*Day 8 - The Forest's Edge*
Malakor watched through stolen eyes.
Not his own—those had been burned out and regrown too many times to count. These belonged to a crow, one of hundreds his father commanded. Through its vision, he observed Ora's transformation from a safe distance.
She'd touched the Heart Tree three hours ago. Her screaming hadn't stopped.
The sound carried wrong—not through air but through the Weave itself, the living network that connected every plant, every fungus, every bacterial colony into one vast consciousness. Even from fifty miles away, hidden in a dying oak's shadow, Malakor felt it. The forest's ancient power rewriting her at the cellular level.
His own bones ached in sympathy. He knew what it was like to be remade.
*Watch,* his father's voice whispered through the crow's mind. *Learn what she becomes.*
Through the bird's eyes, Malakor saw Ora's body crack like drought-struck earth. Black corruption poured from her like pus from a lanced wound, but instead of pooling on the ground, the Heart Tree drank it. Metabolized it. Transformed poison into something else entirely.
Her skeleton branched—not breaking but growing, spreading through her flesh in patterns that echoed leaf veins, river deltas, lightning strikes. Her skin cycled through seasons in seconds: spring's fresh green, summer's gold, autumn's rust, winter's gray, then beginning again.
Beautiful. Monstrous. Both.
Like him.
The comparison sent pain lancing through Malakor's skull. His body—if it could still be called that—convulsed against the oak. The dragon essence his father had hammered into his human soul flared hot, scales trying to push through his left arm's skin. The Death Angel fragments fought back with cold that turned his breath to frost.
And underneath both, drowning but never quite dying, the human boy he'd been screamed.
*Mama sang about birds,* a child's voice whispered from somewhere deep inside. *Yellow ones that came back every spring.*
He crushed the memory before it could fully form. Sentiment was weakness. His father had taught him that with knives and fire and careful doses of liquified suffering.
Through the crow, he watched Ora pull her hand from the Heart Tree. The connection didn't break—instead, it settled into her bones like roots finding water. She stood, swayed, opened eyes that had become portals to the world's green heart.
"I remember everything," she said.
The forest showed her then—memories flowering backward through time. Every moment she'd spent near trees, the forest had been watching. Including things she'd never known.
Her sister's warning. Netharion's betrayal. The Distillers' soul-coins.
Malakor felt his father's satisfaction ripple through the crow network. Everything was proceeding according to plan.
Or was it?
The boy-part of him, the part that remembered mother-songs and morning light, wondered if maybe—just maybe—Ora was making her own choices. Maybe she wasn't his father's weapon at all, but something else. Something that chose its own targets.
The thought was dangerous. Hope was the cruelest poison of all.
His left hand spasmed, dragon-fire burning through nerves already damaged beyond repair. His right eye—the Death Angel eye—showed him the world in entropy: how everything was already dead, just taking its time about admitting it.
But his human eye, the one his father hadn't quite managed to destroy, saw something else in Ora's transformation.
Purpose.
Not the purposelessness his father had beaten into him, not the blind obedience of a weapon, but actual choice. She was becoming something terrible, yes. But she was choosing to become it.
The distinction mattered more than it should.
*Report,* his father's voice commanded through the crow.
Malakor opened his mouth—and hesitated.
For one impossible moment, he considered lying. Telling Vorgoth that the transformation had failed, that Ora had died, that the Heart Tree had consumed her entirely. It would buy her time. Maybe enough time to—
White-hot agony lanced through his skull. His father's punishment for even thinking of disobedience. Malakor screamed, the sound tearing from three throats—human, dragon, angel—in hideous harmony.
When the pain receded, he was on his knees in mud, blood streaming from his nose.
*Never hesitate,* Vorgoth's voice was ice and disappointment. *You are a weapon. Weapons don't choose.*
"The transformation succeeded," Malakor gasped through blood. "She's become what you predicted. Death and life in one body. She knows about Netharion. She's heading south."
*Good. And her emotional state?*
"Angry. Focused. She wants revenge."
*Perfect. Revenge makes people predictable. What about the dwarf?*
Malakor blinked. Through the crow network, he saw what his father meant. A strange figure had joined Ora—a Boletan dwarf covered in fungal growths, arguing with mushrooms and leaving trails of bioluminescence.
"Unknown variable," Malakor reported. "Possibly useful. The Boletans have knowledge of the deep networks."
*Then he might lead her to the Undergrowth Markets. Even better.*
The crow cawed once and took flight, leaving Malakor alone with his breaking body and his father's voice.
*Come home,* Vorgoth commanded. *It's time for your next modification.*
Malakor stood on legs that couldn't decide if they were human, dragon, or something worse. Each step toward his father's fortress was agony. Each breath drew in air that his lungs didn't know how to process anymore.
But he walked. Because weapons didn't choose.
Behind him, where his blood had soaked into the earth, strange flowers began to grow. They had petals like dragon scales, stems like angel bones, and at their hearts, human eyes that wept without understanding why.
Even in breaking, he was creating something new.
Just like Ora.
The parallel should have meant nothing. But the boy who remembered mother-songs noticed it anyway, filed it away in the deep places his father couldn't quite reach.
Maybe weapons didn't choose.
But boys who remembered being loved did.
Even if they couldn't act on those choices.
Yet.
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*End Chapter 8*
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