earth. He looked down.
Beneath the thin layer of moss was a sigil, etched into stone: a spiral of glyphs once used by his kind. Divine script.
It spelled a name. His name. Or… what was once his name.
Only one letter remained unbroken.
"Kael?"
Elyra's voice was closer than he expected.
He turned.
Her eyes met his, soft but cautious.
"You stopped walking."
"There was a root."
"There wasn't."
Silence.
Then she added, more gently, "You don't have to hide every thought you have."
"I'm not hiding anything, "he said evenly.
She tilted her head. "Then why do I feel like you're trying not to remember something I haven't even said yet?"
Dain raised a hand. "Quiet."
Everyone froze.
Kael heard it too—something ahead. Not footsteps.
Breathing.
Wet. Heavy. Wrong.
The trees thickened. Vines reached like hands. The trail narrowed to a choke point lined with broken stones—remnants of a shrine to a lesser god long since erased from the world.
And sitting in front of it, half-slumped, half-wrapped in vines, was a man.
Or what was left of one.
"Is he alive?" Torin whispered.
Lira moved like a shadow, circling left. Dain drew his sword, low and ready. Elyra stepped forward, a faint glow pulsing in her palm.
Kael said nothing.
The man raised his head.
His face was wrong. Too smooth. No mouth. No eyes. Just skin. His chest moved in spasms, like something inside was breathing for him. His arms were outstretched, palms up—and carved with sigils Kael hadn't seen in centuries.
The voice that came from him didn't come from his mouth.
"You are not forgotten."
Everyone flinched.
Except Kael.
The vines began to tighten. The man's body snapped and cracked like wood. A voice—not his own—echoed from the shrine.
"We remember the fire. We remember your name. We remember what you did."
Lira threw a dagger.It stuck in the creature's chest—and melted.
Dain surged forward, blade flashing with a divine pulse.
But the vines reacted faster. They lashed out like serpents, wrapping Dain's arms, dragging him toward the shrine.
Kael moved.
He did not speak. He did not shout.He stepped.
One hand raised. No weapon. No spell.
The air around him shimmered.
The vines stopped.
They didn't burn. They didn't freeze.They simply withered. Like they had been reminded they weren't meant to be alive.
The shrine cracked. The creature gave a soft, breathless sigh—and then fell apart into ash.
Dain lay panting on the ground, blinking.
"You…"
Kael turned away. "We should keep moving."
Lira stared at him. "That was not tier-two magic."
Elyra didn't speak.
But her eyes were locked on him like someone who had just glimpsed a page from a holy book they weren't meant to read.
They walked in silence for an hour.
No one spoke.
The Mourningwood did.
It whispered to the roots. To the air. To the name buried deep in the man walking ahead of them.
The forest did not fear him.It remembered him.And it was trying to wake the rest of the world up.