Torvil found Riven first.

  The boy was crouched by the well, tossing stones with precise flicks of his wrist. Each clack echoed in the stillness like a challenge, like he was daring the town to return to normal, to pretend nothing had happened.

  He didn’t look up when Torvil approached, but his voice came steady: “You’re leaving, aren’t you.”

  Torvil sat on the edge of the stone ring, slow and tired he rested his arms on his knees and let the silence sit for a time.

  “We are,” he said at last: “Brann and I…South, away from this place, for a time.”

  Riven’s next toss went wide and landed with a soft plop in the mud. His jaw tensed: “And me?”

  “That’s what I came to ask,” Torvil said. “This isn’t a family trip, no games, no sweets…no safety nets. If you come, you’ll carry your own weight, and more than that, you’ll learn things that can’t be unlearned.”

  “I’m not a child,” Riven said, sharper than before. “Not after what I saw…What I did.”

  Torvil turned to him. “You are a child Riven…That’s not shameful, but this world doesn’t care. So if you come, I’ll treat you like a man. You’ll train. You’ll be pushed, and you’ll see what lies behind the stories people don’t tell their sons at night.”

  Riven stood. He looked small in that moment, smaller than he wanted to be, but his eyes were steady.

  “I’ll come…you don’t have to protect me.”

  Torvil gave a weary nod. “No, but I’ll still try…I’m your father after all.”

  After things with Riven were settled Torvil found himself in front of Lysa’s door. He knocked once before opening it.

  Lysa was sitting on the floor, legs crossed, books open around her like a shrine to half-forgotten dreams. She didn’t look up…her fingers traced the edge of a page, not reading, just feeling the weight of it.

  Torvil stepped inside and shut the door behind him. “It’s time.”

  Lysa gave a faint, humorless laugh. “Of course it is.”

  Torvil hesitated. “I want you to come with us.”

  She finally looked at him, and there was no fire in her eyes, just still water with something dark beneath.

  “I don’t…”

  The word landed like a stone, not loud, but final.

  Torvil said nothing at first. He crossed the room and sat on the edge of her bed, watching her carefully.

  “You don’t want to come?” he asked gently.

  “I don’t want to be told to,” she replied.

  Her voice wasn’t angry, it was quiet, measured, deliberate: “All my life, people have been choosing for me, what I learn, where I sleep, when I’m ready for truth… You think just because the world’s falling apart I’ll fall in line?”

  Torvil rubbed his palms together. “That’s not what I meant…you’ve always had a choice.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve had options, options shaped by you. By what you thought was best.”

  Torvil swallowed the sting…she wasn’t wrong, not entirely.

  “I want to make my own path,” she said. “Maybe that’s here, helping guard this town, or maybe it’s out there…but if I go…I’m not just trailing behind like some apprentice waiting for scraps of wisdom.”

  She stood, brushing her hands on her skirt.

  “If I come with you, it’s under one condition: You train me…properly. No more secrets, no more delays, I want to understand the forest, the soul, the runes. I want to learn what’s real, not the bedtime version…because one day, I’ll leave again, alone, I want to be an explorer, I want to see what’s left of this world and decide who I’ll be in it.”

  Torvil looked at her, this girl who had once begged him to lift her high enough to touch the low branches of the orchard trees, now asking him for the map to her future, and promising to chart her own way across it.

  He exhaled slowly. “You would walk the druid’s path not to serve the forest or defend the kingdom…”

  She shook her head. “To understand it…to master it and to choose my path.”

  The silence between them stretched, long and taut as a drawn bow, then he nodded, slow and grave.

  “Then I’ll teach you, not half-measures, the real thing. But understand this, once the soul is bound, there’s no turning back, you’ll feel things no one else can and you’ll carry that weight forever.”

  “Good,” she said. “Then I’ll finally know what I’m carrying.”

  Torvil stood and crossed the room to her. He touched her shoulder, gently, like he used to when she woke from bad dreams.

  “You’ll be more than I ever hoped,” he said quietly. “And that scares me.”

  Lysa smiled faintly. “Good.”

  They left the room together.

  Downstairs, Brann waited by the hearth, sharpening the edge of his blade.

  “She’s coming,” Torvil said.

  Brann raised an eyebrow. “Her choice?”

  “She made that clear.”

  Brann gave a faint nod, then got on his feet, it was time for them to leave, they wasted enough time already, so he went to bring the horses.

  Jorlan Kett had never liked paperwork…

  He preferred blades, orders, and hard decisions made in the moment, but protocol was protocol, and with Torvil gone, the burden rested on his shoulders like an old cuirass that no longer fit. Before sunrise, he’d already scrawled two full reports by candlelight, assigned watches along the river line, and reviewed the scouts’ findings. The forest hadn’t moved again, that was the only good news.

  The general and his retinue weren’t expected until next week, even with the fastest horses, they couldn’t have made the journey from Vireth Tal so quickly.

  So when the boom came, loud enough to rattle the shutters and shake dust from the ceiling beams, Kett nearly dropped his quill. He was already out the door by the time the echoes faded, cloak flung over one shoulder, boots heavy on the cobbles.

  The town square was not as he’d left it, fading runes were marked in the dirt and dust filled the air.

  Behind the dust they stood like statues at the center of the square, black-armored figures gleaming in the afternoon sun, edged in deep gold, polished and cruel in the light. Their faces were hidden behind helms that bore no sigil, only slits for eyes and mouths carved with quiet menace. Their cloaks did not stir in the breeze. They had arrived with no caravan, no dust trail, no sound of hooves only the echo of their sudden presence.

  General Edran Velh stepped forward, helmet under one arm, his hair tied back in a warrior’s knot. His face was too perfect, skin unlined despite his age, eyes clear and cold like river ice.

  “Well, well,” he said, smiling faintly. “I know you, old soldier…you trained recruits at the western garrison some years back, did you not?”

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  Kett came to a halt, heart thudding. “I did.”

  Edran tilted his head. “Your stance still speaks of discipline, though you’ve grown soft at the edges.”

  Kett said nothing.

  “Good,” the general continued, scanning the town without true interest. “Then you and two of your best men will accompany us into the forest…show us where the trouble began.”

  Kett blinked. “Into the forest? Now? We haven’t even…”

  “We are burning daylight, Kett” Edran said, cutting him off with the casual finality of a man who did not hear refusals. “The time for talk has passed, the sooner we start our investigation the better…while the traces are still there”

  He left the words trailing, letting imagination fill the gap.

  Kett hesitated…this was wrong. Everything about this was too clean and rushed, their arrival, their armor, the way the general moved as if he already knew what he would find…no one moved troops like that, not for a ghost story. And the fifteen men...they were too quiet, too still. These weren’t regular soldiers, they hadn’t shared a word with him or the townsfolk…they hadn’t even blinked.

  “How did you get here so fast?” Kett asked quietly.

  Edran smiled wider, though it did not touch his eyes.

  “We move when needed” he said simply. “And now, you’ll do your duty and lead us.”

  For a heartbeat, Kett considered refusing…not openly, not brashly, but in the quiet way, a delay here, a question there, slow the pace, buy time. But something in Edran’s eyes made his blood run cold. It was certainty.

  The man expected to be obeyed.

  And for all Kett’s pride, he wasn’t ready to gamble Westmere’s Tip on the general’s patience.

  So he nodded. “I’ll grab my gear.”

  Edran turned on his heel without waiting, already walking toward the northern edge of town. His men followed in perfect silence, boots ringing on the stones in unison, the same rhythm, as though they moved to a heartbeat not their own.

  Kett watched them go, then spat in the dust.

  Something was wrong.

  And he had just agreed to walk back into that cursed forest.

  The crossing went without incident. The soldiers moved in a perfect column, black and gold gleaming like lacquered stone beneath the thinning mist. Kett led them, jaw tight, his eyes scanning the trees. Nothing stirred in Duskmire’s outer edge, not a branch creaked. The forest watched them, silent and unchanged, as if mocking what little he remembered.

  When they reached the clearing where the dial had stood two nights past, Kett stopped short. His breath caught.

  The dial was there, still a solid circle of stone, weathered and moss-flecked, but the names, the carved quadrants, the etched runes that shimmered faintly under moonlight, they were all gone. Scribbled over crudely, gouged into illegibility.

  "This can't be," Kett muttered, stepping forward "There were four zones marked clear as day. Someone’s erased them."

  General Edran Velh stepped beside him, arms crossed, the wind barely ruffling the black silk of his officer’s cloak. “Do you think the druid is covering his tracks?” he asked, as if it were a question with only one answer. “It would not be the first time…They leave no marks until they’re ready to strike…if there even was one”

  Kett turned sharply, fury rising. “No, this, this isn’t the only thing, there were paths, strange ones that bent around you when you weren’t looking, time was not flowing normal…There was a grove... and the trees, some of them looked like iron, twisted and wrong, ”

  “Iron trees?” Edran said, tone suddenly sharp. “You didn’t mention them in your report.”

  Kett winced inwardly…Fool, he had let too much slip.

  “I don’t think they were iron,” he said, slower now. “Only looked that way under moonlight, but they were real. And the dial, it opened paths, I swear it, hidden trails through the forest.”

  Edran’s eyes narrowed, their golden hue unnatural in the light, like burnished coins dipped in oil. “Whatever it did,” he said coldly, “it doesn’t seem to work now…Stand back, I’ll cleanse this.”

  He reached into the folds of his coat and drew out three small yellow crystals, shaped like teardrops and faintly humming in his gloved palm. With a casual flick of his fingers, he tossed them to the earth around the dial…they landed in a triangle, each pulsing once like a heartbeat.

  Edran lifted both hands and began to chant.

  The air thickened. Sparks danced between the crystals, arcs of raw energy snapping like whips. Soldiers shouted and scattered from the clearing as the arcs grew in speed and volume, humming with a pitch that pierced the skull.

  Then, with a roar that cracked branches and shook the ground, a pillar of fire erupted in the small clearing, blinding and fierce. It rose into the canopy like a lance of the sun, then vanished just as suddenly, leaving the ground scorched, the dial nothing but slagged ruin, yellow arcs still traveling between the trees that were still standing.

  Ash floated through the clearing like snow.

  Edran adjusted his collar, satisfied.

  “Well then,” he said, his voice still smooth, unhurried. “Now that the energies from this place have been erased... show us the way to this grove.”

  Kett bristled. “Are you out of your mi…”

  He bit the words short, jaw clenched, insulting a general, especially one like Edran Velh, would earn no reward…the man had the bearing of a hammer that liked to swing.

  Edran’s voice curled like smoke. “What was that, Jorlan Kett?”

  “Nothing general…Just that we nearly got scorched back there…I’ll lead you to the grove, or what I remember of it, without the dial, the paths aren’t the same.”

  They pressed deeper into Duskmire. The terrain clawed at their boots, tangled roots reaching like fingers to trip them. No whispers this time, no madness threading the air. Still, Kett kept his blade close and his eyes wary, the silence here wasn’t comfort, it was a sign that things were not the same.

  When they reached the grove, he already knew what they’d find. No moans of agony, no iron-skinned trees feeding on their prisoners. The battle-fire from their incursion had done its work, scorched bark, blackened roots, the sour tang of burnt sap still lingering. But no bodies, no trace of the horror that was once present.

  Edran surveyed the grove with a narrowed gaze. “I see you did better here than your report suggested. Looks like you torched the place well enough.”

  “We lost fourteen men,” Kett said, the words bitter on his tongue. “We barely got out alive... but yes, we gave back some of what we took.”

  Edran didn’t answer. His hand rose, and the soldiers broke formation…Three groups of five, blades drawn, spreading through the grove like wolves hunting among burnt trees, their swords gleamed with golden runes, sunlight dancing along the edges.

  Then it happened.

  The ground cracked, roots twisted upward like bone fingers. Three wooden beasts, like the one that had taken Oakrin, clawed their way from the soil. Kett reached for his blade, but he was too slow.

  The soldiers moved as one, their rune-blades pierced the creatures before they could fully rise. No screams, no resistance, just the creak of ruptured wood and the hiss of decay as their forms withered and collapsed…a neat little display.

  Kett watched, stomach knotting.

  It had been a show…all of it, a display of power.

  This wasn’t a surprise ambush…these things had been planted here, waiting, he was sure of it. The ease, the precision, the timing, it reeked of orchestration. That’s why Edran had wanted two of his men along…witnesses, to tell the tale in every tavern and checkpoint between Westmere and Avenwall. How the army of the kingdom had walked into the haunted forest and cleared the evil in mere moments, while Kett and twenty men had bled and fled.

  He said nothing. Not yet.

  Torvil’s words echoed again, we must not let them know what we discovered.

  But was that all?

  Had the army worked with the druid? Had there even been a druid to begin with? Or had they all walked straight into a net, victims of a script already written? He didn’t know. Edran didn’t seem like a fool, but arrogance often wore the same face as certainty, and certainty killed just as quick.

  As the soldiers regrouped, Kett stared at the blackened soil, at the place where nightmares once grew like roots. Whatever this was, whatever it had been...

  It was gone now or hidden deeper.

  Edran broke the silence, his voice cool and arrogant, like a man lecturing a field of stumps.

  “It seems there were only a few strays here…They showed no sense of formation, no hint of strategy, I see no guiding hand behind them. Whatever madness haunts this forest, it lacks discipline.”

  He turned slightly, not quite facing Kett, but just enough for the words to strike clean. “You did well enough, Jorlan Kett, handling the bulk of them. The chant we’ll place now should catch the rest, if any remain.”

  Kett bit his tongue his hands itched, though not for his sword. It was the way the man spoke, as if the fire, the screams, and the death were distant rumors, fourteen dead, their names still echoed in Kett’s skull, but Edran had already filed them away beneath a neat little victory.

  Edran raised his arm, and the soldiers snapped to attention.

  “We’ll lay four boundary chants…one squad north, one east, one west and I’ll take the southern mark myself, down toward the bridge. Together we will form a containment square, the grove's heart, where the stone dial once stood, will be the center. If anything breaches the wards in the future, we’ll know.”

  He barked the orders, and the soldiers moved with practiced ease, running thru the forest like it was a training ground.

  Kett followed Edran back to the bridge and watched the lines form, straight and clean. He watched them move like a blade drawn across a wound, sealing it with symbols and measured steps, they made it look so easy…too easy.

  His mouth felt dry.

  They were setting a trap, that much was clear, but whether it was for beasts or for stories, he could not say.

  Did they truly believe the threat was over? Or was this just another piece of theater, meant to keep the townsfolk calm and the whispers from growing teeth?

  He didn’t know anymore.

  He had no words left