The march had no beginnning and no end.
It was pine and stone, pine and stone, boots crunching into snowmelt, breaths clouding the air, the same ridge cresting into another. The king's banners dragged behind him. His men had stopped believing in glory; they followed only because to stop meant to freeze.
When firewood was needed, the knight went alone. An axe across his shoulder, a satchel at his hip. The others let him go. No one argued.
The forest was quiet, resin thick on the wind. He trailed between trunks until the sound of the camp vanished. The silence felt cleaner here without the burden of men's whispers.
Then the trees opened.
The clearing sat like a breath withheld.
At its heart, the willow bent low, its branches sweeping the ground in a tangle of gray greens, heavy with age. Its trunk as broad as a tower's pillar, roots coiled and twisted into shapes that seem crafted instead of natural.
He slowed. The place hummed with stillness.
At the base, in a dark hollow vetween the roots, something glimmered. He knelt, brushing away damp moss.
There: a bundle of scrolls, wrapped in a ribbon-frayed and colorless. Two glass bottles beside, light flickering faintly inside as though the mood had been poured into glass.
He touched them. The glass was cool. The scrolls are dry and brittle, as if they had been waiting here.
He sat back on his heels. His axe lay forgotten in the snow. He did not know why but his chest felt tight.
The first scroll cracked as he broke the ribbon. Letters spilled across the parchment. Letters he did not know, yet sound rose to his his lips. His mouth shaing them as if repeating words he had always known.
The air shifts. The willow shuddered. Braches lifted slightly as if the willow just inhaled.
The knight faltered, then pulled one bottle free. The cork loosened with a hiss., Silver light escaped, cool against his cheek. He drank it down before he could think, swallowing moonlight like water, bitter and sharp, cold as snowmelt, yet burned like brandy.
His breateh caught as he chest burned.
The willow creaked as its roots began to split.
He unfurled the secong scroll. Again the words came, yet he still knew not from where. As he read, the braches lifted higher, parting like curtains. The hollow of the willow widened into a doorway.
Light spilled through.
He staggered back, shielding his eyes, then lowered his arm. And he saw it.
Not ruins. Not ash.
A city, whole.
Streets of pale stone streched between buildings with tiled roofs. Windows glowed with firelight. Thin smoke curled from chimnets. Beyind that, fields spread neat across the valley floor, green even in mountain air, rows of barley and bean climbing trellises.
Figues moved in the streeets. A woman balancing a basket on her hip. Two children chasing each other acorss a small bridhe. A man hauling wood toward a forge. Not shades, or spirits, but people. Alive.
His grip tighened on the empty bottle.
The willow bent forards. His boots pressed over the threshold of the roots and the forest behind him blurred, pine and snow slipping away as though a curtain had been drawn.
The air changed. It was warmer here, filled with the scents of smoke and bread and soil turned by plow.
He entered.
The streets beneath his boots were stone, smoothed by countless feet. Eyes turned towards him. Curious, cautious, but not afraid. The people did not freeze or bow or flee. They looked as one looks when something long expected had fiailly arrived.
A woman approached. His clothes were simple: wool tunic, leather belt, boots pacthed with care. He strudied the knight without speaking, the offered a nod as though confirming something only he could see.
"You've come through," the man said, his voice rough with years. There was no awe or joy in his words. Only fact.
The gestured towords the street. "Then you'll walk it."
The people did not gather or swarm him. They returned to their work, through their eyes followed still. The knight moved forward, each step slow.
He passed stalls where herbs and cloth were bartered for tools. A woman traded a basket of eggs for a clay jug. Coins lay unused, gathering dust in a box by the table's edge. In another square, grain was measured by hand, sacks exchanged for jars of honey.
Children's laughter echoed down a narrow lane. Goats clambered over a stone wall. Chickens scratched in the dirt.
It was a city whole unto itself, sealed but alive, as though the world outside had never existed.
The knight's hand found the scrolls at his side. He did not know why they had been left, why he alone had stumbled across them in a clearing where no path led. He did not know why the willow had opened now.
But he felt the weight of it, all the same.
The man who had first spoken to him lingered at his shoulder. His eyes were steady, his expression unreadable.
"You'll learn soon enough," he said, as if answering a question the knight had not asked.
The knight looked back once. Through the willow's veil he could see the forest, distant and dim, the world he had come from already fading. He could see the branches leaning back down hidiing his world once again.
Ahead, the city spread wide and waiting.