THE ROOTLESS PATH
The path west had been overgrown for generations.
Old records from the Keepers called it the Rootless Way, once used by ancient seers to reach the outer ring of the forest the place where the Veil thinned, and voices from the Beyond sometimes whispered through.
But no one walked it anymore.
Until now.
Lucy pressed her fingers to the most covered stones, feeling the ancient runes beneath. They pulsed faintly once dormant, now humming to life.
She's touched this place, she murmured.
Tim crouched beside her. Touched... or remembered it.
Mark stood a few paces behind, scanning the shadows that lined the crooked trail. Why lead us here?
No one answered. But Lucy felt the question burning at the back of her mind like an ember: Why now?
The air along the Rootless Path grew thinner as they walked quieter, almost brittle. The trees were stunted here, the sky visible in jagged cracks through the twisted canopy. Even the lanterns above seemed older, dimmer. They spun more slowly, like they hadn't been stirred in decades.
Then Lucy saw it.
A stone arch half buried in ivy, carved with faded glyphs. On its peak sat a broken lantern one that no longer glowed. Beneath it, the air shimmered faintly.
This was a threshold, she whispered.
Tim nodded grimly. A rift gate. Before the Crown of Ash broke it.
Mark looked between them. Why would the Lantern born lead us here of all places?
Lucy stepped forward, her fingers grazed the old lantern. It was cold, heavy with time.
I think she's trying to remember what was lost, she said softly. Maybe even fix it.
Tim exhaled. Or finish what her mother began.
Beyond the gate lay the ruins.
They rose from the soil like broken teeth pillars of black stone, shattered walls covered in vines, and a dry well at the center of the clearing that pulsed faintly with blue light.
Lucy knelt beside the well and peered in.
No water. Just depth. And something shimmering far, far below like starlight on the surface of a forgotten sea.
Suddenly, a voice rose from the depths.
You shouldn't have come.
Mark staggered back, hand on his blade. Tim flung a warding sigil into the air. It burned for a moment then fizzled out, useless.
Lucy didn't move. Her heart was steady.
I know you, she whispered to the well. You were here once. The Crown of Ash.
The voice answered like smoke.
She took everything. Burned her name into the roots of the world. And now she wants more.
A pause. Then, quieter:
Run. Before she pulls you into her fire.
Lucy stood slowly. I won't run.
The light in the well dimmed. The air settled.
And a single whisper rose like a thread of smoke:
"Then be ready to burn."
That night, as they made camp near the ruined gate, Lucy sat alone beneath a dead lantern.
The others slept uneasily, wrapped in silence and worry.
But Lucy watched the sky.
And she realized something terrifying:
The stars above no longer looked the same.
They were shifting.
Turning.
As if they too were watching something rise.
Lucky couldn't sleep.
She sat cross legged beneath the ruined archway, the broken lantern above her casting a faint, flickering reflection of a light that no longer existed.
The well's words haunted her.
Then be ready to burn.
Not a warning. A promise.
Her fingers traced the worn carvings of the old stone, trying to decode what the Lanternborn wanted her to see. She didn't believe this path had been chosen by accident. No there was memory in the stone. A kind of ache. And Lucy felt it humming under her skin.
She reached into her satchel and withdrew the ember shard she had found at the Vale. Even now, it pulsed with low heat. She pressed it into a groove in the arch's base.
The wind stilled.
The lantern above her glowed.
For the first time in a hundred years, it ignited soft gold turning crimson red, like the last flare of a setting sun.
Tim and Mark jolted awake behind her.
Lucy! Tim voice cut through the silence.
But it was too late. The old gate shuddered.
The air split.
A veil parted.
And for a heartbeat, Lucy saw.
She stood in another time. Another life.
The forest wasn't quiet and dying it was thriving, blazing with energy. Lanterns burned brighter than stars, and the trees swayed with a kind of sentient grace. At the center stood a girl barefoot, cloaked in gold flame, eyes endless with power.
The Lantern born.
Not a monster. Not yet.
A child of prophecy. Of sorrow.
She stood at the gate, her hand outstretched, whispering to something beyond. Another realm. Another flame.
Behind her stood her mother the one they called the Crown of Ash. Cloaked in shadow. Watching.
Then everything erupted.
Fire. Screams. A light so bright it shattered stone.
The vision cracked apart.
Lucy hit the ground hard. The glow of the lantern above her vanished, snuffed like breath on glass.
Tim was already at her side. What did you do?
She coughed. I saw her. I saw before. She didn't destroy everything not at first. She was trying to open something. A gate.
Mark helped her up. A gate to what?
Lucy looked at him.
And this time, she answered with absolute certainty.
To the other half of herself. The part that was taken.
Later, as the stars realigned overhead, Kael sat silently sharpening his blade while Ren added sigils to their warding circle.
Lucy sat apart, the ember-shard warm in her palm.
The Lantern born wasn't hunting them.
She was calling them.
To remember.
To witness.
To choose.
And Lucy realised this wasn't a story of ending at all.
Maybe it was the start of something even more dangerous.
Something new.
They stayed near the broken gate longer than intended.
What had begun as a trail of forgotten stone had opened into something deeper: memory, prophecy, and warning all tangled beneath ash and time.
Lucy different now.
Like the air inside her had shifted.
The vision had shaken her, but what lingered wasn't fear it was recognition. The Lantern born wasn't just reaching across time.
She was reaching through Lucy.
Where are you going? Mark called softly.
Lucy had wandered toward the ruins again, drawn to the dry well at the center. She knelt, staring down into the black. The shimmer at the bottom was still there still alive. Like a slow moving ripple across a dream.
Tim joined her, arms crossed. You don't want to fall into that.
Who said anything about falling? Lucy said quietly.
A silence stretched between them.
Then, she spoke: What if she didn't want to burn the world?
Tim's expression hardened. Then she shouldn't have lit the match.
She was a child when it began, she shot back. A child with too much power and no choice but to obey.
Tim's voice lowered. Power doesn't care if you're ready. That's why it costs so much.
They were quiet after that.
Lucy dipped her hand toward the shimmer again not touching it, just feeling the way it pulsed. The same way her chest had pulsed under the Heart Tree. The same rhythm in the lanterns above.
A single, living heartbeat shared between her and something ancient.
A memory that wanted to become real again.
Suddenly, the shimmer cracked.
Not a sound but a feeling like someone screaming without breath. The surface below the well shimmered violently, then calmed.
Mark rushed over, eyes wide. Did you see that?
Tim stepped back. She's testing the veil.
Lucy stood. Her voice was unsteady. No. That wasn't her.
They all stared down into the silence.
It was colder now.
Deeper.
Darker.
Tim's hand went to his blade. Then who was it?
That night, Mark and Tim argued.
Softly. Fiercely.
Lucy sat at the edge of camp, listening to the words without truly hearing them. She watched the lanterns spin above, trying to decode the rhythm of their light. Were they warning her? Guiding her?
r watching her like sentinels?
Mark's voice finally cut through: She's not safe anymore, Tim. You know it.
I know she's more than just safe or dangerous," Tim snapped. "She's necessary.
Mark growled. You're willing to gamble everything on a feeling.
Tim replied, voice low and final, I'm willing to follow her.
Lucy closed her eyes.
She didn't want them to fight. Not for her.
But deep inside, past the noise and fear, something had begun to grow.
Not certainty.
Not control.
But something older. Wilder.
A knowing.
The Lantern born wasn't just awakening.
She was remembering.
And Lucy whether by fate or fire was the key.
Sometime before dawn, Lucy awoke to a whisper.
Not a dream.
Not a voice from memory.
A present whisper.
Real.
It came from the ruins soft, distant, like leaves brushing against a window no one could find.
She rose silently, stepping over Mark's sleeping form and Tim's half open eyes. He didn't stop her. Maybe he knew there was no point.
The whisper led her back to the well.
But this time, the shimmer at its base had risen.
It now floated midway up the shaft, suspended in the air like a piece of sky trapped underwater. It pulsed with soft crimson and flickers of deep indigo. It didn't feel evil. It didn't even feel alive.
It felt... empty.
A mirror waiting for someone to look.
She stepped closer.
Her breath fogged.
And then she saw her reflection not as she was now, but as something else. Something cloaked in ash and gold. A version of herself crowned with lantern light, her eyes filled with fire but not flames of destruction. Flames of memory.
A reflection of who she might become.
She reached toward the vision.
The shimmer rippled.
And a voice not from the well, but from inside her rose like wind:
She remembers the first name you ever spoke. The name you forgot.
Lucy's lips parted.
But the name was gone, like smoke in her mouth.
Behind her, Tim appeared at the edge of the clearing.
You felt it too? he asked.
She nodded. It's not just showing me things. It's calling something out of me.
Tim's jaw tightened. Then it's already begun.
He stepped beside her, eyes locked on the shimmer. Whatever it is, you don't have to face it alone.
She looked at him.
A long silence passed.
Then Lucy reached into her pouch and drew out the ember shard.
It pulsed in response to the vision in the well.
This was never just a piece of her, she said. It's a piece of me too. I just didn't realize how deeply I was tied to her. To this whole story.
Tim didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
Lucy placed the shard on the stone rim of the well.
It sank in gently, like a seed into fertile ground.
The shimmer solidified.
For a second, everything stopped.
Even the lanterns overhead stilled.
And then a heartbeat.
One single, thunderous pulse.
It echoed through the trees, down into the roots, and up into the stars.
Tim staggered.
Lucy didn't flinch.
Because in that moment, she felt it,
the Lantern born was no longer just awakening.
She was becoming.
And Lucy was the vessel she would rise through.