BOUND BENEATH ROOTS AND SOUL

Chapter 11

KAEL'THOR POV

The first time I saw her, I let her live—only because the moment had not yet ripened. Taking her life would have been easy—a mercy, even—after all, her existence was thin and fragile in the way all sacrifices are, no matter how much ceremony and glory the Fae dress them in.

To kill her would be to watch their grand lie collapse, but lies are very patient things; they would simply find another vessel to take her place. And that is the true rot beneath all of this.

It isn't the girl, not even the sickness creeping through the forest, but the ease with which replacements are chosen, the casual cruelty of the necessity.

This time, though, feels quite different.

For the first time in an age, the stillness of the obsidian lake felt violated. As I stood at the edge of the glass, calm water, my eyes fixed on the spot where she had vanished, the air still humming with the resonance of her passage. It was an old frequency that shouldn't exist in a mortal soul or even this time frame. This was the second time she had found this shore; the first time, she had stumbled here like a blind fledgling, and I had stayed my hand only because the threads of fate were still quite tangled. After all, I am a creature who respects the weave, but even still the shock and fury I felt when her fingers broke through my barrier still burns in my chest.

That shield was woven by me, from the core of the world's oldest magics, not like the fae's stolen magic and yet...yet she had slipped through it as if it were nothing more than foggy mist. It was as infuriating as it was freshly entertaining.

My draconic blood stirring with a curiosity I hadn't felt in centuries. After all the magic transporting her to and fro, dragging her from the safety of her bed to these treacherous depths, as if looking for something, was a primal, tethering force, almost as old as I am.

"This should be fun," I murmured, the words feeling heavy and metallic as I tilted my head back to look up at the colossal, skeletal canopy. "What do you think, Yggdra?"

The name left my lips in a rasp of grit and stone, sounding foreign even to my own ears after a long age of silence. That silence rushed back in immediately—a vast, unwilling presence that seemed to pulse in time with the lake's dark rhythm. It was broken only by a low, wet growl as the Corrupted Unicorn emerged from the shadows of the clearing, its yellow eyes fixed hungrily on the barrier.

Watching the rot drip from its matted fur onto the sacred soil, I felt a pang of grief; it was a walking cancer, a mockery of the bright, precise creatures I remembered from a time when their only will was innocence and kindness.

But my patience for such filth had reached its limit. "I will not let these abominations destroy our sacred place," The vibration of the words I spoke thrumming deep in my chest.

Without the need for a staff or the crutch of a formal spell, I simply moved my hand in a sharp, dismissive arc. The response was instantaneous: a pulse of white-hot power surged outward, and where it collided with the misshapen beast, the creature surrendering to the light. Rot, bone, and matted fur disintegrating into a fine grey ash that was swept away by a sudden, clean wind, leaving no trace of the horror that had been. The light continued its work, rolling over the blackened trees as the ground drank it in greedily, causing the corruption to peel back from the trunks like burned skin. I watched as black veins receded, pulled screaming into the soil where they belonged, until the leaves steadied and the forest finally drew a slow, grateful exhale.

As I lowered my hand, the molten gold of my eyes reflected in the obsidian water, signaling the return of a deeper, more solemn silence. Moving forward, my gaze fell upon the ground where the body of a dead fairy lay, its light extinguished, forever vanished from this world. I would recognize the cruel handiwork of the so-called faithful Fae, I whispered a final mercy into the cold form, watching as the body disintegrated to join the rest of its kind at the foot of Yggdrasil.

The weight of the long watch settled over me, then—the burden of centuries spent guarding a world that has long since forgotten I exist. "I will protect our place, Yggdra, I promise." I whispered into the stillness, the words feeling like a promise and a curse all in one. My eyes drifted toward the forest where the girl had been sent, watching as the barrier shimmered and knit itself closed; she should not be able to reach this place, and yet she has done so twice now.

It will not happen again.

Ember's POV

I woke with a start, but I wasn't on the damp forest floor; I was huddled on the wooden floorboards at the foot of my bed, my heart racing like a frantic hammer against my ribs. The real panic set in when I looked down and saw that the beautiful new dress Elara had given me—the one that felt like a peace offering after what happened yesterday in the forest with Ashthorne— it was a total disaster. Jagged tears ran through the delicate fabric, and the hem was caked in a dark, oily mud that smelled faintly of rot and cedar and cold stone.

My mind was a blur of s**t, s**t, s**t as I scrambled up with clumsy speed, stripped out of the ruined garment, and shoved it into the bottom of the trunk I was given. I threw on a plain tunic and dove under the covers, squeezing my eyes shut to force my breathing to slow down just then the silence of the house was broken by footsteps. They were quiet—impossible, ghost-light steps—approaching my door, and I held my breath, turning my face toward the wall with every muscle locked tight. I'm not shy to say I was quite perfect at this.

"I felt the wards move," Elara's voice came through the wood, sharp and devoid of her usual sweetness. "But there was no alarm."

"Could it be an animal?" Ashthorne replied, his voice a low, weary rumble.

"Am I a child, Ashthorne?" Elara snapped. "The ward wasn't disturbed in a way that set off the alarm, but I knew something passed through it.

She paused. "You know I'm rarely ever wrong. In fact, you know I'm never wrong".

After a short silence. She spoke again. Her voice a whisper "Anyway, she's still here, I can feel her in the room. She's there. Let's go."

I lay there paralyzed, but even in my terror, a strange layer of confusion hummed in the back of my mind. It didn't occur to me until much later that they hadn't been speaking English; I was hearing the sharp, melodic trill of the Fae tongue, and yet I understood every word perfectly, as if my brain had been rewired in the night to bridge the gap between our worlds. Nor did it register that I shouldn't have been able to hear them at all, for while Fae move with the silence of falling snow, their movement sounded likeq boots on wood to me.

As their presence drifted away and the floorboards ceased their faint protest, my mind remained a chaotic wreck. I didn't want to think about the dark shadow at the lake, the magical barrier I'd passed through like smoke, or what Elara meant by being "never wrong." The realization should have frightened me—it should have sent me running after them for answers but I think after all that a less smart person would have done that. But growing up learning how to perfectly navigate a family that didn't care about you or want you, you learn to firmly mind your own business, and get selective deafness.

So, I smartly turned onto my side and closed my eyes, choosing not to feel the ache in my legs or the memory of golden eyes widening in disbelief. I leaned on my greatest talent and my ultimate challenge: my perfect, chronic avoidant behavior. I pulled the blanket over my head and shut down my thoughts like a flickering lamp, forcing myself into a heavy, dark escape. If I did not think about it, then it wasn't happening.