Morning ca with the clatter of broken jars.
"CAI!" Lira shouted, slipping on spilled honeywort and nearly punching a shelf out of instinct. "Why were you balancing pots on top of the pestle rack?!"
"I was organizing them by emotional energy!" Cai chirped from the next room.
Lira turned to Elric, who was pretending to be deaf. "Your clinic is a magical madhouse."
"It's also extrely effective," he said, flipping a page in his notes. "We treated eleven patients in three hours yesterday."
"Yes, and one of them was a chicken."
"It had frostbite."
"It had dignity, Elric."
---
Downstairs, Keera was quietly brushing a sleepy goat who had followed her back from the mountains. Veyra watched her with mild curiosity. "You na everything, don't you?"
Keera smiled. "This one's called Trouble."
"How fitting."
Elric stepped into the room holding a small box wrapped in faded silk.
Inside it lay the silver ring with the red gem — the second item Selene had hidden in the bundle she gave him before she disappeared.
Until now, Elric hadn't dared open it.
But the sigil on his wrist — the Bloodroot mark that burned into him when he saved Cai — had started pulsing ever since they returned from the mountain ruins.
And it pulsed now, stronger, urging him to act.
"I think it's ti we stop pretending we're not standing in the middle of sothing ancient," Elric said.
"You an the part where the Tree whispered and the undead knight bowed to you?" Lira asked, entering with a tray of tea. "No, I think we passed 'ancient' two cursed relics ago."
---
Elric unrolled a new map drawn by Sylas, connecting ancient Tree sites, Watcher zones, and forbidden territories.
At the center of the web sat an unexpected spot.
The village.
"Under us," Elric said, tapping the floor. "Beneath this clinic. There's a root chamber."
Everyone stared.
"Your clinic," Lira said flatly, "is built on top of a magical nerve center?"
"More like a buried heartbeat."
Sylas blinked. "Did you feel it through your floor or just... guess?"
Elric held up the ring. "The ring pulses when I'm near it. The floor hums when I press my sigil against it. It's under us."
---
With everyone ard, spell-prepped, or carrying torches (Cai insisted on holding two and a wooden spoon "just in case"), they descended into the storage cellar.
Elric pushed aside a loose tile near the dicine chest, revealing a faint glyph pulsing under the floorboards.
"I always thought that was just bad masonry," Lira muttered.
Keera traced the symbol. "It's old. Older than the mountain ruins."
Elric pressed the ring against the glyph.
The floor sank—stone folding into itself like paper—and revealed a staircase made of bone and glowing root.
"Oh look," Veyra said dryly. "Another haunted staircase. We're collecting them now."
---
The passage led down into a chamber far smaller than the mountain ruins—but denser, and alive with unseen magic.
At the center stood a throne.
Not gold. Not stone.
But living wood, entwined with blood-crystal veins and bone like the remains of sothing ancient trying to rember itself.
Keera shivered. "This is a Root Throne."
Sylas' hands trembled. "I've read legends... but I didn't think they were real."
Elric stepped forward, the ring glowing brightly now.
The throne responded—roots writhing into glyphs that floated in the air.
Words appeared.
A na.
Elric Eliora.
---
Lira gasped. "That's—"
"Not my blood," Elric said quickly, his voice shaking. "Eliora was... the first. A healer who made the original Pact."
He touched the sigil on his wrist, feeling it burn.
"This is not my family na. It's a legacy. A mark left in the soul. Whoever I was before, whatever life I lived... so part of her rembers through ."
The glyphs changed.
Last Heir of the Broken Pact.
The room pulsed once with crimson light, and the walls began to shift—unfolding panels of mory: wars, betrayal, healers twisted into weapons.
And finally—Selene, bleeding in a battlefield of roots, whispering his na.
---
Elric stumbled back.
The throne pulsed again.
And this ti, it spoke.
"Choose. Reclaim the pact, or sever it. But you must choose before the Rootwalker rises."
Lira steadied him. "What does it an?"
"It ans," Elric whispered, "I don't have the luxury of staying neutral anymore."
The throne pulsed once more and dimd.
They left the chamber in silence.
---
That night, Elric sat under the stars, staring at the silver ring now heavy on his hand.
He had seen himself.
A healer turned into a weapon.
Not by choice.
But by desperation.
This ti...
He would choose differently.
---
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