Chapter 14 – Voices Beneath the Roots
603 Words
The forest had grown darker, denser—its silence too complete to be natural. Moss carpeted the ground like old velvet, muffling his steps. Elias had been following a trail no mortal eyes could see—a faint shimmer of magic in the air, the ghost of a path that twisted between ancient oaks whose roots writhed like sleeping beasts.
The deeper he went, the heavier the air became. It smelled of damp earth and forgotten tears.
A strange hum began beneath his feet, soft at first, then rising like a pulse. He paused, pressing a hand to a tree trunk. The bark was warm. Beneath it, something moved—slow, deliberate, alive.
Then came the whispers.
“Turn back…”
“Leave her be…”
“Your heart is not strong enough…”
The voices wove around him, lilting and mournful. Each syllable brushed against his skin like a cold fingertip. Elias gripped his dagger, though steel seemed a poor defense against voices made of air and sorrow.
He tried to move, but the forest itself seemed to resist him. Roots curled higher, tangling across his boots. Vines crept like hands from the underbrush, coiling about his legs.
“Do not wake her sorrow again…”
The whisper came from beneath him, from within the soil itself. He knelt, brushing away the moss—and froze.
Beneath the green layer, faces stared back at him. Not fully formed, but impressions of them—eyes closed, lips parted as if caught mid-breath. Spirits, perhaps, or memories pressed into the earth by centuries of grief.
His pulse thundered. “What are you?”
“We are the ones who tried…” the voices sighed. “The ones who sought to save her.”
A tremor shuddered through the ground. The forest moaned as if waking from a long, painful dream. Elias stumbled back, the weight of countless souls pressing against his mind.
He saw flashes then—visions, memories not his own. Knights swallowed by thorns. Lovers kneeling before the witch, begging for mercy. A child reaching out to touch her tears and vanishing into light.
“All who love her are lost,” the roots whispered. “And you will be no different.”
Elias clenched his jaw. “Then let me be lost.”
The air cracked with power. The forest did not know what to make of defiance. Branches shuddered overhead. The faces beneath the moss blurred, twisting in anguish.
“She does not want you to find her,” one voice hissed. “She sleeps to protect the world from herself.”
“Then I will wake her,” Elias said. “And if the world must break, so be it.”
The voices fell silent. For one fragile heartbeat, the forest seemed to listen. Then the roots beneath his feet uncurled, slowly, reluctantly, like something ancient acknowledging courage—or pitying it.
Ahead, the trees parted just enough to reveal a faint blue glow pulsing between them. It was not the cold light of moon or star—it was heartlight, magic woven from sorrow itself.
Elias stepped forward, his breath steady despite the tremor in his limbs. The whispers followed him still, softer now, more like a lament than a warning.
“He walks the path again…”
“Perhaps this time, she will not weep…”
He did not look back
By the time the forest swallowed the last echo of his footsteps, the whispers had changed. They no longer begged him to turn back—they prayed he might succeed where all others had failed.
- Writer
