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Keeper's Adage:
"He who steals light from the sacred heart pays not in coin or blood, but in the indelible stain upon his own soul. The forest remembers the violation, and the debt owed to the guardian echoes long after the desperate hand has fled"
– Scroll of Sundered Threads of Virgil
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Four Years Ago – Part VI:
The forest beyond the Ashward Fold breathed. It didn't whisper like the Dark Woods of Maldri's foraging grounds. It sang.
Here, the choking rot of the Sinks, the psychic stain of Unbinding, was a forgotten nightmare. This was a realm of pure, undiluted life. Akar didn't pulse like a dying man's tremor; it flowed. Golden, vital, thrumming through moss like emerald velvet and roots thicker than Gorran's battle-scarred thighs. Trees bore fruit with rinds that glowed like captured moonlight, their bark etched not with tools, but with living glyphs that spiraled and shifted with the slow pulse of the wood. Ferns unfurled in perfect, deliberate fractals, each dew-kissed leaf edged with bioluminescent fire. The air itself was thick, sweet with nectar, yet cut through with the sharp, intoxicating tang of raw, unbound power – the very breath of Asha made manifest.
And the creatures… they moved with a reverence that stole Hatim's breath.
He crouched low behind a moss-mantled stump, every shift sending jagged fire through his ribs – a brutal souvenir of the Pit. He froze.
A Beryl-Stag stood knee-deep in a creek that shimmered like molten glass. It stood taller than a Verge trade cart, its hide a shifting mosaic of jade scales and amber stone, its immense, branching antlers draped in cascades of razor-gold moss that caught the light like spun metal. It drank slowly, deliberately, obsidian eyes half-lidded, as if each sip was a communion with the sacred ground beneath its hooves.
Hatim didn't dare breathe. Not just from the predator's proximity, but from a profound, humbling awe. This creature wasn't just part of the forest; it was its embodiment, its guardian spirit made flesh and stone.
The stag lifted its massive head. Water streamed from its muzzle in liquid diamonds. For a heartbeat that stretched into eternity, its dark, depthless gaze locked onto Hatim's hiding place. Not with malice. With acknowledgement. Then, with a silent ripple of power that barely stirred the air, it turned and vanished into the luminous undergrowth, as insubstantial as a shadow dissolving in noon light.
Hatim exhaled, a shuddering release. The encounter left him feeling small, profane.
Move. Now. Before something smarter… or hungrier… finds you.
The air grew warmer, thicker, as he descended, saturated with the cloying scent of overripe, fermenting fruit and the damp breath of ancient stone. The path, barely more than a game trail, bore grim testament to others who had dared this sanctuary:
-A shattered spear shaft, snapped like kindling, the splintered end dark with sap and chewed by teeth larger than Hatim's fist.
-A blood-crusted rag knotted fiercely around a thick vine, the coarse fibers still twitching faintly with the fading resonance of its owner's terror.
-A single, scuffed Verge-made boot, half-swallowed by loam, the bones within picked startlingly clean.
The deeper he pressed, the louder the silent warning screamed: You are not the first. You walk on the bones of the greedy.
The trail narrowed abruptly, ending at a sheer ledge overlooking a hidden hollow. Below, roots like petrified serpents coiled around pillars of weathered white marble. At the basin's heart lay the Akar Pool. Its surface was still as polished obsidian, yet swirling beneath with threads of liquid gold, pure and potent, drawn from the deep veins of the world itself.
And there, coiled at the water's edge like a fallen god: the Guardian.
Not myth. Not spirit. Beast. Primal power given terrifying form.
Twice Hatim's height if it stood, but built low, sinuous, a nightmare fusion of panther and river eel. Velvet-scaled hide shimmered with absorbed Akar-light, rippling with molten gold where muscle bunched beneath. It drank with deliberate slowness, a long, forked tongue lapping the luminous surface. Each sip made the Akar-threads within its own body flare brighter, a visible surge of power.
Hatim's fingers dug into the soft moss of the ledge. Just a predator. Bigger. Hungrier. But mortal. Yet its terrible beauty made it no less deadly.
His gaze snapped to the basin's far edge. There, nestled among the colossal roots like exposed teeth, jutted jagged Akar Crystals. Smaller fragments, loose, glowing with an inner fire. Reachable. If the beast was distracted.
It blocked the only direct path.
Gorran's gravelly voice hissed in his memory, a lesson etched in pain: "Don't fight what eats starlight, boy. Don't challenge it. You wanna steal from its larder? You trick its belly. Or its nose."
Hatim shrugged off his meagre satchel, fingers trembling against the rough fabric. His pitiful arsenal:
-A strip of salted Gloom-Rat jerky, hard as petrified wood.
-A crumbling wedge of marrow-bark, its bitterness known to induce vomiting.
- And his prize: a small, wax-sealed jar of Brine Ant Paste. The stench was legendary – a putrid reek of rotting chitin and swamp gas that could make a Carrion-Wyrm gag.
He ripped a strip from his already tattered sleeve, smeared it thick with the vile, greyish paste, and tied it tight around a heavy river stone. He took aim, not at the beast, but at a cluster of luminous fungi on the far side of the pool.
Thunk.
The stone landed. The jar's seal cracked on impact.
The reek exploded into the humid air – a physical assault, a miasma of decay that cut through the forest's sweetness like a rusty blade.
The Guardian's massive head snapped up. Nostrils, slitted like a serpent's, flared wide. A low, guttural snarl vibrated the air, a sound like grinding glass shards. It turned, muscles coiling with terrifying, liquid grace, and began to stalk, silent as smoke, towards the source of the offense. Not charging.
Investigating. A hunter assessing strange carrion.
Hatim didn't wait for certainty. He slid over the ledge, boots finding purchase on moss-slick marble. Every jarring step sent bolts of agony through his battered ribs. The heat radiating from the crystals intensified as he neared, a physical pressure against his skin even through the satchel cloth. The air crackled.
One. Fingers closed around a shard the length of a skinning knife. It seared his palm, a clean, sharp pain that felt paradoxically pure. He stuffed it into the satchel. Two. A thicker chunk, edges singing with latent energy against his calloused fingertips. In. Three—
A sound like tearing silk and shattering obsidian ripped through the hollow.
The Guardian was turning back. Obsidian eyes, burning with cold, ancient fury, fixed directly on him. Not fooled. Not for long enough.
Hatim didn't think. He ran.
Boots skidded on marble polished by centuries of Akar-tinged water. The beast's enraged roar shook the basin walls, dislodging showers of glowing pollen. Hatim scrambled up the roots on the far side, fingernails tearing, blood slicking the bark. Something searingly hot, like a brand dipped in acid, lashed across his calf – the tip of the Guardian's whip-like tongue.
He screamed, raw and ragged, hauling himself over the lip of the basin, tumbling into the dense undergrowth beyond. He rolled, clutching the satchel bulging with stolen light against his hip, the crystals pulsing like captured hearts.
The Guardian roared again, a sound of pure, thwarted fury that echoed through the sacred trees. But it didn't follow. Not past the boundary of its pool. Too sated. Too anchored. Or perhaps bound by older laws.
Hatim staggered blindly deeper into the luminous forest, the searing pain in his calf matching the throb in his ribs, before collapsing against the massive bole of an ancient tree. He pressed his forehead to the cool, glyph-etched bark, gasping, the scent of loam and his own blood thick in his nostrils.
Alive.
By the skin of my teeth. By Gorran's foul paste. By sheer, stupid luck.
He rolled onto his back, staring up through the fractal canopy where shards of bruised sky were visible. Far beyond the treetops, silhouetted against the horizon, the impossible spires of the Crowns pierced the heavens. A world away. A world where men traded in rivers of power, not scraps. Where a Sinks rat with stolen sunlight burning in his satchel might, just might, become something more than ash.
The forest watched him. Silent. Watchful. Luminous eyes glinted from the undergrowth.
Not cruel. Not yet. But its sacred silence now held the echo of theft, and the promise of consequence.