"There's blood," she observed, voice tightening. She pressed her gloved fingers to the sap??dark stain, feeling how the bark pulsed faintly beneath. "Not hours old. Days, at most."
Draven joined her. He inhaled once, discerning tallic tangs of iron and mana residue. "Elven blood," he judged. "Highborn. And laced with pressure??sigil backlash—soone tried to heal themselves mid??casting and failed."
She followed the narrow sar deeper, eyes narrowed. "If an elf survived out here alone, they must be desperate—or bound by oath."
"Or both," Draven said.
The trail wound past a crumbled amphitheatre whose tiered seats wore cloaks of moss. Cracked statues watched from the shadows—sentinels with blind, stone eyes. Sylara counted four distinct glyph matrices on the pillars, all dormant, all fractured. Each had once anchored complex defensive wards. She whistled low. "Soone breached a fortress to ruin this."
They rounded a vine??draped archway and erged into a ritual plaza scorched by blasts of ancient magic. Charred grooves ford spiral patterns in the marble floor. Shafts of moonlight slanted through holes in the canopy, turning the blackened stone into a patchwork of silver and soot. In that spectral glow, Draven traced a spiral with his foot.
"Siege spells," he murmured. "Probably triggered from inside when the grove sealed itself."
"What were they defending?" Sylara asked.
"Not what," he corrected. "Who."
The blood trail led them to a colossal tree hollowed like a cathedral, its gnarled roots forming archways tall enough for giants. Luminous insects zipped in and out of fissures, painting soft green constellations across the bark. At the base, half??hidden by sagging ferns, lay a figure.
Sylara's heart lurched. "A boy?"
Draven shook his head. "Look closer."
They approached with muted steps. The figure sat slumped against a root, knees drawn to chest, head bowed. He appeared no older than ten—delicate limbs, ceremonial tunic torn and steeped in drying blood. Yet when Draven knelt, he found eyes like twin stars in eclipse: fathomless, ageless, riveted with quiet sorrow.
The boy did not move at their arrival, though Vyrik's low growl reverberated through the grove. Instead, he spoke in a voice weathered by centuries. "It's all ruined," he said, the words flat, rasping. "Why are you here?"
"To see what still lives," Draven replied, matching calm for calm. He t those impossible eyes without flinching, studying the veins of mana flickering beneath pallid skin.
The child—if child he was—lifted his chin a fraction. "Most don't find this place. Most aren't allowed."
"I'm not most," Draven answered simply, his tone quiet, final.
The boy's eyes—glassy with pain yet piercing in clarity—studied him a mont longer. Sothing ancient flickered behind that childlike fa??ade. Then, as if compelled by a buried oath or perhaps an instinct older than language, he spoke.
"Tell ," the boy said in flawless High Elven, voice now smoother, formal, tinged with ceremonial weight, "recite the Fourth Canticle of Starsong."
Draven didn't hesitate.
He straightened, and sothing shifted in his bearing—not posture, but presence. The stillness that took him was deep, like a frozen lake just before dawn. And when he spoke, his voice dropped into perfect High Elven, not the stilted academic tongue, but a fluid, lodic cadence that hadn't been heard in centuries.
"Na theryniel il'taer,
Mi'rendor tel'quessir,
Sarn?? tinúviel, e'laetha ten'duin.
Linae eth'ir, vilya sael,
Tinuva arna'quel,
Laetha an'dorei mi'calar."
Each line flowed like water over polished stone—soft yet resonant. His pronunciation didn't rely imitate; it understood. As though the words were etched in his soul long before his current life.
The grove listened.
Sylara blinked, eyes narrowing as the runes on nearby roots pulsed faintly in response to the recitation. Even the air felt different—thicker, charged, reverent.
When Draven finished the final line, a hush fell again. It wasn't silence—it was a held breath.
"Show-off," Sylara muttered, crossing her arms.
But the boy wasn't finished.
His tone changed, and with it, the mana around them twisted. He began to speak—not just in words, but in tones braided with arcane intent. Twelve threads of mana unraveled from his lips, each a different frequency—so notes high and bright, others low and mournful. They wove a question too ancient for modern translation. It wasn't just about comprehension—it was about attunent.
Sylara staggered slightly, instinctively bracing herself. Vyrik growled low, ears twitching. "What the hell is that?"
Draven didn't reply right away.
His head tilted slightly, like a hawk studying the wind. His eyes half-closed, letting the threads pass through him, not just around him. He didn't just listen—he tuned to them, let them settle into the ridges of his mind.
Then, slowly, he responded.
The sound he made wasn't speech in the common sense. It was music, layered resonance shaped by intention. Where the boy's tones had posed a question, Draven's wove an answer, harmonizing and counterpointing each strand in turn.
The threads aligned—one after another—clicking like tumblers in an ancient lock. Midway, Draven altered the rhythm, inserting a soft pause, then letting his final tone spiral upward before folding it neatly into silence.
The air sighed.
The question unraveled, answered not in concept, but in soul.
The boy's expression shifted. Not surprise—no, not exactly. Recognition. Like he'd found sothing he feared no longer existed.
"You speak the words like one born under them," he said softly.
Draven's gaze was steady. "So of us listen closely."
Sylara knelt, placing her bow aside. The chira essence vial glowed in her palm—a soft marigold pulse. "Hold still," she urged. "This will slow the bleed." She dabbed a drop on the boy's torn collar, and pale green light seeped into the fabric, knitting fibres and flesh alike. The boy did not flinch, though his breathing hitched.
"Na?" she prompted gently.
"Laethiel," he said, voice softer now that pain ebbed. "Keeper of the Heart??Seed. Guardian of mory."
"What happened, Laethiel?" Draven asked.
"Wards shattered," Laethiel whispered. Silver hair fell across his cheek, now less blood??matted. "The Heart??Seed cracked. I couldn't hold the resonance any longer. And then the song turned to screams."
Draven's brow furrowed at the phrase. Heart??Seed. Resonance. He glanced around the hollow. The air thrumd faintly—an arrhythmic pulse, like a chorus out of tune. "Where is the Seed now?"
Laethiel tried to shrug but winced. "Root??core. Below. But it's… wrong. Splintered." He studied Draven again, curiosity overtaking pain. "Mirrored soul," he murmured. "Two layers, one fra. You're one of the ones we have waited for."
Sylara's eyes darted between them. "Mirrored?"
Laethiel pointed—first at Draven, then at the faint afterimage of energy that followed each of his movents, visible only to those attuned to deep mana currents. "One soul layered atop another. You walk with echoes behind your footsteps."
Draven didn't deny it. Instead, he rose and surveyed the tree's interior. Runes spiralled up the hollows, dim and flickering. So sparked like dying candles. Others glowed steadily, though cracks marred their lines.
"We'll need to rest here," he declared. "He can't travel yet."
Sylara nodded, already unslinging her pack. Vyrik lumbered nearby, giving the clearing one last wary sniff before curling protectively at Laethiel's other side. She laid out bandages and salves, her motions deft. When she dabbed at Laethiel's shoulder, he hissed but held still.
Draven unpacked a collapsible brazier, igniting it with a whispered incantation. Soft amber light blood, pushing back the grove's silvery gloom. He arranged their rations—dried fruit, hard bread, a flask of springwater—in a neat semicircle. Every movent was precise, efficient, no action wasted.
Laethiel watched, eyes wide at their mundane preparations. "You act as though this place is safe."
"Nowhere is safe," Draven said without looking up. "But here is quiet. Quiet is enough."
Sylara studied Laethiel's expression. "How long were you alone, Keeper?"
He stared at the fire's glow. "I stopped counting seasons after the wards began to fray. The forest kept
half??asleep, half??awake, sustaining . But the Seed… it drains those who guard it."
"Why keep guarding sothing broken?" she asked softly.
Laethiel's shoulders slumped. "Because it rembers us. If it dies, we fade entirely—every song, every na, swallowed by silence."
Draven rose, attention caught by a spiralling glyph above the entrance. His gaze tracked its pattern. "We won't let that happen," he said, voice low yet firm. He knew the Pri would insist the sa. There was knowledge here worth any risk.
Laethiel's eyes glowed as though reflecting distant starlight. "Why now?" he whispered. "Why does the mirror soul co when the Seed fails?"
Draven answered while tightening a strap on one wrist. "Because sothing stirs in the tilines—threads pulling taut. Your song is needed again."
Sylara glanced at him, brows knitted. "You always act like you know the script."
Draven settled beside the brazier, unsheathing a dagger to sharpen absent??mindedly on a whetstone. Sparks leapt between blade and stone like fireflies. "Because he left
the map," he said quietly, aning the Pri, the source of their shared consciousness.
Above them, the fractured canopy parted, revealing a sliver of moonlight. It cast pale beams through the hollow, illuminating swirling dust motes and highlighting the serene, porcelain angles of Laethiel's face. The wounded Keeper watched them in silence, perhaps weighing the cost of hope against the inevitability of decay.
Draven's gaze lingered on the moonlit treetops. In the distance, a chorus of night insects began to sing, layering new music atop the grove's fading hymns. He listened, parsing the cadence like he might parse a coded missive, finding patterns where others heard noise.
Finally, he murmured, "Finally, it starts. I guess I've arrived at the right ti for the elves."
And the Grove That Waits answered in rustling leaves and the faintest echo of an ancient lullaby, as if acknowledging that ti itself had, at last, turned its gaze back to ??alethar.
Sylara's voice broke the quiet like a pebble dropped in still water.
"Hey, so what exactly happened here? I don't think I'm catching on."
Draven didn't respond imdiately. He stood at the hollow's edge, gaze fixed on the spiraling glyphs etched into the ancient bark. The runes were shifting faintly now—threads of light flickering as if reacting to his presence. His hands rested behind his back, one thumb slowly tracing the knuckle of the other, a gesture that might have passed as thoughtless—if not for the razor-sharp stillness in his posture.
Sylara waited, arms crossed, leaning slightly against the thick root of the tree. Her chira, Vyrik, paced in slow circles behind her, tail low, ears twitching.
"Draven," she prompted again, softer this ti. "You're reading sothing in this place that I'm not. I know you're not one for speeches, but... throw
a bone?"
His head turned slightly, just enough for the moonlight to catch the edge of his profile. That calculating gaze flicked toward her, asuring her question against the weight of the grove.
"This isn't just a ruin," he said at last. "It's a scar."
Sylara blinked. "A scar?"
"On the tiline," he clarified. "On mory. On magic itself." He stepped forward, his fingers brushing the glowing bark. "The Seed here—what Laethiel was protecting—it wasn't just a relic. It was a lock. A living archive. A pulse of ancestral mory so potent it could stabilize arcane leyflow across centuries."
She frowned. "Okay. But what happened to it? What broke it?"
Draven's eyes narrowed.
"Laethiel said it began to crack. That the song turned to screams." His voice was quieter now, the edge of weariness threading beneath the usual detachnt. "Sothing pierced the boundary. Not through brute force. Through resonance."
"You're saying sothing sang its way in?"
"No." Draven shook his head. "Sothing unmade the harmony. An inversion. A disruption of identity so deep the Seed itself fractured trying to process it."
Sylara's arms tightened around herself, and her gaze dropped to Laethiel, who now slept with the gentle rise and fall of soone montarily free from agony.
"So who would do that?" she asked. "What kind of mage even has that kind of—?"
She stopped. Her throat went dry.
Draven looked at her then, expression unreadable. His eyes glead like mirrors—reflecting nothing, yet showing too much.
She whispered, "Draven…"
He turned back to the grove. His fingers rested lightly against the bark.
One word left his lips.
"Demons."
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