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Keeper's Adage:
"The sacred wood collects what is stolen. Its price is not blood spilled, but the debt etched in the survivor's bones. When the Warden steps from the mist, know this: salvation and judgment wear the same face, and the forest marks its creditors in silence"
– Scroll of Sundered Threads of Virgil
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Four Years Ago – Part VII:
The forest did not forgive thieves. It collected.
The radiant glow of the stolen Akar crystals in Hatim's satchel felt like a brand against his hip, a beacon in the shifting gloom. The luminous sanctuary of the Akar Pool faded rapidly behind him, swallowed by a mist that coiled like living smoke through the gnarled branches. The trees here shed their benevolent majesty.
They became wardens. Trunks twisted into tortured shapes, scarred by lightning or claws, bark peeling to reveal wood the color of dried blood. Copper-edged leaves shivered in a wind that carried no freshness, only the heavy, metallic tang of wet iron and ozone. Moss crept up their flanks in intricate, glowing spirals, pulsing with a slow, deliberate rhythm that matched the forest's own deep, unsettling breath.
Hatim's steps quickened from a weary trudge to a desperate stumble. He'd marked his path – crude scratches on bark, small cairns of stacked stone – but the forest undid him. Roots slithered across the ground, obscuring his scratches. Moss flowed over his cairns like liquid shadow. The comforting warmth of Akar veins beneath the loam, a golden guide moments before, flickered and died, plunging him into a world gone cold, dull, and unnervingly hungry.
Then, the silence descended.
Not peace. Absolution.
No rustle of unseen creatures. No drone of luminous beetles. No distant cry of a Beryl-Stag. Only the tortured creak of ancient wood settling and the slow, deliberate plink… plink… plink of thick, amber sap dripping from unseen wounds overhead. It sounded like a countdown.
His hand pressed against the satchel. The crystals pulsed back, their stolen heat a fragile, defiant comfort against the creeping dread icing his spine.
A groan shattered the stillness.
Not wind through branches. Not settling stone.
Something alive. And vast.
Hatim spun, heart hammering against his bruised ribs.
The underbrush exploded.
Goreback.
It filled the space between the twisted trees – three men tall, a moving landslide of shattered granite and volcanic rock. Jagged vents along its flanks spewed geysers of superheated steam that reeked of sulfur. Down its spine, massive shards of crimson Akar crystal jutted like broken, bloodied fangs, pulsing with violent light. One colossal, stony limb, more battering ram than arm, swung in a lazy, devastating arc.
CRACK.
A centuries-old tree, thick as a Verge pillar, snapped like dry kindling, exploding into a shower of splinters and sap.
Hatim ran.
Instinct, raw and terrified, took over. The forest became a smeared nightmare of clawing shadows and panicked flight. His boots slipped on wet leaves and treacherous moss. The Goreback's breath roared behind him, a furnace blast scouring his neck. Branches, like skeletal hands, whipped his face, drawing stinging lines of blood. The stolen crystals clinked loudly in the satchel at his hip – a traitorous chime, impossibly bright, painting a target on his back for the juggernaut hunting him.
Faster!
He vaulted a serpentine root, landed hard, stumbled, and plunged into a steep, leaf-choked ravine.
Stone scraped his palms raw. The impact at the bottom knocked the wind from his lungs in a agonized whoosh. Icy creek water, thick with sediment, surged over him, shocking him back to terrified awareness.
Above, the Goreback's footsteps thundered –CRUNCH. CRUNCH. CRUNCH. – shaking the ravine walls, dislodging showers of rock and dirt. Closer. Closer.
Hatim dragged himself through sucking mud, fingernails tearing as he clawed for purchase on the slippery bank. His ribs were a cage of white fire. His vision swam, dark spots dancing at the edges.
His scrabbling hand closed on cold metal. A shattered emberglass blade, its edge dulled, its hilt slick with rot and old, blackened blood – some forgotten hunter's final, futile defiance.
Pathetic.
He looked up. The Goreback loomed at the ravine's edge, blotting out the bruised sky. Vents hissed, spewing steam. Eyes like smoldering coals fixed on him, burning with ancient, mindless hunger. Its stony maw seemed to widen in anticipation.
Hatim bared his teeth, gripping the useless shard of emberglass, a snarl building in his raw throat. A final, stupid defiance.
Then—
A hum.
Not a sound heard, but a vibration felt. It cut through the fog, the Goreback's roar, the frantic hammering of Hatim's own heart. It resonated in the bones, sharp as a honed blade slicing silk. Pure. Focused. Power.
The Goreback stiffened. Its massive head swung away from Hatim, scanning the mist-shrouded trees.
A flash of white. Not light. Motion.
A scream of tortured stone echoed through the ravine.
The Goreback reeled backward, a deep, smoking gash torn across its flank. Molten crimson Akar, like the city's deepest slag, sprayed in a violent arc, sizzling where it hit the wet ground. It roared again – a sound not of rage, but of dawning, primal recognition. Fear.
And then the Warden stepped from the swirling mist.
Tall. Impossibly still. Clad not in plate, but in armor seemingly grown from overlapping plates of silverbark and hardened resin, etched with living glyphs that pulsed in perfect sync with his steady heartbeat. A mantle of fresh, impossibly green silverbark leaves rustled softly at his shoulders, though no wind stirred the heavy air. In his hands, a longstaff of dark, polished weepingroot wood, its length threaded with veins of cold iron that sang with a high, clear tone as he shifted his grip.
Another fluid strike. The staff blurred. The Goreback bellowed, stumbling, a chunk of its stony hide shearing away. It didn't charge. It fled, its ground-shaking steps retreating rapidly into the forest, its bellows fading into a defeated rumble.
Hatim collapsed onto the muddy bank, the emberglass shard falling from numb fingers. His body was a single, screaming map of pain – ribs, palms, calf, face. He gasped, sucking in air thick with mud, blood, and the ozone-sharp residue of the Warden's power.
The Warden looked down at him. Not with pity. Not with concern. With the detached assessment of a man examining a particularly foolish insect that had survived its own stupidity by sheer happenstance.
"You're not dead," he stated, his voice flat, devoid of inflection, yet carrying an undeniable weight. Eyes like chips of flint, sharp and utterly unimpressed, flicked over Hatim's wounds with clinical precision. "Congratulations. That's statistically improbable here."
Hatim spat a mouthful of mud and coppery blood, struggling to push himself up on trembling elbows. His gaze locked onto the Warden's impassive face. "Who…" he rasped, each word a knife in his throat, "are you?"
The Warden tilted his head, a fraction. The silverbark leaves rustled, a soft counterpoint to the fading hum of his staff. "Name's Kander." A pause. Then, dry as dust settling on a forgotten tomb, utterly matter-of-fact: "And you, gutter-rat, are a monumental idiot."