Eryndor Thorne's fingers trembled around the wooden staff as he gazed at the stranger across the clearing. Sylven, his radiant life beast at his side, bristled low, hackles raised in threat. Between the bone-carved staff of the stranger and pulsating tattoos that rose up their neck, Eryndor sensed roused old magic—but not the kind taught in any academy.
The voice of the mystery mage was cold but even. "There's no place for you here," they said to him. "But there's also no death yet. That speaks louder in itself than your banishment."
Eryndor swallowed, letting the stick fall, confusion fighting adrenaline. "If you wanted me killed; you could've done it at the gates," he stated.
"You didn't have a life there anymore. But here… something shifted." The stranger took a step closer, outline blurring in dawn's flat light. "Life energy. You didn't simply revive it—you soaked it up, like a sponge."
He gazed at Sylven. The creature sniffed the air, then poked Eryndor's leg.
"Beasts don't deceive," the stranger whispered, leaning his head toward Sylven. "That thing is born of more than chance."
Every hair on Eryndor's arms stood. "What are you talking about?"
The wind stilled between the trees. Leaves rustled by them, sound transmitted on roots and soil.
The stranger turned to hear, then caught Eryndor's gaze, as though sensing the spark living in him. "I won't chase you. Not yet. But I can't leave you unguarded. There are those who will come—and you're not prepared."
The stranger extended a hand. Eryndor froze. Did he trust someone who found him before the others? Guarded him—or judged him?
His gut clenched. "You're of the Crimson Mantle," he said. "Their mage hunter wields. I feel their blood pressure on the breeze."
The hood of the stranger dropped, and shadowed faces were shown. "I was," they said gently. "Sworn once to end lifeweavers. But I've left their path."
Eryndor's chest tightened. "Then go. I don't require—"
A bellow swamped his words. Out of the edge of the trees a colossal shape exploded forward: a twisted hound-like monstrosity snapped into existence. Knotted fur, several teeth, and burning void-blazes on its sides.
Sylven leaped forward. Eryndor bellowed in reflex. The stranger raised their staff; bone runes burned green and gold.
They attacked as one: Sylven dove beneath the beast, claws glinting; the stranger's staff flared; life-threads danced between staff and forest roots.
Eryndor saw his friend envelop with the stranger's magically imposed wards. The hound fell under a rain of energy.
As silence fell, the stranger retaliated against Eryndor. "That beast preys on balance," he gasped. "The woods will not be swayed by your rising—you take more than you give but still."
Eryndor looked at Sylven, then the stranger, then the hut where his future and past converged.
"I have no idea how to use this." His voice was quiet. "But I believe I'll require help."
The stranger nodded. "Then I'll stay. For now."
Leaf-lit and tense, they emerged from the clearing. Eryndor's unrest lay heavy between them, as thick as the forest dusk closing in.
"What's your name?" he asked.
The stranger glanced over their shoulder, where distant thunder echoed across hills. "Call me Maren," they said.
"And you're not a hunter anymore?"
They gave him a shadow of a smile. "Only if I must. But this evening, you will learn something—if you want to."
Eryndor propped himself against a soft root, sensing the beat of life that capered beneath. It was faint. Unpredictable. He already knew he'd never look at the world in the same manner.
They trudged along to the flattened hut. Eryndor looked at his mangled robes spread over a cracked beam.
"Mine," he whispered. "Before everything changed."
Maren sat down next to him on a mossy boulder. "The world you were born into doesn't exist anymore," they replied. "But it can be rewritten—if you're willing to spin it."
He wanted to know what that involved.
He wanted to escape.
He wanted to believe.
He set a hand over his chest—where Sylven had curled up close. "Then—show me," he breathed, voice little more than a whisper.
Maren nodded again. "But rules there are."
Eryndor stared back at them, unspoken.
"You can heal," Maren continued, "but taking is something else. Drawing life out of one creature to give it to another is not a neutral action… it distorts destiny. And others bear the name of destiny."
Sylven slipped onto Maren's lap, leaning against their staff.
The forest was quiet.
Then Maren stood up.
"And I will show you," they said to him.
Eryndor gasped.
The faces in the trees did not blink or speak, but he felt them. A presence—a judgment older than his exile and deeper than his guilt—pressed upon his breast like cold stone. Sylven's light darkened, casting violet ripples through the branches, casting long shadows that writhed like living things.
He shot a look at Maren, but the mage stood frozen, their hand held high, eyes wide with focus.
"What… what is this?" Eryndor whispered, backing up until bark touched his shoulder. "This isn't real."
Maren didn't answer immediately. The glyphs on their staff flared green, then red, then settled into a low gold. "You've stepped beyond the boundary of the Wyrmroot," they said softly. "The forest isn't what it seems—it listens. And now that you've awakened… it sees."
Sylven growled low in his throat, and stepped between Eryndor and the nearest tree, as if to shield him from a presence unseen. Leaves quivered without wind, and beneath the earth, something stirred, like air inside an ancient chest.
"Are we at risk?"
Eryndor asked.
Maren's mouth compressed to a thin line. "That will depend entirely on you."
Eryndor believes he can feel a beat beneath his foot—faint, but definite. Not heartbeats. No echo of footsteps. But awareness. Like the forest had veins, and his sudden arrival had caused blood to move through them.
Maren moved toward him carefully, feet so motionless that they barely shook the moss. "You held back too tightly when you opened the root gate. This place—it is on the surface of the Spiral. A vibration of an older world."
"I wasn't trying to do anything," Eryndor stuttered, voice shaking.
"That doesn't matter now."
They stood there in the quiet home, one of the bark-faces unclosing a gapping mouth-like space. Something came not out, but a washing of sorrow—and a something like a recognition—moved through Eryndor's chest.
He took a step forward, his heart pounding. "It… it recognizes me."
Maren put a hand on his shoulder. "No. It knows your type. Lifeweavers are not frequent, but not unheard of. In ancient times, they were defenders and claimants of worlds. The Spiral represented their strength, but the Void." "The Void?" Eryndor asked, stepping back again.
"Eats at imbalance," Maren said. "And you, right now, are imbalance incarnate. Your own awakening is a portent."
The tree-faces began to close again, bark reforming over the ancient eyes like eyelids of wood and bone.
The air grew different.
A shiver coursed through the grove.
And then, abruptly, Sylven growled—a warning rumble, low and deep, that made Eryndor's neck bristle.
"Something's coming," Eryndor said.
"Not something," replied Maren severely. "Someone."
They marched swiftly, leading Eryndor along the narrow cleft of roots at the edge of the groove. Emerging, Eryndor looked back for an instant—and among the silence among the trees, a figure stood where none had ever stood.
She was dressed in flame and smoke, mask fashioned from obsidian, and a staff that was identical to Maren's, only blackened to the tip.
"Is that—?" Eryndor began.
"Hunter," Maren growled, her voice foul. "Crimson Mantle."
Sylven howled, and the trees groaned and drew in against the masked man.
Maren shoved Eryndor ahead. "Run. Now."
The command sounded like a drum stroke. Eryndor fled down the tunnel of roots, Sylven bounding behind him, Maren at his back. When they burst out into the light again, shining beyond them grew dim like a candle snuffed out.
And out of the darkness, the hunter followed after them at leisure. Patient. Unhurried.
"He won't stop," Maren sneered. "He can't."
"Why me?" Eryndor breathed, his heart pounding. "Why would they send him—someone like him—so soon?"
"Because you're no longer an exile," Maren stated darkly. "You're a spark. And if you ignite? The Spiral turns."
Eryndor didn't hesitate. His hand curled around Sylven's scruff and they sprinted deeper and deeper into the forest, his legs pounding harder than he ever thought possible. Branches smacked into his face, thorns tore his cloak, and with each few steps he could feel the life about him quail—trees recoiling, beasts crouching further in. The forest wasn't concealing them anymore. It was warning him.
Maren came gasping, blood streaked down one cheek. "He's distorting the Spiral's blade! That power—he's draining the life-thread."
"What does it mean?!" Eryndor bellowed.
"It means," snarled Maren, "he's killing the forest to reach you.".
Behind them, a crack echoed out, not of wood breaking, but lower like the spine of the world cracking a bone. The air turned bitter. Blackened leaves were curled up. And far away, the hunter in his red robe moved across the ground without ever quite touching it, as if he floated above rot that spread at every step.
Sylven groused, his tail whipping. Eryndor's heart pounded a little faster. He reached deep within himself—not to the magic he didn't show on his naming day—but to that strange well he'd first experienced when he healed Sylven. It was like a vein beneath his skin that throbbed warm and cold at the same time.
He opened to it.
Not fully—he had no clue how—but sufficiently.
The world shifted.
The trees leaned toward him, subtly at first, then with purpose. Roots shifted, then reared, creating a curtain of earth and bark between them and the oncoming hunter. The soil pulsed green beneath his feet. The moss glowed faintly.
Maren's eyes widened. "You're weaving without a glyph," they whispered. "Not just sensing. Commanding."
Eryndor didn't answer. His head throbbed. Blood trickled from his nose.
"Couldn't maintain this much longer," he snarled through gritted teeth. "But maybe it'll provide us—"
"LOOK OUT!"
Maren thrust him aside just in time, as a snapping bolt of crimson energy sliced the air, incinerating a tree where Eryndor had stood. The explosion knocked Sylven stumbling off-balance, and for one frozen moment, Eryndor couldn't see him.
"SYLVEN!" he bellowed, charging forward.
The fox-beast thrashed to his paws, whimpering. Fur singed, eyes demented. He lived, though.
"Don't let him die," Maren snarled. "This hunter is after your bond."
Eryndor stumbled forward, pulling Sylven along with him, wrapping his arms around the beast's neck as if sheer force of will would preserve their thread of life. "We must quit the forest," he panted. "He's distorting it."
Maren inclined her head. "There's a rift line ahead of us. Ancient ley threads, smoked out. But unstable enough to tap."
They ran again.
With every step deeper into the woods he felt like dragging his soul on briars. The trees no longer whispered but shrieked, bark tearing as their very life force was sucked away. And at their darkest backsides always the slow, measured tramp of the hunter, staff burning with inverted life.
And then they saw it: a rent in the floor of the forest, tattered and worn, where two ley lines had once crossed and snapped. Fragments of stone hanging in the air like broken teeth. Power leaked from the fissure like light from an opening in the body.
Maren glared at Eryndor. "I can send you through. The rift won't hold both of us."
Eryndor stood with arms folded across his chest. "Then we go together or not all."
"There isn't time to argue!"
The hunter stepped out of the trees. He brandished his staff. Another burst of crimson death coiled towards them.
Maren flung their hand out, summoning a golden sigil that deflected most of the blast, but it broke apart on contact. They reeled back, blood spewing from their mouth.
"No!" Eryndor cried, catching them before they collapsed entirely.
The hunter came nearer, without any haste. His voice was muffled, layered—like countless souls speaking as one. "The Weaver must be cut. The Spiral must remain sealed."
Eryndor's wrath grew to the unbearable.
He dropped to one knee, and rested one hand flat against the moss. Then he pushed-not with magic, learned or not; just instinct. A shaft of green lance out, vines and roots snaked around the hunter's legs. They died as fast as they sprouted, but it won that second.
Sylven stepped in close.
Eryndor stared at the tear.
Then Maren.
Then the hunter.
"I am not ready," he whispered. "But I will be."
He grabbed Maren, dragged them towards the schism, and leaped.
The world apart for one moment without wind—the colors leaked askew, air bent sideways, and he heard the hunter's voice, echoing like a damnation.
"You cannot escape fate, Lifeweaver. The Void stirs already."