Beneath the Roots
751 Words
The chill of night curled around Zaphira’s shoulders as she slipped down the cliffside path of Shatterpeak Mountain, breath tight in her throat. The wind whispered warnings through the stones, and her palms ached with cold as she pressed them to the damp rocks for balance.
She didn’t look back. Not once.
Ka’Mora—the village carved into the cliffs—was asleep, cradled in warm hearths and morning routines. She was just one girl in a village of miners. But now, she was more than that.
She was leaving.
The Pambo Forest loomed ahead like a giant curled in on itself, its glittering leaves flickering under starlight. She had to cross it. Alone. By morning, they might realize she was gone—but hopefully not before she reached the Obsidian Shore. She had to believe that.
As she stepped beneath the twisted branches of Pambo, her glowing crystal cuffs flickered faintly. The forest shimmered with soft bioluminescence—like starlight caught in vines. For a moment, she allowed herself to breathe.
She would be gone before they noticed.
She would be free before they tried to stop her.
She would—
“Just rest a moment,” she whispered aloud, slumping under the base of a large tree.
The moss was soft. The forest pulsed gently around her like it had a heartbeat. She pulled her hood low and closed her eyes.
That’s when she felt it.
A whisper of air. A slight sting on her leg.
Then the world turned inside out.
At first, it was soft—like the shimmer of crystals under a torchlight. But then the colors bled, the trees bent the wrong way, and the sky above pulsed with too many stars. Zaphira blinked, but her eyes no longer worked right. The ground beneath her rippled.
“W-what is…”
The roots began to shift, curling and writhing like fingers.
She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t move. The tree above her groaned, its bark peeling back like lips to reveal glowing amber eyes, dozens of them, staring down.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” it whispered in a dozen voices.
Vines slithered over her boots, tugging her downward. The forest hummed, sang, cackled.
She cried out—her voice swallowed by leaves.
The hallucinations deepened. Pambo wasn’t just alive—it was hungry.
And it had her.
But then—
He appeared.
A flicker in the dark. A shadow with glowing red eyes.
He knelt beside her, his hands hovering over her leg where the sting had spread. Dark tendrils moved up his arms, pulsing like veins. His fingers brushed her skin.
The pain receded. The colors calmed. The forest… paused.
She tried to speak—to ask who he was—but her mouth was filled with glittering sand.
The figure didn’t say a word. He only looked at her, his face soft and strange. Not afraid. Not cruel.
Just... sad.
She woke to golden light peeking through the trees. Dew clung to her lashes. The hallucination was gone, but her leg bore a tiny mark—a fang puncture surrounded by faint, dark bruising.
She stared at it.
“A Thistlewyrm,” she murmured. “I should be dead.”
But she wasn’t.
And she wasn’t going to waste the second chance.
Her limbs ached, but she forced herself upright. Every step felt heavier than the last, but she pushed through the glittering foliage. Birds called in strange tones overhead, and the trees loomed like silent watchers.
By the time she broke through to the edge of the forest, the Obsidian Shore sprawled before her—a black-sand crescent kissed by ocean spray. And there, bobbing in the tide…
A boat.
Not a fishing raft. Not a merchant skiff.
A proper vessel, small but sturdy, tied loosely to a mossy rock. No one in Ka’Mora knew how to sail. No one left the island.
Her breath caught.
She looked back, half-expecting her grandmother’s voice or her mother’s footsteps. But there was only wind. Only the sea.
She stepped into the boat.
Untied it.
And pushed off.
The vessel creaked as the tide pulled her outward. Pambo shrank behind her. Shatterpeak disappeared into morning mist.
She clutched her knees, heart hammering, tears not from fear but from the rawness of change.
She didn’t know what waited on the other side of the ocean.
But for the first time in her life—
Zaphira felt free.
And somehow, destiny felt her coming.
- Writer
