The Fallen Princess: Unbound

Chapter Eleven

The forest didn’t allow straight lines. Even when Koen led, even when he moved with that unnerving certainty like he was reading a map written under the soil, the path kept bending.

Around root arches thick as bridge beams, over slick stone half-swallowed by moss, through curtains of vines that looked too eager to touch skin.

Light rarely reached the ground. What filtered through the canopy came muted and bruised, turning everything into shades that belonged more to dusk than morning.

Heat pressed in with every step. Not sun-heat... this was closer to breath, humid and close, a constant presence clinging to the back of Zaria’s throat. Magic pulsed beneath it all, slow and steady. A heartbeat that didn’t belong to any living thing.

Ahead, Koen paused. He’d been quiet since the moment they’d crossed into the corrupted forest, speaking only when he had to, short directions, quick warnings, a single “Don’t step there” that had made Aldric grumble until Zakai gave him one look and the grumbling turned into a thoughtful silence.

Now Koen stopped so abruptly that Zaria nearly collided with him. He didn’t turn. He just stared through a curtain of hanging vines, red eyes narrowed in a way that made him look less like a man and more like a blade deciding where to cut.

“There,” he said. Zaria followed his gaze. At first, she saw only thicket, dense growth, twisted trunks, vines braided in unnatural spirals. Then her eyes adjusted, and the wrongness sharpened into shape.

Stone. Ruined stone, almost invisible under moss and creeping roots. A low wall swallowed by the forest. A collapsed arch. Half a roofline, the old timbers blackened with rot and lichen. Nature hadn’t reclaimed it so much as devoured it, digesting the bones slowly.

“A village,” Aldric murmured, voice subdued for once. Zakai’s hand hovered near the hilt of his weapon. “Or what’s left of one.” Koen stepped forward without hesitation, pushing through the vines like they weren’t there.

Zaria and the others followed, and the forest seemed to tighten behind them, branches shifting, leaves shivering, as if it disliked being entered. The village opened around them in pieces. Paths that had once been stone were now slick channels of mud and root.

Homes leaned at angles that made Zaria’s stomach tighten with wrongness. Frames warped by years of moisture, walls grown through and split open by vines as thick as a man’s arm. Moss covered everything like a blanket left too long in rain.

In places, mushrooms bloomed pale and heavy, their caps bruised purple at the edges, as if even fungi grew sick here. No smoke. No voices. No footprints. Not even the clean hush of abandonment.

This silence felt… maintained. Like the forest had chosen to keep it. Koen moved deeper, boots squelching softly in the dark soil. He didn’t announce anything. He didn’t say this was mine.

But Zaria watched the small changes in him: the way his shoulders tightened, the way his pace slowed by an almost imperceptible fraction, as if memory had weight and he couldn’t decide if he wanted to carry it.

He stopped in front of a house that barely remained a house. The front wall had collapsed inward. What had once been a doorway was a jagged gap framed by warped wood and roots. Vines hung like curtains. The roof sagged in the middle, half-caved and dripping with damp.

Koen stared at it for a long moment. Then he stepped inside. Zaria followed, careful of the floorboards that had softened into sponge. The air inside was cooler, but the damp made it worse somehow. Cold rot instead of heat.

Shadows crowded the corners. The room smelled like old water trapped in wood. This place had been lived in. You could feel it. Not from objects, most had been reclaimed or dissolved, but from the way the space was shaped, the faint sense of where a table had stood, where light had once come through a window.

Koen moved toward what might have been the back wall. His hand lifted, brushing lightly over a beam as if expecting it to be smooth beneath his fingers. He found something on the ground half-buried in mold-soft debris.

A toy. It had once been carved wood. Simple, rough, made by someone who hadn’t been trained to craft for nobles, only for love. It was too rotten now, edges swollen and splitting. But the shape still held: a small animal with a blocky head and four stubby legs. A child’s thing.

Koen picked it up. A look crossed his face. Solemn recognition, quick and sharp, like a blade glinting in sudden light. And then it was gone. His features settled back into that controlled mask, the one he wore like survival.

He turned the toy once in his hand, as if testing whether it was real, whether it could still matter. Zaria didn’t speak. Neither did Zakai or Aldric. The silence around Koen was different now. Not awkward. Not cautious. Respectful.

Koen set the toy on a beam that might have once been a shelf, placing it carefully as if it deserved a resting place, even in ruin. Then his gaze moved across the house, quick, thorough, searching for something he knew he might not find.

“My father took me from here,” he said at last. The words were quiet. Not dramatic. Not an invitation to pity. Just… fact. Zaria’s breath caught. She didn’t push. She didn’t ask why. She waited.

Koen’s eyes remained fixed on the far wall, on the place the roof had caved in and let vines spill like veins. “I had a sister,” he added. Another beat, like the words cost him. “She was still an infant.”

Zaria felt it then... an odd, sharp ache in her chest. Not because Koen was suddenly sentimental. He wasn’t. But because it was clear he had once been a child who knew warmth and family… and had lost it so thoroughly that the memories were all he had left.

And now even the memories had a tomb. Koen turned toward the doorway again. “The relics,” he said. Zakai nodded once. “Lead.” They followed Koen out and across the village, moving between ruins that looked half-dissolved.

The farther they went, the more the growth thickened, the forest swallowing stone in slow coils. At the village center, a low structure sat half-sunken into the earth. Stone walls slick with moss, roof collapsed, doorway choked by roots. Koen pushed through the tangle, stepping inside.

It had once been a storage chamber, maybe sacred, maybe practical. The air was heavier here, damp and stale. Shelves lined the walls, but most had collapsed. What remained had been ruined by humidity and time: parchment fused into black paste, bindings swollen and split, inks bled into meaningless stains.

Koen crouched and sifted through debris with gloved hands. Not frantic. Methodical. Like he could refuse despair by choosing order. Zaria knelt beside him and lifted a warped wooden box, its lid softened and stuck.

When she forced it open, the inside held only mush and a faint metallic scent. Half of what had been here was gone. Taken. The rest had been destroyed by the elements and the forest’s slow hunger.

Aldric let out a quiet breath through his nose. “So… best case scenario, someone cleared this place out before it fell.” Zakai’s gaze swept the room. “Or after.”

Koen’s jaw tightened. He didn’t look up. “They knew where to look,” he said. His voice was flat, but Zaria heard the edge beneath it. Not anger. Devastation held down by sheer will.

Zaria’s light flickered uneasily. The pulse of magic in the forest seemed stronger here, as if the ruins acted like an old wound the land kept pressing. “We need to search the village,” Zakai said. “Anything left. A marker. A trail.”

Koen rose slowly. His eyes were darker now. Not with emotion, but with that cold focus he used when something threatened to break him. “Split,” he decided. “You’ll cover more ground.” Aldric lifted his brows. “And who goes with who?”

Koen’s gaze flicked to Zaria. “Me.” Zakai’s eyes sharpened immediately, protective reflex surfacing. Aldric opened his mouth, probably to make a joke and then seemed to think better of it when he saw Zaria’s face.

Zaria nodded. “Zakai, you take Aldric,” she said, voice steady. “Search the outer homes and the path we came in on. Look for tracks. Signs someone’s been here recently.” Zakai hesitated, just a heartbeat. Then he inclined his head. “Stay where I can find you.”

“I will.” Aldric saluted her with two fingers. “Try not to die without me, Princess.” Zaria’s mouth twitched. “Be careful.” “Always,” he said, and then under his breath to Zakai, “You lead, I’ll pretend I’m listening.” Zakai didn’t respond. Aldric followed anyway.

When they were gone, the village felt even emptier, like the silence had room to expand. Zaria turned to Koen. “What do we do now?” Koen stared at the ruined chamber behind them for a long moment. His shoulders rose with a slow inhale, then fell with an exhale that sounded like restraint.

He shook his head once. “I don’t know,” he admitted. It was the most honest thing Zaria had ever heard from him. He didn’t let himself look broken. He didn’t let his voice c***k. He simply… stood there, and Zaria could feel how tightly he was holding himself together, how much effort it took not to let the loss show.

This village wasn’t just a place on a map. It had been the only happy memory he’d allowed himself to keep. And even that had been swallowed. Zaria took a step closer, not touching him, not yet. “Koen…”

Koen’s gaze slid to her, and for a heartbeat the mask slipped, not enough to reveal everything, just enough for her to see the hollow underneath. Then his expression hardened again, as if he’d caught himself.

“We keep moving,” he said. “The book wouldn’t be here. Not if they were hiding it.” Zaria nodded, swallowing the ache in her throat. “Where, then?” Koen turned slowly, scanning the village and then beyond it into the thick forest.

He was listening, truly listening, in that eerie way he did, as if sound carried messages only he could interpret. At first, there was nothing but the forest’s quiet pulse. Then... A whistle. Soft, almost nonexistent. A single note, airy and thin, like a birdcall that didn’t belong to any bird Zaria knew.

Koen froze. Zaria watched his posture change, subtle but immediate, shoulders going rigid, head tilting as if the sound had touched something buried deep. He whispered, almost to himself, “That…” The whistle came again. Two notes this time. Faint. Hidden.

Koen moved. Not rushing wildly, still controlled, but with a sudden certainty that hadn’t been there a moment ago. He pushed through brush, stepping around collapsed walls and root-choked paths, heading toward the darker part of the forest beyond the village.

Zaria followed quickly, cloak snagging on thorns, breath shortening as heat pressed closer under thicker canopy. The ground sloped, the undergrowth turning denser, vines looping like traps. Her boots sank into damp soil that sucked at her steps.

“Koen,” she called softly, not wanting to break the hush too sharply. “Where are we going?” Koen didn’t look back. “I don’t know,” he said, and then, quieter, “but I remember it.” The whistle sounded again... closer now.

Zaria’s body began to protest the pace. Not sharply, but insistently. Her breath grew heavier. Sweat gathered beneath her hood. Her legs ached with the steady burn of exertion, postpartum strength still rebuilding. She hated it. She hated needing to slow.

Koen must have sensed it anyway, because he stopped suddenly, lifting a hand. Zaria halted with him, chest rising and falling. For a moment, all she heard was her own breath and the wet hush of leaves shifting in faint wind.

Koen’s gaze moved left, scanning. “There,” he said. Zaria followed his line of sight. At first she saw nothing, only shadow and hanging vines. Then the brush parted slightly, revealing stone. A narrow opening, half-hidden beneath roots and moss, with mist spilling out of it like breath from a sleeping mouth.

A cave. Or something that wanted to look like one. The air around the opening was cooler, but the mist carried that same thick magic, pulsing and alive. Zaria’s light recoiled instinctively, flickering inside her chest like a candle in a sudden draft.

Koen stepped closer, studying the edges as if reading the way vines clung to stone. He looked… certain again. Not comfortable, but certain. Zaria’s pulse hammered. “Is this—” “An entrance,” Koen said simply.

Zaria swallowed. Her hand lifted without thinking, fingers catching Koen’s gloved hand. Not affection. Unease. A need to anchor herself to something real before stepping into whatever waited inside that mist.

Koen looked down at their joined hands, then up at her. He didn’t tease. He didn’t flinch away. He only nodded once, understanding exactly what she needed without forcing her to explain it. “Stay close,” he murmured.

Then a voice spoke from the mist. Not loud. Not shouted. Controlled. “Stop.” Koen and Zaria froze. The brush above the cave mouth shifted. Shapes emerged, men stepping silently into view, cloaks blending with shadow, bows drawn and aimed.

Their eyes were red. Not oath-bound red. Natural, steady red... like Koen’s. Zaria’s breath caught. Her fingers tightened around Koen’s hand. The nearest archer spoke again, voice flat as stone. “Koen... Son of Voryn.”

The name landed like a blade. Koen’s posture went still in a way Zaria recognized now, like a man bracing for an old wound to be reopened. He didn’t raise his hands. He didn’t plead. He simply lifted his gaze to the archers and said, quietly, “I’m not here for you.”

The archers didn’t lower their bows. And from the misty cave behind them, something moved. Someone stepping forward with slow, deliberate weight, as if they had all the time in the world. “Then why,” the voice asked softly, “did you come home?”