The first bend beyond the Entrance Tree was unnervingly still.
Their boots crunched on pale moss, but the sound seemed swallowed before it could echo. The air carried a faint sweetness—like fruit left in the sun too long—almost cloying enough to make breathing deliberate. The canopy overhead was thicker here, branches knitting so tightly the sky was reduced to thin green veins of light.
Caleb kept his bow low but his steps silent. "This… wasn't like this yesterday," he murmured.
"It was never like this," Malachi corrected grimly, mace resting on his shoulder. "The forest is listening harder now."
Eliakim walked at the center, the Codex of Imreth cradled in one arm, quill in the other. Ink lines shifted across the page without his touch—routes on the map expanding, twisting, and sometimes vanishing in front of his eyes. He did not mention it.
Ezra moved quietly beside him, her bark-crafted linen blindfold glowing faintly with enchantment. She did not trip. In fact, her steps were unnervingly sure, guided by the mana perception she'd been honing since dawn. "The forest's heartbeat is faster," she whispered. "And… it's looking at us. Not all of us. Just one."
That sentence landed like a stone in a still pond. No one asked who. No one wanted to be the first to speak the guess aloud.
They reached the first curve of the northwest chamber on the Codex's living map. That was when the light changed.
It dimmed—not like evening, but like a shadow passing overhead, massive and unhurried. The moss underfoot darkened to a bruised purple. Branches above twisted, their leaves turning so their undersides—ink-black and veined with crimson—faced downward like a canopy of watching eyes.
The air thickened. The sweetness rotted into a metallic tang.
And the path ahead closed.
Roots surged from the soil, weaving into a wall before them. Behind, another wall rose, sealing them in.
From between the trees, they stepped out.
They were elves—but not the bright, sky-gazing kind. These had skin of dusk-gray, hair black as river stones, and eyes faintly luminous like reflections of starlight in deep water. Each carried a weapon—different from the group's own, yet somehow answering them.
One stopped before Eliakim—a lithe figure with twin hooked blades that curved inward like crescent moons.One before Gideon—broad-shouldered, gripping a heavy glaive with a jagged edge.One before Malachi—shorter, but with a chain-flail glowing faintly at the spikes.One before Caleb—bow in hand, but the arrows shimmered with blue fire.One before Ezra—staff capped with crystal, humming in resonance with her own mana.
No words were exchanged. No warnings given. The forest did not want them tested now. The forest wanted them bled.
Eliakim's DuelThe hooked-blade elf struck first, blades scissoring toward his ribs. Eliakim twisted aside, chains spilling from his sleeve with a metallic hiss. They lashed outward, catching one blade—only for the elf to let it go and kick at his chest. The force sent him sliding back, boots carving furrows in the moss.
He grinned faintly. "Finally, someone who doesn't flinch at chains."
The elf reclaimed the trapped blade with a spin, and their duel turned into a dance—Eliakim's chains curling like serpents to deflect, the elf's twin blades cutting in arcs too sharp for a normal swordsman.
Gideon's DuelThe glaive came down like a falling tree, sparks leaping where it struck Gideon's fused axe. The blow rattled his shoulders, but he turned the momentum into a counterstrike, his axe's twin heads whirling to catch the glaive's shaft.
The elf was fast—stepping just out of reach before lunging again, sweeping low. Gideon met each strike with raw force, the air around them ringing with steel on steel.
"You swing like you mean it," Gideon growled. "Let's see how long that lasts."
Malachi's DuelThe chain-flail blurred, spikes biting the ground where Malachi had stood. He rolled aside, mace up, meeting the next strike with a solid crack. Sparks spat from the impact, and the elf only smiled faintly, winding the chain for another attack.
Malachi's breath came slow, deliberate—waiting for the overreach. It came when the flail spun high, and Malachi surged in, catching the chain mid-flight, dragging the elf close before slamming his mace down.
Caleb's DuelTwo archers, two styles. Caleb drew and loosed with precision, but his opponent's blue-flamed arrows burned through leaves and turned the moss to ash where they landed. Caleb's heirloom bow, Verdant Whisper, thrummed with each shot, the string almost singing.
The elf's stance was sharper, each shot meant to corner him. Caleb sidestepped, returned fire, and muttered, "Show-off, are you? I can do that too."
Ezra's DuelStaff met staff—hers of living bark, his of crystal and light. Each strike sent ripples through the air, their mana colliding in bursts of color. Ezra's blindfold didn't hinder her—if anything, it sharpened her awareness.
She wove her strikes with sudden bursts of mana, breaking the elf's rhythm, forcing him to shift from offense to defense.
The duels were short-lived. The forest was not patient.
The roots beneath them bucked suddenly, throwing the combatants apart. The dark elves did not press the attack—instead, they stepped back into the trees, fading into the shadows until they were gone.
The root-walls uncoiled, revealing the path forward.
Everyone was breathing hard.
"That," Gideon said, pointing at where his opponent had stood, "wasn't just a fight. That was a message."
Ezra's voice was quiet. "They weren't trying to kill us. They were measuring us."
Eliakim's gaze flicked to the Codex. The map had changed again—paths shifting, one route now marked with a faint red glow.
He didn't say it aloud, but he knew what it meant.
The forest was hunting now.