Atzimor was a shadow of itself.
Once a city where the trees sang with light and living homes danced to the rhythm of growth, now it lay dim beneath a forest canopy choked with silence. The great branches that once stretched like arms into the sky were now dry and splintered. Entire districts of living wood had withered, their homes hollowed and brittle. Still, life clung stubbornly to the bones of the city.
Along the cracked rootpaths, beneath broken vine-arches, a weak but persistent trade endured. Wood carvings, trinkets, tools—anything sculpted from the forest that still held the breath of magic—were exchanged for food, herbs, or fragments of old metals scavenged from fallen structures. The Anshi Atzim had always lived through the forest. Now, they barely survived off its corpse.
A tightly-knit community of surviving families, bound by hunger and memory, had built a small encampment on the south edge of the city. Here, clans lived together, shared food, and kept the old songs alive in whispers. It wasn't prosperity, but it was something.
Far beyond this patch of clinging civilization, nestled within the quieter woods just outside the city, a young man sat cross-legged in the roots of a dying yehoran tree. His hands moved fluidly—gently bending a strip of still-living wood as he whispered in the tongue of his people. The wood responded, curling, shaping, smoothing itself into the form of a bird mid-flight. He finished it with a small flick of his wrist and smiled—not because it was perfect, but because it would be enough.
Koach Betikfa, twenty-two seasons old, tightened the strap on his satchel, packed the figurine alongside others, and rose to his feet. His clothes were patched, his hands worn, but his eyes held the glint of someone who had not yet surrendered. Somewhere in the city, his mother waited in their tree-home, too frail now to walk, her breath rasping like old leaves in the wind. Every carving Koach sold was a day's medicine. A meal. Hope.
—
Meanwhile, deep within the wild borders of Vahuriel,
Shordet Amiti pressed through the darkened forest paths. The trees here were no longer silent—they murmured, but not with life. With something else.
"Turn back,"whispered the wind.
"There is no redemption. Only endings."
Dark voices slithered beneath the bark, curling into his ears like vines. At first, they felt like thoughts of his own—doubts he had buried long ago. Then, like dreams. Clear. Twisting. Real.
He saw himself wandering endlessly, lost in the past, searching for nothing. He saw Vahuriel collapse, with none to witness its death. He saw his own face, hollow and defeated.
But even in the fog of this lucid terror,
Shordet remained still.
His hand gripped the obsidian pendant around his neck. A gift of blood and memory. Its weight reminded him of what was real.
One of his gifts was the power to see truth from illusion
—and though the voices screamed, he did not falter.
When he stepped into Atzimor, the curse lifted. And to his surprise, **life met him at the gates**.
Children ran barefoot through moss-lined alleyways. Families haggled gently over dried herbs and bark-paper scrolls. Fires crackled in hollowed-out roots. The city lived—scarred, faded, but breathing.
Shordet nodded softly. "There is still hope"
—
He wandered the city, gazing at the remnants of a world he had only heard of in stories, until—
SPLAT.
His foot hit a slick peel—fruit, or what was left of one—and Shordet stumbled forward with surprising clumsiness. He crashed full-body into a young man struggling to carry a bundle of wooden carvings, sending the entire satchel flying. Figurines scattered across the ground like startled birds.
Koach let out a strangled gasp. "*Oi, my birds!*"
But instead of scrambling after them, he dropped the bag and turned to help the stranger.
"You alright?" he asked, offering a hand.
But Shordet was already upright, brushing himself off with the grace of a warrior.
Koach blinked, then laughed. "Well then. Fast on the fall, faster on the rise. You alright, uh… tumble-leaf?"
Shordet cracked a rare smile and bent to help pick up the scattered figurines.
"These are yours?" he asked, studying the smooth, curved forms.
"Mine, yes," Koach said, dusting one off. "Made them myself. They're for trade. Or admiration. Mostly trade."
"They're beautiful," Shordet said sincerely.
Koach tilted his head. "You're not from here, are you?"
"No. I came seeking someone… though I don't know who." He stood upright, meeting Koach's gaze. "Someone important."
Koach frowned thoughtfully. "Not exactly the most helpful description. Lots of 'someones' in this city, and most of us just trying to eat."
Shordet sighed. "It's a long journey. I may have taken a wrong path."
Koach paused for a moment, then grinned. "Well, if you've got nowhere else to fall, you can stay with me and my mother for a while. It's not much—tree's a bit crooked, walls hum in the night—but there's warmth. Come."
—
That evening, in the quiet hours just before nightfall, the two walked back from the forest after another day of carving and talking. Shordet listened closely to everything—how the people of Atzimor lived, the little rituals they kept alive, the stories they shared around the mosslight fires.
They sat in front of the tree-house as the sky above flickered with a sickly orange hue.
Koach leaned back, sighing. "No stars again. Been months now."
Shordet was quiet. Then his gaze shifted to Koach's neck—a faint, jagged rune burned into the skin, like a scar beneath time.
Without thinking, he reached toward it.
"Wait, what're you—?" Koach began, but before he could move—
Shordet's fingers brushed the mark.
His obsidian pendant flared with sudden, blinding light. A single, whispered word slid into the air around them, clear and ancient:
"The one."
Koach jumped back, eyes wide. "What the—?! What just happened?!"
Shordet stood frozen, mouth slightly open, pendant dimming slowly against his chest.
Koach's voice was sharp now, defensive but shaken.
"What the hell was that? Why did it say that? What did you do to me?"
Shordet didn't have an answer. Not yet.
But now he knew: the first Mehimanit had been found.
And he had no idea what to do next.