The rain in Sylvaran country was less a visitor than a constant, breathing companion. It didn't roar; it whispered. A soft, ceaseless susurration against the broad, waxy leaves far overhead, each droplet catching the dim light like scattered mercury before plunging. Below, the forest floor was a tapestry of velvet moss, emerald and deep hunter green, drinking the moisture greedily. Rain gathered in quiet, clear pools cupped by roots and hollows, reflecting the inverted world of dripping branches and grey sky. It traced delicate, shimmering paths down the grooved bark of ancient trees; oaks wider than cottage walls, beeches like silver pillars, and towering sentinel pines, etching centuries into their skin with liquid patience. The air itself felt like cool silk against the skin, thick with the perfume of rain-soaked soil, the sweet decay of fallen leaves, and the crushed, green scent of countless ferns unfurling. Beneath it all lay the sharp, clean tang of wet stone and the distant ozone promise of storms yet to break over the Thrygond peaks.
To the east, the Thrygond Range was a brooding presence, a wall of shadow glimpsed through shifting veils of mist that clung to its lower slopes. These mountains were the silent architects of the Lethwood's lushness. They broke the harsh, desiccating winds that scoured the inland wastes beyond, instead coaxing the sea's heavy breath inland. This captured moisture wove itself into the very fabric of the air, nurturing a sanctuary where life thrived in perpetual, dripping green. Sunlight, when it pierced the layered canopy, fell in scattered, liquid gold, dappling the mossy floor, glinting off wet leaves, and illuminating drifting motes of pollen like tiny, suspended stars.
Here, in the heart of the Lethwood, the world seemed softened, blurred at the edges by the pervasive damp and the gentle haze. The colossal trees stood as silent, patient sentinels, their roots knotted deep in the dark, rich earth like the fingers of slumbering giants. High above, their branches formed a vaulted ceiling, cradling the diffused light and the constant murmur of the rain. A flash of iridescent blue darted through the understory; a kingfisher, perhaps, silent as a shadow. Somewhere unseen, a wood thrush offered a few liquid notes, pure and clear, before falling silent again. The rustle of tiny claws on bark, the soft plop of a water droplet hitting a pool from a great height, the distant, rhythmic tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker working high in the canopy; these were the subtle sounds woven into the rain's quiet symphony. A squirrel, russet fur slicked dark, paused on a moss-covered limb, watching with bright, black eyes before vanishing into the greenery. Dragonflies, jewels of sapphire and emerald, hovered momentarily over a rain-filled hollow, their wings catching the faint light.
And here, where the ancient stones slept beneath moss and root, and the air hummed with hidden life, Arianell Celeborn moved. She walked without a sound, her passage leaving no mark on the yielding moss, her form blending with the dappled shadows and the falling rain as if she were another element of the forest itself.
"Are we sure we're heading in the right direction?" Cassa's voice cut brightly through the layered hush, as sudden and incongruous as a bell in a chapel. "Because this moss is definitely clinging harder than usual, which means more moisture, which means we're close to Velra's edge, right?" Her words seemed to hang in the damp air, momentarily startling a cluster of tiny, iridescent beetles into flight from a nearby fern.
Arianell glanced up at her friend, lips parting in a soft smile.
"You always talk more when you're nervous," she said gently.
Cassa grinned, pushing back the brim of her rain-hood, a broad, waxed bark hat stretched over a woven reed frame, common among forest workers. "Of course I'm nervous. Last time Matra Eliss made us pick dewthorn, I bled for hours."
"I told you not to squeeze it barehanded," Arianell murmured.
"I was curious! You never learn if you don't touch things."
A low harrumph rumbled from behind them, rich with the gravel of decades spent instructing wayward students. Matra Eliss stood wrapped in her faded cloak, oiled green cloth worn soft at the elbows, stitched with the faint remnants of Sylvaran vine patterns along the hem. She leaned on her walking stick, its gnarled wood polished smooth by years of gripping, the head carved into the shape of a dewthorn blossom. The weight she placed upon it spoke of more than age; it was the posture of someone who had spent lifetimes teaching others how to bear their own burdens.
"Girls," she said, the word dusted with the patience of one who had repeated instructions to generations of students, "the dewthorn waits for no tongue." Rain beaded on the deep wrinkles of her forehead as she fixed Cassa with a look that had made apprentices tremble for forty years. "You'll earn fewer scars if you listen first, child. And Arianell..." Her voice softened just slightly, the way it always did for her most gifted pupil, before she narrowed those hawk-bright eyes. "...you'll catch your death playing mystic in this weather. Even seers need dry boots."
Matras in Sylvaran were more than a teacher. Matras did not just instruct; they revealed the hidden roads in every student's heart. Eliss wore hers like a second cloak. She could silence a rowdy lecture hall with a glance, but her real magic happened in moments like these, knee-deep in wet leaves, showing pupils how to read the world's whispers in raindrops and thorn pricks.
Arianell had removed her rain hood some time ago. Her copper-brown hair was soaked through, plastered to her cheeks and brow, yet she stood beneath the open sky like it meant to cleanse her. Her arms were outstretched slightly; palms upturned to the falling water. Drops sparkled on her lashes and chin, and despite the gloom of the forest floor, she seemed faintly aglow, not with light, but with presence.
"I'm fine, Matra," she said, voice light as the falling rain. "It feels... honest today."
Eliss groaned in that ageless tone only old women mastered, part affection, part exhaustion. "And it'll feel like fever in a day if you don't stop playing like a girl half your age."
Cassa giggled behind her gloved hand. "She's impossible, Matra. We should chain her to the herb wagon."
"Matra would scold the wind if she thought it blew too freely," Arianell teased gently, stepping over a puddle to pluck a fern with her bare fingers. Its roots came away clean, and she cradled it with almost maternal care.
Eliss's scowl softened. She was known in the village of Vel Tikala as a strict herbalist, but she had never been immune to Arianell's presence. Few were. The girl possessed an uncanny stillness, not of silence, but of peace. Animals rarely fled her, even the nervous hill-deer. Angry words lost their edge in her presence. Even now, in the cold damp, Eliss found herself sighing more than scolding.
Cassa rolled her eyes. "You're such a ghost sometimes, Nell."
"I can hear the Velra from here," Arianell said, ignoring the jab. "She's moving strong."
"The river's always strong during the spring rains," said Eliss. "Too strong for healing roots. We go uphill."
Velra was the lifeline of Sylvaran's southern reach. Born in the glacier-fed peaks of the Thrygond Range, the river wound its way through the mist valleys and into the tangled green of the lowlands. Along its banks, the town of Vel Tikala nestled at the edge of the Lethwood forest, where traders loaded timber, resin, herbs, and oils onto flatboats bound downstream. In return came salt from the Vaelorian Empire, spices from the Drokaran, and, more rarely, whispers, rumors of foreign infrastructure, advanced weapons, and fleets crafted entirely from Sylvaran wood.
None had come lately.
Sylvaran was a country without kings or queens. Rule rested with the Table of the Six, elder representatives from the Six original lineages, not by blood, but by service. Each family held stewardship over a different aspect of the nation: river traffic, forest management, trade diplomacy, learning, healing, and so on. The Celeborn line, of which Arianell was heir, traditionally held the Stewardship of Healing, a quiet burden that brought neither wealth nor applause, but much respect.
Still, Arianell disliked the title. It implied leadership, direction, force. She preferred stillness. Listening. Soft steps, and soft speech.
As they climbed higher along the forest path, the scent of mintroot and damp bark filled the air. Rain tapped steadily on leaves overhead, creating a muffled, rhythmic silence around them.
"Here," Arianell said suddenly, crouching beside a half-hidden cluster of starleaf. "Matra, these are ready."
Eliss nodded approvingly, leaning down with a grunt. "Finally. The girl sees what's needed. Cassa, get the balmcloth."
Cassa knelt beside her friend and helped gather the leaves, pressing them between sheets of dried cloth for transport. "Do you think it's true?" she whispered.
"What is?" Arianell asked.
"That the spirits live deeper in the woods. That the ones who breathe in the old trees know when you're coming."
Arianell didn't answer immediately. She ran her fingers over the slick bark of the starleaf's stem, then slowly said, "There's something in the green that listens. Maybe not as you and I do. But it knows."
"You're weird," Cassa said, not unkindly.
"I know."
They laughed softly together, and even Matra Eliss didn't chide them. The rain continued to fall in gentle sheets, and far off, the deep pulse of the Velra whispered like a drumbeat under the earth.
Eventually, they reached a shallow rise where the trees opened slightly. A massive fallen trunk, rotted in the middle and carpeted with fungus and moss, served as a natural bench. The three women paused for a brief rest.
Cassa flopped down and groaned dramatically. "I hope the roots are easier on the way back. Or I'm rolling down this hill like a barrel."
Eliss snorted. "You'd deserve it."
Arianell knelt beside the old trunk, running her hands over the velvet moss. She was silent again, not in avoidance, but in peace. The moss glistened beneath her fingertips. Even Cassa quieted.
Moments like this were why people loved her.
She didn't command calm, she invited it. Something in her presence dissolved anger, deflated fear. Animals calmed when she touched them. Children stopped crying. Even the irritable market elders of Vel Tikala spoke softer in her presence. She did not know how she did it, only that the sensation passed through her like water through silk. Sometimes she could feel the emotions of others, faint heartbeats behind their words. And sometimes she could feel someone's grief and respond without being told.
Her gift was not flashy, but it was undeniable.
A flash of movement caught her attention. A silverleaf squirrel darted across the clearing, and she smiled.
"Rain's letting up," she said, lifting her face. "We should head back soon."
"Eliss is going to make us carry twice the load if we dawdle," Cassa muttered.
"I heard that," the elder snapped.
As they gathered their findings and began the slow walk back, the canopy shimmered with fresh rainfall, and the forest around them breathed. No messengers from the west had arrived. No riders brought warnings from Caelthar, and no rumors yet stirred from the burning depths of Drokaran.
In this moment, the world was only green, calm and waiting.
*****
The rain had lessened, but the mist still lingered.
Vel Tikala's morning market buzzed with its usual rhythm, vendors stringing dried roots, smoke curling from early hearths, the scent of brewed moss tea and boiled grain curling through the square. On the green terrace outside the healer's hall, Arianell crouched beside a row of flowering balms, fingers tracing the petals with practiced care.
Cassa had already slipped once on a slick root. Her muffled yelp had drawn a stifled giggle from Arianell, who offered a steadying hand as they ascended the path toward the old gathering grove.
They wove through the market stalls, pausing where a vendor displayed trinkets carved from stormfallen oak. Cassa held up a pair of earrings shaped like sage leaves, then a bootlace threaded with river pearls.
"Which of these," she wondered aloud, "will keep Matra Eliss from throttling us for breaking her mortar?"
Arianell looked up, eyes glinting with mischief. "None. But this one might keep the bruising down."
They laughed. It was a rhythm they knew well, gentle teasing, shared responsibility, days wrapped in the steady learning of herb craft and healing rites. Cassa was the louder of the two, always pushing for answers, prodding at tradition, quick with a joke. But Arianell grounded her. Not with rules, just presence.
"Do you ever think," Cassa said idly, as they stepped around a narrow ridge where moss had overgrown a stone bench, "about what it'd be like if we traveled? Left the Vel Tikala? Saw the salt coast, or the crystal markets of Vaelin?
Arianell was silent a moment. "Sometimes. But then I wonder who would keep you from poisoning yourself with unfamiliar berries."
"I'd make a delightful corpse."
"You'd be the loudest one in the graveyard."
They continued along the path, which narrowed as the undergrowth thickened, threading through low archways of leaning saplings and knotted vines. The ground sloped upward, slick with rain and riddled with treacherous roots that jutted like ribs from the earth. Arianell stepped lightly, her familiarity with the terrain evident in the way she shifted her weight. Cassa, less graceful, caught her foot on a hidden root and dropped to one knee with a curse muffled by leaves.
"I'm telling you," Cassa huffed, brushing mud from her knees, "this forest is actively plotting against me."
"It's not plotting," Arianell replied gently. "It just doesn't slow down for anyone."
"Trees should be more courteous."
"They are. Just not to your boots."
They shared a laugh, the sound carried off by the rain-slick leaves above. The trail ahead twisted deeper into the woods, where damp ferns curled along the edges and the air hung heavy with petrichor and crushed moss. They weren't gathering today, only checking the drying racks tucked near the old stone hollow, where yesterday's harvest hung bundled in twine. But the forest, as always, demanded a price for passage.
A horn blast rolled through the trees. Three notes, long, low, and deliberate.
They paused, listening to the commotion.
"That's from the eastern ridge," Arianell said, her tone neutral.
Before Cassa could reply, the underbrush behind them rustled. Two sentries sprinted down the path, boots skidding on wet roots, cloaks snagging briefly on fern stalks. One gave a quick nod of acknowledgment but didn't slow.
"What's the rush?" Cassa called after them.
"Soldiers," the second one said over his shoulder. "East path. Coming fast."
They vanished into the trees, heading toward town.
Cassa glanced at Arianell. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
Arianell was already turning toward a narrow deer track that veered uphill. "Overlook. We'll see more from there than the council will from their chairs."
Cassa smirked. "Good. I wasn't in the mood to wait. Just when I thought today would be boring!"
They moved off-trail, boots sinking into soft moss, the forest closing in behind them, cool and green and curious.
*****
By midday, the news reached everywhere.
Fifty men, give or take, emerged from the mists of the old trader's trail, trudging slow and uneven like the aftermath of a storm. They bore soot-streaked banners and armor scorched and dented beyond recognition, no two suits alike, patched with what looked like salvaged iron and shattered bronze. Broad, mismatched shields hung off the backs of the front-liners, their wood swollen from cold and blood. Spears, long as saplings, jutted over tired shoulders. Behind them came the wounded, too many of them, borne on makeshift litters woven from torn tents and splintered hafts.
Some wore twin blades at their hips, untouched by battle, walking silent and sharp-eyed as if waiting for a second fight. Others, tall, lean men with bows slung over their backs; moved in wary circles, scanning the tree line like wolves uneasy in foreign woods. And at the center of them, flanked but unarmored, strode a man in a battered helm with no sigil, only silence. His soldiers moved around him like stones in a river, as if he were gravity itself.
They looked less like an army than the remains of one. Burned. Bruised. Not broken. And not a single one of them said what they'd fought, though their eyes had the haunted wideness of men who'd seen something bigger than war
The town guard formed a cautious perimeter. Not a challenge, but not a welcome either. The Thrygond crest was visible on their cloaks: the mountain sigil broken by a diagonal slash of blue, not the sanctioned red.
Rogues.
At first, it seemed there was no leader among them. Just a wall of bruised men in soot-drenched cloaks and scavenged gear, moving like a single wounded creature.
But then, without fanfare, the line parted.
From the heart of the formation, the man with battered helm stepped forward. Slowly. Deliberately. Like a stone dislodged from a cliffside.
He wore no insignia, no ornament, just a matte-black helm that covered his entire face save the eyes. It wasn't polished, it wasn't ceremonial. It was built for breathing frost and withstanding fire, curved like a wolf's skull hammered into steel. Vents lined the mouth, and where the edges curled near the jaw, old blood and dark resin clung like dried bone marrow. The kind of mask worn not to be feared, but forgotten behind.
He walked past the shieldmen without a word, past the scouts, past the wounded who flinched only once. The guards stiffened as he neared, but he raised no weapon.
Only when he reached the edge of the perimeter did he speak.
"We're not here to fight," he said. His voice was low, rough from disuse, like something that had spent too long buried under snow. "We need healing."
A long pause. No plea, no bow, just breath steaming from the slits of his helm.
"There are three mammoths," he added, "dead on the pass. Yours, if you want them."
He looked up. Just his eyes, grey, still, sunless.
"That's our offer in return for the help."
*****
"You want us to treat fifty strangers?" Cassa whispered, eyes comically wide as she scanned the chaotic hall. "We don't even have enough balmcloth for a squirrel's stubbed toe!"
Arianell didn't look up from the pressure bandage she was securing. "You counted?"
"Roughly!" Cassa gestured wildly at the sea of mountain men. "Fifty grumpy boulders! Eighteen look like they've been tenderized by trolls …" she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper "…eleven heavily tenderized, seven lightly tenderized. And one?" She pointed at a soldier whose chest was a spectacular rainbow of bruises. "Literally stepped on. His ribs bent like willow bark under a drunk ogre. I checked."
The healer's hall hummed with organized panic. Matra Eliss moved like a general, mobilizing every apprentice, herbalist, and two tanners who kept muttering about "better uses for hides." The gathering hall had become a triage center, mats and pallets arranged in haphazard rows that somehow avoided overlapping. Wet, fur-trimmed armor lay stacked by the doors like defeated beasts. Thrygond soldiers sat half-naked, bleeding stoically into bandages while Sylvaran healers darted around them with herb-scented precision. Never had the forest-dwellers treated so many mountain men, warriors who looked like they'd been quarried, not born.
Thrygonders were rare in the humid south. Frost-bitten oaks of men, taller and broader than most, skin wind-whipped to leather. Their speech was clipped granite, expressions as readable as stone tablets. Intricate tattoos snaked down arms and necks; kills, pacts, rites etched in sacred ink. Their yew-wool cloaks, perfect for icy passes, were now steaming slightly in the damp hall, smelling like wet dog and defiance.
And they rarely groaned. Even when stitched.
One warrior only grunted when Cassa dabbed saltwater onto a deep gash.
"You can scream, you know," she offered cheerfully. "Might feel cathartic. Or musical!"
He blinked slowly. "Why?"
"I'd feel better!" Cassa insisted. "This silent suffering is unnerving. Try it! Aaaaaah! See?"
He stared, utterly blank. "...Why?"
She threw her hands up. "Forget it! Just... breathe heavily or something. Give me something."
Cassa couldn't contain herself any longer. She spun, eyes wide as moons. "What in the green depths did you people fight? Landslides with teeth? Angry mountains?"
"Mammoths," piped a boyish voice. A young soldier, barely fifteen, fever-bright eyes clinging to Cassa's sleeve. His arm was in a sling, one of the "light" injuries. "Three of them. Bigger than the chieftain's longhouse."
Cassa gasped. "You fought mammoths? With... with what? Harsh language?"
"We were supposed to slip through," he whispered, shivering despite the hall's warmth. "Quiet-like. But they... they found us anyway. Didn't like us borrowing their pass." He puffed his chest out slightly, wincing immediately. "Got one good jab in though. Right in the trunk. Made it sneeze."
Nearby, the soldier with the willow-bark ribs wheezed what might have been a laugh, then groaned. Cassa patted the boy's good shoulder. "Well, next time, bring bigger sneeze-powder." She grabbed another roll of bandages, muttering, "Mammoths. Right. Because frost giants would've been too easy..."
*****
Arianell moved between the rows, her hands never rushed, her voice even softer than usual. Some of the soldiers stirred when she passed, their gazes following her not with suspicion, but wonder. The air around her seemed to calm their rattled nerves. She paused beside the hearth. The masked one sat with his back against the stone, one knee drawn up, gauntlets still on, blade balanced across his thigh. He wasn't cleaning it anymore, just holding the cloth, staring at the metal as if waiting for it to speak.
His eyes found her, shadowed beneath the helm.
"How are they?" His voice was low, scraped raw by smoke and silence.
"Tired. Hurt. But quiet," she said. "Which is something."
He gave a small nod, like she'd confirmed what he already feared.
"They won't all walk tomorrow," she added.
"I know." His gaze drifted over the rows of wounded. "But they lived."
Arianell followed his eyes. Men sprawled across cloaks and mats, breathing deep beneath linen and wool. She noticed the way the others glanced at him when they thought he wasn't looking, how the air shifted around him, quiet and heavy, like a stone at the center of a pool.
"You fought mammoths," she said.
He didn't answer. Just turned the cloth once in his hand and resumed wiping the blade—slow, methodical, though it was already clean.
"What happened out there?" she asked softly.
A pause. Then, "We were passing through. They found us."
"And?"
"They didn't let us pass."
The cloth stilled again.
She crouched beside him, resting her hands on her knees. Up close, she could see the fatigue beneath the helm, how carefully he held himself, not in peace, but in restraint. Tension coiled in him like wire.
"Why were you trying to cross the pass?" she asked.
His jaw shifted, but he said nothing.
She watched him for a moment longer. "Who are you?" she asked.
Another pause.
Then, quiet: "No one that matters right now."
"That's not how your men look at you."
He didn't respond.
"You shouldn't wear a helm indoors," she murmured.
"I know."
But he didn't take it off.
She exhaled through her nose, quiet. Then finally said, "They need rest. Real rest. Your bones too, under all that iron."
He didn't answer. Just gave a small nod, and turned back to his sword.
*****
That night, the rain returned in earnest, drumming against the longhouse roof like distant hoofbeats. Outside, Thrygond scouts kept silent watch. Inside, the injured slept on mats, breathing deep beneath folds of Sylvaran linen.
Cassa dropped beside Arianell near the hearth with a sigh. "That masked one's intense."
Arianell sipped her tea. "I think he's tired. He looks like someone who hasn't laughed since birth."
Mischief flickered in Cassa's eyes, as if she'd just spotted a toy left unguarded. "Then we'll have to fix that."
"Oh no. That's your job," Arianell said, shaking her head. "I'm focusing on the one who thinks nettle juice is delicious. What's wrong with mountain people?"
Cassa blinked. "Wait, he liked it?"
"He asked for more," Arianell muttered. "Apparently, the cold numbs their tongues."
Cassa groaned and let her head thump gently against the wall. "Hopeless. All of them."
They sat in companionable silence, the fire crackling low, casting amber light across the sleeping hall.
After a while, Cassa asked, quieter now, "Do you think this means something? The timing, I mean."
Arianell stared into the coals. "I don't know," she said softly. "But something's shifting. I can feel it."
Outside, beneath the press of rain and the breath of the trees, the forest listened silently.
*****