The trail west of Teralen was older than the road itself.
Trees bowed toward it like mourners. The air was still, but not silent. The kind of quiet that presses into your ears—like something waiting to speak.
We walked single-file, following a narrow path half-swallowed by moss. Lyra led. She didn't speak. Just moved with purpose, eyes scanning every root, every shadow.
"How far's the druidic site?" I asked.
"Close enough to be worried," she muttered. "Too far for backup."
Silas whistled low. "That's comforting."
"No it's not."
"Exactly."
I could feel it, even before we crossed the ridge.
A wrongness under the soil. Like the heartbeat of the forest was skipping.
---
The clearing appeared like a wound.
Where there should've been woven trees and stone altars, there was splintered bark and collapsed stones. The old druid circle was cracked, half-buried in blackened vines. Roots curled upward like hands grasping for air. And at the center, a stone monolith—once carved with elvish harmony sigils—now glowed red.
Velis approached first, staff low.
"This was a leyline anchor."
"Was," Lyra echoed. "Now it's bleeding."
She pointed to the monolith's base, where the carving had changed.
Once: a tree. Now: a tree with eyes.
---
Iria stepped closer, hand on Edelbrecht. "I feel something. Watching."
"That's because it is," Velis said. "That's not a rune anymore. It's a ward trigger. Someone—or something—is still bound to this site."
Silas crouched near a broken vine. "Still warm. Something moved through here recently."
I opened my mouth to agree.
And the earth shook.
The vines near the altar exploded outward. Bark split. Spores filled the air, bitter and coppery.
And then it rose.
Thalorin Greyleaf had once been a druid of the circle. You could still see the shape of him: long robes, ritual bands, remnants of a ceremonial mantle. But that was where it ended.
Now, his arms were twisted bark and bone. His eyes glowed like a torch behind fog. One leg ended in root-claws that didn't touch the ground. His voice echoed when he spoke—not through the air, but through the ground beneath us.
"You do not belong here."
We drew weapons.
He raised his clawed hand, and the trees responded.
Roots erupted beneath our feet—black, wet, wrong. Vines lashed at Velis before she could cast. Silas ducked, rolled, and threw a dagger that sank into Thalor's shoulder with a sound like piercing old leather.
He didn't flinch.
"Decay is not death," Thalor whispered. "Decay is renewal."
He slammed his wooden hand into the ground, and blood-colored flowers burst to life around the battlefield.
One of them pulsed.
Then exploded.
Iria charged first.
She moved through the vines like a crashing wave, blade high. Edelbrecht clashed with Thalor's corrupted arm and knocked him back a step.
But then he turned—muttered something in Druidic—and vines surged beneath her, locking her legs in place.
"Verdant Snare!" Velis shouted. "He's casting old spells—corrupted ones!"
"Can you counter it?"
"I'm trying!"
Thalor raised both arms.
With a horrible groan, the monolith behind him pulsed again—and from the forest came shapes.
Animals.
Or what had once been.
A wolf with six legs and no eyes. A deer with its antlers inverted and thorn-covered. Birds, silent and twitching, their wings gliding wrong.
They charged.
Velis conjured a radiant barrier just in time to block the first wave. Iria hacked her way free. Silas flipped onto a root and rained knives like sleet.
Lyra stood beside me, arms raised.
"I need five seconds," she said. "Can you buy me five?"
I nodded.
Then did something incredibly stupid.
I ran straight at the corrupted druid.
He turned too late.
I didn't hit him. That would've been optimistic.
But I did distract him, just long enough for Lyra's spell to land.
A wave of cleansing energy burst outward—like springtime breaking through rot. The vines loosened. The corrupted beasts staggered. Iria broke through with a cry and slashed Thalor's chest wide.
Green sap spilled from the wound, glowing, unnatural.
He screamed—and changed.
The ground cracked beneath him. Vines pulled him upward—no longer walking, now floating, half-tree, half-spell.
"Let the roots remember what the world forgot!" he roared.
He raised his claw and pointed to Velis.
A tether of leyline energy surged between them.
She gasped, nearly dropped her staff.
"He's draining the leyline! Trying to rewrite the ritual site!"
"Stop him!" Lyra snapped. "Or the whole forest folds around this madness!"
Silas reached the monolith.
"SOMETHING'S INSIDE THIS ROCK."
"Break it!"
"I'M TRYING!"
Iria leapt through the fire and vines—dodging, ducking, screaming battle oaths in perfect poetic meter.
Velis overloaded a rune and countered the leyline tether with a surge of fire and frost combined.
Thalor screamed.
Roots cracked.
I hurled a rock.
I missed.
But it hit the flower that had been about to explode near Iria.
It detonated.
Knocked her forward.
Directly into Thalor.
She drove Edelbrecht into his chest.
And Silas shattered the monolith.
Light burst.
A roar like mountains collapsing echoed through the trees.
And then it was silent.
Thalor collapsed.
For a moment, he looked human again. Tired. Old.
"I tried... to protect it," he whispered. "But the voice... it grew in the roots..."
He turned to dust before he finished the thought.
---
The leyline pulsed once.
Steady.
Normal.
But Lyra wasn't smiling.
Velis knelt beside what was left of the monolith.
"Whatever did this," she said, "knew exactly where to strike."
I looked around.
At the ruined circle.
At the hollow trees.
At the path back.
And I realized something chilling.
This wasn't conquest.
This was infiltration.