They left the river at first light and walked until the trees grew older than anything Rowan had ever seen. Trunks wider than cottages. Roots that rose like ribs from the ground. The air was cool and damp, and the light came down in thin green sheets. Birds were quiet here. Even the wind seemed to tread soft.
Brennar set the pace, steady and slow. Ari ranged ahead, light as a fox. Nyx walked where the shadows were thickest and somehow never brushed a leaf. Lyra kept the center, listening with that soft, careful attention she had when she felt pain near.
Rowan followed the curve of the river when he could, keeping the weight of it at his side like a friend. His hands still ached from the night before, the skin tight where cold had bitten. Every so often he uncorked his waterskin, breathed slow, and shaped a small shard just to keep the feel of it. The pieces held longer now. When they cracked, they broke clean.
"Save your fingers," Lyra said gently as she passed him a strip of bark to chew. "The cold will take more than you think."
He nodded and tucked the waterskin away. He did not want to admit it, but part of him feared the other thing—feared the day the water did not listen, or worse, took the lead.
By mid-morning the path stopped being a path. The forest did not open so much as it decided to let them pass. Ferns bent and then stood again. Vines hung and did not snag. Old stones—black with lichen—rose in odd places, as if someone had placed them with care and then forgotten why. Once, Brennar reached to push a branch aside and it slid out of his hand of its own accord.
"Anyone else feel that?" he muttered.
Ari didn't look back. "We're not lost," she said. "We're being shown a way."
"Or herded," Nyx said, voice flat.
They kept going.
The first sign came as a sound—water shifting in a deeper voice than the river, like a drum struck far below the ground. Rowan felt it in his feet more than he heard it. He slowed without meaning to. The others slowed too.
The second sign was the silence. The forest had been quiet for hours, but this was different. No wingbeat. No insect hum. Even Brennar's breath felt too loud.
"Hold," Ari said softly, lifting a hand.
They stood at the lip of a wide, low basin ringed in roots and stone. The river curled through the far side in a slow, clear arc. Moss lay like a carpet. In the center rose a cluster of old stumps and young shoots twisted together into a low seat. It was not a throne. It only felt like one.
Rowan swallowed. His mouth was dry.
"Circling," Nyx murmured.
Figures moved at the edge of sight. A shape there, gone. A shape here, waiting. Then the stag stepped out where the light touched the moss.
Rowan had seen deer. He had seen the stag last night. This still stole the breath out of him. Vines hung from its neck like a living mane. Moss lay thick along its back. When it breathed, leaves on nearby branches stirred as if answering. Its eyes were not human and yet he felt seen in a way that made his chest tight.
On the opposite side, a wolf padded out. It was big as Brennar, quiet as Nyx. Bark seemed to plate its shoulders. Ivy wove through its ribs. Its mouth was closed. Its eyes were gold, calm and sure.
The two Soul Sprites did not rush. They did not snarl. They circled the basin, keeping them always in the center. Rowan realized with a small, cold chill that there were more eyes in the brush than he could count—small ones low to the ground, long ones up in the branches, green glints under roots. Nothing moved to strike. Everything watched.
Brennar lifted his axe and then let it sink again, blade to the moss. "I hate this," he said under his breath. "I hate being looked at."
Ari's bow rose a finger's width and stopped. "Don't show our throat," she said, calm. "Don't bare our teeth."
Rowan shifted his grip on the harpoon. He did not raise it. He did not lower it either. The river at his side felt very close, as if it had decided to lean nearer to hear what would be said.
Nyx's head turned a fraction. "There," she whispered.
At first Rowan saw nothing. Then the light between two trunks deepened, the way water looks deeper when a cloud passes. A man stepped out of that shade and the forest moved with him.
He wore no crown. He did not need one. A cloak the color of living moss fell to his boots, heavy and clean. His hair was dark with threads of silver and a twist of ivy braided through. His skin was brown like oak heartwood. His eyes were the strangest thing—deep brown with a scatter of gold flecks, as if someone had dropped sparks in a well. He was tall, broad across the shoulders, but there was no strain in how he stood. He looked like a tree that had grown where it wanted to grow and would not be moved.
He did not speak at first. He only looked at them, and the looking felt like a hand laid on the back of Rowan's neck. Not cruel. Not kind. Measuring.
Ari's voice was barely a breath. "Can you feel it?"
Brennar exhaled, like something heavy had settled on his chest. "Aye."
Ari's eyes stayed on the man. "He doesn't fight his gift. He wears it. Like skin."
Nyx's mouth barely moved. "No. Not worn. He has Merged with it."
The word carried weight. Rowan felt it thrum through him. Merged—beyond Awakened, beyond anything he could imagine. He thought of his clumsy shards and the frost blade that cracked after a minute. He felt suddenly very, very small.
The stag and the wolf came to him without any sign spoken or given. They stepped to his left and right and lifted their heads. For a heartbeat Rowan thought they would fade as Soul Sprites did when dismissed—into mist, into breath, into nothing.
They did not fade.
They unraveled.
Light slid off them in threads, green-gold and soft, as if their fur had become rays of morning. The light curled and rose, twisting in the air like smoke in reverse, and flowed into the man's chest. Not through skin—into him, the way water goes into dry earth. The stag was there and then a river of light, and then gone. The wolf followed. The basin was quiet again.
Rowan's mouth was open. He shut it. He forgot to breathe.
Lyra's hand had drifted to her throat. "I've seen Sprites fade," she whispered. "But never return."
Ari lowered her bow all the way. Her face was pale under the dirt. "That wasn't summoning," she said. "That was… communion."
Brennar said nothing. His knuckles were white on the axe haft. Rowan thought he might be praying, and he had never heard Brennar pray.
Nyx did not move. Her eyes, pale as glass, had lost some of their hardness. "They chose to go back," she said, almost to herself. "Like breath choosing lungs."
The man finally spoke. His voice was deep and low, the sound of a log rolling in a slow river. It did not push. It carried.
"You walk my forest," he said. "And my forest has judged you."
No one answered. There was nothing to say that would be wise.
He took two steps closer. Moss did not spring back under his boots. It welcomed him. "You burned what rot would draw worse things," he said, gaze passing over Brennar, over Ari, over Nyx. "You killed when killing was clean. You ran when you should run. You did not cut where you did not need to cut." His eyes found Lyra. "You bound wounds without asking for coin." Then they rested on Rowan and did not leave.
"You carry water," he said. "New and noisy. But the river in you wants to learn."
Rowan's cheeks warmed. He could not explain why the words felt both like a pat on the head and a weight handed to him.
Brennar cleared his throat. "We don't mean trouble," he said roughly. "We're only passing through."
The man's mouth tipped, not quite a smile. "No one who holds power only passes through."
"Who are you?" Rowan asked before he could stop himself.
The man looked at him, and in his gaze Rowan saw a grove in winter, and the first leaf of spring, and a wall grown from roots that no blade could breach. "Ashwyn," he said.
The name landed like a stone dropped into a still pool.
Ari's lips parted. "Merged," she whispered.
Nyx's voice was sharper, colder. "And if he walks long enough, if he endures long enough…" She trailed off, her eyes narrowing. "He could become Eternal."
Even Brennar went quiet at that. Eternal was a word out of stories, not out of the world.
Ashwyn neither nodded nor denied. He only said, "Old. And bound to this place."