The wailing woods did not forgive footsteps.
It remembered them, every crushed leaf, every broken twig, every heaven, and gasp that happened there stayed there like a secret being whispered long even after it was gone.
The woods seemed to have paused, the air a stilled as several sets of yellow and amber eyes watched from the shadows, not hunting, unblinking, witnessing the scene of the shadows queen flee.
Queen Cairo tried to run as much as she could. Her breath coming out in heavy puffs, each one heavier than the last.
Water and blood steamed down her thighs, soaking into the hem of her torn dress.
She leaned into a tree, a hand on her swollen belly trying to soothe the child that fought violently from within her.
"Easy there, easy."
She said raising herself to continue fleeing as a sharp pain tore through her belly. Her fists clenched, tears gathering in her eyes as she begged.
"not yet. Not here please."
Behind her the woods growled trying to protect her as the sounds of feet crushing twigs and and leaves came closer.
The awakened soldiers were close.
'Slaves of the high gods, useless peasants' she thought her jaw tightening.
She could feel them now, their power strangling the air around making it hard for her to breathe.
She pushed herself forward willing her feet to take her far away.
She had once been so powerful, crossing between realms as she wished.
A period where time paid heed to her and did as she pleased.
But she had sealed her powers, locked them in that she could barely feel it just to keep her child safe, and now every step felt like stolen time from an extra life.
She felt it in her veins begging to be released, but to do that would be to lose the child and tear the future apart.
The sound of a horn split the air echoing unnaturally throughout the woods and assaulting all that was within.
She heard a split, a large tree on her left feel apart on the floor with a loud this, it's bark smoking as divine force carved through it like paper.
" They are hunting" Cairo whispered hoarsely as fear for the child's safety creeped in.
Her foot caught on a root, the force of it causing her to stumble nearly sending her to the ground.
She grabbed at a tree bark barely managing to keep herself upright. Pain ripped through her abdomen.
Sharp.
Enough to steal her breath.
She bit down on her lip until she tasted blood refusing to give them the satisfaction of hearing her scream in pain.
The wailing woods was old, older than many higher gods, existing long before Dogan unified the realms and separated the realms into hierarchies under his rule.
It had once been a place of refuge for those who had nowhere to turn to, but even the woods bowed eventually, even it knew when to give up and step aside.
The trees ahead thinned abruptly, leaving no place for hiding.
Cairo stopped at the edge of the clearing knowing that she had lost.
The ground here was bare, stripoed down to the black earth with no blade of grass anywhere in sight.
Only faint silver lines that were spread across like veins.
They were residual warding marks, long dormant but not dead.
She turned slowly as they emerged from the trees without haste.
Three figures at first, then five, then more.
They were High men clad in leather armour that gleamed faintly even without light, their forms too precise, too perfect.
Their faces were uncovered, expressionless, eyes burning with restrained divinity. Each step they took pressed the world flatter beneath them.
Lower gods yes.
But among the strongest of them.
They were Enforcers.
"Queen Cairo" one of them said, his voice resounding without effort.
"You are far from where you belong"
Cairo laughed, a broken sound. "I do not belong anywhere your masters want either"
Another raised his hand slightly. The air thickened at once, gravity shifting just enough to make her knees buckle.
She powered herself from falling, growling low in her throat.
"Careful" she warned. "You wouldn't want to push me"
A flicker of unease passed through the group.
Not fear... Never that, but caution.
They could feel it too, the pressure around her, the way the elements refused to settle down in her presence.
Even sealed, even bleeding, she was still an abyssal creature and could disrupt the order of things.
"What you carry is a sin against the order" the first High man said. "Surrender, and we can promise that no harm will come to the child" his face ticking as he stared at her belly with undisguised disgust. "So that the situation may be contained" looking at her in the eyes. She placed her hands over her belly protectively.
'Contained.'
She remembered another clearing, the council, voices cold as they pronounced judgements they did not have to live with.
She remembered her lover's defiance, his father's silence, the moment abomination had been spoken, not as insult, but as classification.
"You won't touch my child" she said quietly but firmly.
Another High man stepped forward.
"That decision was not yours the moment you conceived it"
The forest reacted.
The silver veins beneath the soil flared faintly, pulsing like a heartbeat. The wolves in the distance snarled, restless.
Cairo felt it, the pull of her true power, clawing at the seal she had buried deep inside herself. One release, just one, and this clearing would cease to exist.
And so would the child.
She exhaled shakily drawing back the power at her fingertips.
"I will go," she said " but you will not harm my child. And you will not harm me, not here."
The High men exchanged glances.
One of them, young by divine standards, hesitated, his gaze flicking to and away from her belly.
"Fine. But only if you co-operate" the leader replied.
The bindings came without warning.
Bands of light snapped onto her wrists, searing cold, biting through her skin as they locked into place.
Cairo cried out despite her resolve, her knees slamming into the dirt as the creeping pain ate at her.
The seal inside her screamed in response, straining, pushing.
The child kicked and pushed, fighting the pain and the seal.
Pain exploded throughout her body, and for one terrifying moment she thought she was losing the child right there in the dirt of a forgotten forest.
"No," she gasped. "No. Please."
The pressure eased slightly.
Not mercy. Calculation.
"She is unstable," the first High man snapped. "Move her."
They pulled her up without touching her, the bindings pulling her up as though she were nothing more than an object.
The forest receded around them, the trees folding back unnaturally as they drifted away.
Cairo twisted, forcing herself to look back one more time.
The wailing woods watched her go.
She held onto that thought as darkness folded over her.
Cairo lay on a hard bed beneath a sky that was not sky at all, but a vast shifting ceiling of light and shadow.
The air hummed with restrained power.
She knew this place.
Everyone did.
Dogan's outer sanctum.
Some High gods stood in a wide semicircle around her, their robes reflecting the pale glow of the realms core. Beyond them, elevated on layered platforms of obsidian and gold, other High gods loomed, unseen but unmistakable.
The council was assembled.
Cairo laughed weakly. "You couldn't even wait." She murmured feeling beside her for her child.
"Where is my daughter?"
A voice answered, not loud but final.
"Queen Cairo" it said, "you stand accused of violating the order."
She lifted her head with effort, seeing an empty space where the voice originated.
"Order," she repeated. "You use that word as if it were yours."
A ripple passed through the chamber as she demanded, "where is my child?"
Another voice spoke. "You are on trial for rebellion"
"I know" she said her eyes searching around for her child.
"You shouldn't even exist"
Silence followed that statement, heavy and deliberate.
Her lips curved in sheer amusement. "So I have been told" she said trying to get up.
Her feet were bound up.
She pulled at the chains causing the High gods before her to move back, laughter erupting violently from her throat.
She snapped the chains off her feet, standing up to face them.
"Your child will be allowed to live" a third voice spoke, quieter than the others.
Cairo strained her eyes but saw no one.
"She will be contained," the voice continued. "Her power sealed at its origin. She will be raised under supervision. Watched. Controlled. But she will live."
Cairo's breath shook. Relief warred with dread.
"And I?" She asked hoarsely.
The answer came without hesitation.
"You will be removed from the flow of time, and sent back to your origin.
She understood immediately.
The Abyss.
A place without past or future. A place where even memory eventually faded.
She bowed her head.
Not in submission, but in acceptance.
"Then let me hold her, as it will be all our time together.
The chamber stilled as the weight of her request filled the air.
Somewhere far from Dogan, time halted, and nature bended for a moment as the wailing of the child filled the air only quieting down once in the arms of her mother.