Chapter 4: The Root of Power
The trees swallowed him.
Fen ran until his lungs burned, legs thundering over roots and stone. The cries of Valkyries echoed behind him—unnatural screeches, furious and cold. The smoke of Littleroot faded behind the hills. But the weight in his chest only grew heavier.
He didn't look back.
He couldn't.
Branches whipped his face. Leaves snapped beneath his feet. The mountain forest opened around him like a dark cathedral. He pushed deeper and deeper into the woods until, finally, he collapsed against a great oak and gasped for breath.
And then… silence.
Only the wind remained.
Fen slumped to his knees, heart hammering. His axe was still in his hands, stained with soot and sparks. His mother's voice rang in his head—not the Valkyrie's scream, but the gentle tone she used during their quiet mornings.
"They say Littleroot got its name from the World Tree itself," she once said, while stirring stew over the fire. "Yggdrasil. The roots run deep beneath us. Some say you can feel them breathing if you lie still enough."
He remembered that night vividly now.
"And under the deep roots," she whispered, "the gods once hid Runestones—tiny shards of old power. If a warrior binds a Runestone to their weapon… it awakens an ability tied to the stone's heart. Some burn with fire. Some bend wind. Others… change the soul itself."
"Where are they?" a younger Fen had asked.
She smiled. "Only the brave—and the desperate—find them. The strongest are buried beneath the Tree. That's why Littleroot is sacred."
The memory jolted him upright.
He scanned the trees.
And then he saw it—rising through the forest mist like a mountain clothed in bark and age: the Great Tree.
Its trunk was wider than ten houses, gnarled and rising high into the sky, its branches reaching like arms toward the stars.
He sprinted toward it.
This was the only chance. The only hope.
He dropped to his knees at the roots, tearing into the earth with both hands. Dirt flew. His fingers bled. He clawed, dug, ripped through old roots and stones, his mind screaming—
Please let it be real. Please, please, please—
The earth grew colder. Then—
A glow.
Faint at first, like moonlight underwater. A small stone—shaped like a shard of glass, rough, yet humming with energy—glimmered deep in the hole.
It pulsed with blue light.
Fen reached for it, breath catching.
But the wind shrieked.
Too late.
A shadow fell over him.
He turned just in time to see a Valkyrie diving through the trees, spear forward, eyes wild with divine fury.
She was nearly on him.
Fen grabbed the stone.
The world blinked.
BOOM.
The moment his fingers closed around it, a burst of wind exploded from the ground, throwing leaves and debris in every direction. The Valkyrie screamed, thrown off course mid-flight, slamming into the roots above Fen's head.
Fen tumbled back, the glowing Runestone clutched in his palm.
And in that instant… he felt it.
A connection.
The stone hummed in rhythm with his breath, his heartbeat, his soul.
The axe in his other hand—simple iron and oak—began to crackle faintly, absorbing the blue light.
The Valkyrie recovered, rising again with wings spread wide and death in her eyes.
But Fen stood taller now.
Stronger.
He wasn't running anymore.