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There was no time to mourn.
The screams had faded, swallowed by the forest. Fog clung to the earth like a living thing, curling around blood-soaked leaves and shattered steel. Somewhere behind, the old black carriage stood broken and silent—Harrik gone, the horses scattered, their cries distant echoes already claimed by the wood.
Sylvanor stood alone.
Blindfold half-fallen. Wrists still bound. Breath ragged.
Three Nightclaw Predators circled him now—phantoms of muscle and moonlight, their sleek forms gliding between twisted trees with predatory grace. Their eyes glowed with cold, blue fire, casting pale halos through the mist.
Blood dripped from the maw of the largest. The scent of iron and death thickened the air.
And yet the boy did not run.
He couldn't.
Whether by rope, fear, or fate, his feet remained rooted to the earth as the world closed in.
The forest watched in silence.
Then—just as teeth bared and death readied its pounce—something stirred.
Not in the shadows.
In him.
A shiver crawled across his spine, not of fear but of memory—of something ancient, buried deep beneath skin and sorrow. The red cloth around his head, torn and flapping, suddenly tightened around his brow—not by wind, but by will. As if it too had recognized the moment.
And in that stillness,
he heard it.
Not a voice.
A name.
His name.
Sylvanor…
A whisper not carried by air, but sung from the marrow of the trees. From root and ash, from blood and godhood. It was the name granted in silence by the goddess Auriona, spoken at the edge of prophecy.
Lord of the Forest.
And in that naming, power stirred.
The predators paused—not from fear, but confusion. Something had shifted. The prey no longer smelled like prey.
Sylvanor inhaled, ragged.
His legs trembled, but his mind... his mind reached downward.
Remember...
And then, for the first time, the Rootcall awakened.
His breath slowed. His heart aligned. And beneath the soles of his feet, he felt the forest.
The roots spoke—not in words, but in pulses, in the quiet language of old earth. A vision bloomed behind his closed eyes:
A vast web of soil and sinew, of root and tendril, stretched beneath him. Every tree, every blade, every fungal thread a vein in the skin of something far older than Aurethia itself.
And through that map, he saw.
One Nightclaw—low, circling behind.
Another—left flank, teeth bared.
A third—leaping, now, from above.
"Now," he whispered.
With no blade, no spell, only instinct and Name, Sylvanor twisted.
His body obeyed the map the roots had painted. He dropped beneath the pounce—air rushing past his ears as talons missed by inches. The roots beneath him shivered, bending with his motion. He rolled into the blood-slick leaves, eyes flashing open as the blindfold slipped fully away.
The forest saw him.
And for the first time in centuries—
the forest recognized one of its own.
The world seemed to still. Leaves hung like suspended breath. The predators encircled, unaware their prey had remembered what the world had forgotten.
With a cry that rang deeper than sound, Sylvanor raised his bound hands—bloodied, trembling—and shouted:
"Arborbond!"
The ground answered.
With a groan like old trees waking from slumber, the forest surged. A single sliver of bark—glistening with sap and fury—shot from the earth, spiraling up in a blur of movement. It coiled around his arms like a serpent of wood and sliced clean through his bindings. The blindfold, soaked with sweat and prophecy, fluttered away in the wind.
Sunlight cracked through the canopy above—just enough to illuminate the predator mid-leap, claws outstretched, inches from his throat.
Sylvanor dove.
He rolled across the damp earth, leaves clinging to his limbs. His hand found the jagged edge of a snapped root, thick and gnarled. Without thinking, he willed it—his fingers tightened, and the root hardened, reshaping in his grip into something ancient and meant.
A staff, born of blood and bark.
The Nightclaw crashed down beside him.
Sylvanor spun, sweeping the root-staff low. It struck the beast's legs with a crack like shattering bone. The creature snarled, lost its footing, and crashed into a bramble-thick thicket, howling in rage.
Another lunged from the side—teeth glinting, eyes aflame.
"Vireth!" he called, the word rising unbidden from the roots.
Living vines burst from the earth, green and serpentine. They wrapped around the leaping predator, catching it mid-air and slamming it full-force into a trunk. The tree shuddered with the impact. Leaves rained down like golden ash.
The third Nightclaw was faster.
It darted low, avoiding the roots. Its claws found flesh—ripping through his robe and into his side. Pain flared, sharp and real. Blood spattered across the moss.
Sylvanor gritted his teeth and dropped to one knee.
"Sylva Ward!" he roared, voice shaking the branches.
The ground exploded.
Brambles surged from beneath, twisted and thorned, weaving into a wall of wild defense. The predator lunged and struck the shield of thorns with a screech, staggering back, hide torn by a thousand tiny teeth of wood.
Sylvanor rose, breath ragged, vines still dancing like serpents in his wake.
He no longer looked like a banished prince.
He looked like a force of nature.
The first Nightclaw, dazed and limping, tried to rise.
Sylvanor turned toward it, eyes blazing with green-gold fury. He whispered, not in fear, but in sorrow:
"You are not my enemy. But I must survive."
He raised both arms.
The roots beneath the beast twisted upward, like fingers from the deep. They snared the creature's limbs, locking it in place. It growled, but its strength could not match the will of the forest.
Sylvanor bent, hand splayed on bark, and called forth a final weapon.
From the base of a nearby stump, a shard of hardened bark rose like a blade forged in silence. He seized it.
With a cry that echoed through the trees, he drove it down.
The beast went still.
The other two Nightclaws backed away slowly—ears low, bodies trembling. They looked at him not as prey, but as something greater.
They turned and vanished into the mist, whimpering. Not out of fear of pain.
But of his Name.
The silence that followed was immense.
Only the rustle of trees and the whisper of ancient roots remained.
Sylvanor stood bloodied, panting, robes torn and stained. His breath steamed in the cold morning light. His eyes scanned the clearing.
Harrik was gone. Dragged into the wood—or fled. The carriage sat broken. The path behind him was gone, swallowed by the forest's will.
Before him stretched the unknowable: the Cursed Wood, a realm where maps turned to lies and stars hid behind branches.
He did not turn back.
He stepped forward—not as an exile, but as something reborn.
And as he passed the broken threshold of roots and stone, he whispered—not to the trees, but with them:
"I am Sylvanor.
And the forest remembers its Lord."
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