The expedition left at dawn.
There were twelve of them in total the Pilgrim, Lee's group of four, and seven others who had either been desperate enough or stupid enough to believe. Lee sized them up as they walked: mercenaries with dead eyes, scholars with trembling hands, a woman who whispered to a bird skeleton she carried in a cage, a man whose shadow moved the wrong way.
Interesting company, Onyx Tempest observed. Some of them are not entirely human.
Lee kept his hand on the sword's hilt. "Define 'not entirely human.'"
One of them has been dead for at least three years. Another is wearing someone else's skin. And the woman with the bird cage? The skeleton isn't the only thing in there that's dead.
"Great. Just great."
Kira fell into step beside him. "You're muttering to yourself again."
"I'm muttering to the sword."
"That's worse, Lee. That's so much worse."
The journey to the Sunken City took three days. The first day was uneventful just the Rust Sea's usual horrors: sinkholes, rust worms, the occasional demon that had crawled up from the lower depths. They lost one of the mercenaries on the first night a man named Gregor who wandered off to relieve himself and never came back. They found his boots the next morning, still laced, still warm, with nothing inside them.
"Shadow eater," the Pilgrim said, his face grim. "They come up from the deep places when they smell fear. Gregor was afraid. He didn't show it, but he was. They always know."
The second day was worse.
They entered the Ashen Forest a petrified woodland where the trees were made of black glass and the ground was carpeted in white dust that might have been ash, might have been bone, might have been both. The air was still. Too still. Even the rain stopped here, as if the forest had its own weather.
"The trees are watching us," Taro whispered.
"Trees don't have eyes," Kira said.
"These do."
He was right. Lee saw them now subtle at first, then unmistakable. Eyes carved into the glassy bark. Not human eyes. Something else. Something that had been watching for a very, very long time.
The Forest of Witnesses, Onyx Tempest said. I remember this place. In the time of the Sun Kings, criminals were brought here. Their souls were extracted and bound into the trees, so they could watch the world change forever. They cannot move. They cannot speak. But they can see. And they remember.
"How do we get through?" Lee asked.
You don't. Not without paying tribute.
"What kind of tribute?"
The sword didn't answer. But Lee felt it a pulling sensation in his chest, the mark burning hotter than ever before. His feet carried him forward, away from the group, toward the heart of the forest.
"Lee!" Kira shouted. "Where are you going?"
He didn't answer. He couldn't. Something was guiding him, something older than the sword, older than the forest, older than the Shattering itself.
He stopped in front of a tree larger than all the others. Its eyes hundreds of them, thousands stared down at him with an emotion he couldn't name. Not anger. Not hunger. Something closer to longing.
"Hello," Lee said.
The tree didn't respond. It couldn't. But something in the air shifted.
You feel it, Onyx Tempest whispered. The souls in these trees... they've been waiting for someone like you. Someone who carries both light and darkness. Someone who can hear them.
"I can hear you," Lee said to the tree. To the forest. To the thousands of trapped souls that had been watching for three hundred years. "I don't know how. But I can."
The ground trembled.
They want you to set them free.
"How?"
By giving them what they've been denied. A voice. A choice. An end.
Lee closed his eyes. He thought about all the souls in the forest criminals, the Pilgrim had said, but what did that mean in the time of the Sun Kings? Had they been murderers? Thieves? Or had they simply been inconvenient, swept up by a power that didn't care about justice, only control?
He thought about his own soul the light and the dark, the gold and the silver, the war that had been raging inside him since birth.
And he made a choice.
"I can't free you," he said. "Not yet. I don't have that power. But I can promise you something." He opened his eyes. "I will come back. When I'm strong enough. When I understand what I am. I will come back and I will free every last one of you. That's my vow."
The forest went absolutely still.
Then, one by one, the eyes began to close.
A path opened through the trees a corridor of soft, grey light that led to the other side of the forest. The Pilgrim stared at Lee with an expression that was half awe, half terror.
"How did you do that?" he asked.
Lee shrugged. "I asked nicely."
Behind him, Kira was making the sign to ward off evil. Taro was hiding behind Ren. And Ren... Ren was smiling.
"You really are something else, Lee Zaou," Ren said.
Lee didn't answer. He was too busy wondering why the mark on his chest had stopped burning and why, for the first time in his life, he felt like he'd just made a deal with something far older and far more dangerous than the Sunken City.