The Deadwoods did not breathe.
The deeper they walked, the more the forest lost any semblance of life. The trees here had no leaves—only jagged branches stretching upward like skeletal fingers clawing at a sun that never rose. No animals stirred. No breeze whispered. The very air pressed down like a forgotten tomb, thick with rot, silence, and something older still.
Rael led in silence. The shattered memory from the temple clung to him like ash. The vision of the Flame Queen—his mother, his betrayer—played over in his thoughts not as pain, but as warning. Her voice had burned through the mirror with a thousand regrets and none of them were apologies.
He walked with purpose now, every step pulling him deeper into the heart of the forest, where the gods had tried to erase what could not be forgotten.
Behind him, Selene twirled a dagger idly between her fingers. "So, anyone want to talk about how Rael just casually name-dropped his divine mother and walked it off like it was nothing?"
Caelaris grunted. "Let him be."
"I'm not judging," Selene replied, lips curling into a smirk. "I just want to know if 'divine mommy issues' are going to be a recurring theme."
"She called him theirs," Aelthaea said quietly.
That silenced them both.
Rael's voice broke through after several steps. "They did not birth me. They forged me. Like a weapon. And when I refused to kill for them… they burned my name from the heavens."
Selene sobered. "That's why we're heading deeper, isn't it?"
Rael nodded. "There's something still buried. Something even the Flame Queen couldn't destroy."
Aelthaea's steps slowed. Her gaze drifted to the trees. "This place remembers, Rael. Be careful what memories you stir."
Hours passed.
The terrain shifted subtly. The earth became soft, damp—slick with a pulsing black moss that recoiled under their boots. The trees grew closer together. Some had mouths carved into them—wide and screaming, frozen mid-agony. Others bled sap that shimmered like oil.
The light was dim, yet somehow ever-present, as if the forest itself generated a twilight of its own—neither day nor night, but an eternal between.
At the heart of it, they found the roots.
A massive circle of twisted trunks and interwoven branches had formed a dome-like husk, as if the forest had grown around something long ago and then sealed it away. It pulsed faintly, a heartbeat beneath the bark.
Selene stared at it, blades drawn. "Tell me that's not another cocoon."
"It's not," Rael murmured. "It's older."
He stepped forward.
As he approached, the dome responded—creaking open with a groan that sounded like weeping. A tunnel appeared between the roots, dark and sloping downward into the earth.
"Of course it's underground," Selene muttered. "Why is it always underground?"
Aelthaea's voice came softly. "Because what is buried is harder to kill."
They descended together, torches lit with Rael's divine flame. The walls were formed of roots and stone, wrapped tightly around one another like a cocoon of memory. Symbols pulsed along the bark—ancient runes of sacrifice and severance.
Aelthaea slowed beside one. "These are exile marks. Not for mortals. For gods."
Caelaris frowned. "This place was a prison?"
Rael said nothing.
But his eyes lingered on the marks. He recognized some. Others recognized him.
At the end of the tunnel was a vast hollow chamber, lit by the faint bioluminescence of glowing vines. The ceiling curved high above, carved into smooth arches of petrified root. At its center stood a stone altar. Upon it, a single object rested:
A circlet of black metal, scorched at the edges. Beneath it, etched into the stone in worn divine script, were words:
"Here fell the Flamebound Son. Let no memory rise."
Selene stepped beside him. "You were buried here."
"No," Rael replied. "This was where they unmade me."
He reached out and touched the circlet.
The chamber changed.
Memory flooded the space—not a vision, but a reliving. Light flared across the walls, showing shadows of divine figures. He was back in chains. Kneeling before the Pantheon. His voice raw from defiance. The circlet burned against his head as they named him traitor, unworthy of flame.
They did not kill him.
They erased him.
Flame became silence.
Name became void.
The memory faded.
Back in the present, the circlet now glowed with dull heat.
Rael lifted it and turned to face the others. "This is what I was. Before they bound me to war."
He dropped it.
The circlet shattered into dust.
A pulse of power radiated outward, shaking the chamber.
And the forest screamed.
Above, in the woods, the trees trembled. Vines recoiled. The sky cracked open with a groan that echoed for miles.
And in the distance, something answered.
It was not a roar. It was not a cry.
It was a song.
Low. Melancholic. Beautiful.
Aelthaea stepped forward slowly. "That's not the Womb."
"No," Rael agreed. "It's something else. Something watching."
Caelaris readied her spear. "We should leave."
But Rael's eyes remained locked upward. "No. We should meet her."
The forest parted for them.
Trees bent. Vines slithered away. And soon, they reached a glade untouched by rot.
The silence here was thick—but not hostile. Expectant. Sacred.
At its center stood a tree unlike the others—tall, silver-barked, with leaves like sapphire flame. It pulsed with a divine rhythm. Beside it stood a woman.
She was barefoot, standing among wildflowers that had not bloomed in any other part of the Deadwoods. Her robe was woven from vines and moonlight. Her hair, pale green streaked with white, flowed like mist down her back. Her skin bore the color of polished ash wood, marked with glowing emerald runes that shifted like living moss.
Her eyes were ancient—no iris, no pupil, only pure luminescent white.
She did not blink.
She did not speak.
She only watched.
Selene stepped forward cautiously. "You don't look like one of the Forsworn."
The woman tilted her head.
Her voice was soft, echoing like wind through hollowed stone. "Because I am not. I do not serve the Forsworn. Nor do I kneel to the Pantheon."
Rael stepped forward. "Then who do you serve?"
"I serve memory," she said. "I serve the truth that cannot be silenced. I am the bloom that endures the burn."
Rael narrowed his gaze. "Your name?"
"Nyssira, Warden of the Roots. Guardian of the exile grove. Keeper of what the gods tried to forget."
Caelaris's voice was firm. "Why did you call to us?"
"I did not," Nyssira said. "The forest did. It remembered him. And it wished to know if he was still its flame… or its executioner."
She stepped closer, not in threat but in gravity.
"Which are you, Rael Vayashura?"
Rael stared at her, unblinking. "What do you think?"
Nyssira raised a hand and pressed her palm against his chest.
For a moment, her eyes closed. And when they opened again, there was a flicker—something sharp beneath the calm.
"I think you carry both. But you've forgotten how to bloom."
A pause.
"Let me remind you."
And the forest exhaled.
Vines surged up from the earth, not to bind, but to lift them. Flowers opened in fast motion. Light filtered in through a canopy that had never let the sky through. For a moment, the rot was gone, and only remembrance remained.
Rael stood still.
Nyssira leaned close.
"You burn because they broke you. But beneath that flame… there are roots."