Kaelen stepped into the forest that locals called Wraithwood.
The air was thick, the trees ancient and gnarled, their bark blackened as though charred by centuries of whispering flame. Mist coiled along the forest floor like a living thing, wrapping around his legs and dampening his boots with a strange, sticky chill. The deeper he walked, the more the world seemed to bend around him, distant bird calls distorting into unnatural tones and his own footsteps sounding muffled, as though he walked a hundred feet below the surface.
Even the light had changed. What began as early morning had become an eternal twilight.
He'd found the edge of Wraithwood by accident—or perhaps it found him. The Riftstone he'd taken from the previous ruin had grown warm in his cloak pocket when he neared the trees, as though sensing something. He'd studied the map etched into its glassy surface under moonlight, and seen this place marked in an unfamiliar language that only revealed itself beneath starlight. And now he was here.
Something about this forest tugged at the edges of his Tri-Fabric awareness. Space twisted subtly, threads of time snagged and looped, and matter itself felt... strained. The entire area felt like a deep wound scabbed over, a place where the world had tried and failed to heal.
He moved with caution. His senses reached out in all directions.
After an hour, he reached a clearing where the mist parted.
Stone ruins dotted the edges—not grand temples like before, but broken pillars and cracked stone slabs, covered in vines that shimmered faintly. In the center stood a crooked tree, black as pitch and leafless, yet pulsing with a faint, rhythmic glow from within its bark. Around it, thin strands of violet light wove through the ground like veins.
Kaelen approached carefully. The tree exhaled a soundless pressure. Not malevolent—but watching.
Then came the whispers.
Not words, but impressions. Echoes in his thoughts. Flashes of memory not his own: battles in the mist, shadows devouring men from within, a figure with eyes like shattered mirrors planting a seed in the heart of this wood.
He closed his eyes and extended his Tri-Fabric senses. His control had sharpened since the Rift encounter. Now, he gently touched the spatial tension around the tree, weaving tendrils of awareness into the rift-scarred currents.
A shape emerged from the mist—tall, skeletal, draped in tattered robes made of leaves and bone. Its face was a mask of bark, and its eyes glowed with faint, sorrowful blue light.
Kaelen shifted his stance, magic pooling in his palms. "Are you Riftborn?"
The creature did not speak, but pain bled from it like steam. It was bound to the tree. Not by chains, but by something deeper. A pact.
Kaelen narrowed his eyes. "What are you guarding?"
The answer came not in sound, but in emotion: Remorse. Duty. Warning.
He stepped forward and laid a hand on the tree. The world lurched.
He stood in a battlefield.
Not physically, but within a memory the tree preserved. Shadows clashed with light, warriors made of crystal and void. Above them, the sky was cracked open, Rift maws pouring creatures like nightmares onto the land. The tree—younger, blooming—stood at the center of a spell woven by a woman whose face Kaelen couldn't fully see.
He watched her speak a vow: To trap the Rift-born within the roots of remembrance. To turn corruption into silence. To pay the price.
She bled into the soil.
When Kaelen opened his eyes, the mist had vanished. The tree was now dormant. The skeletal guardian gone. But at its roots lay something new: a shard of violet crystal, glowing faintly.
Kaelen picked it up. It hummed against his skin.
He didn't know what it did yet. But it was meant for him.
And the forest—for the first time—was silent.
No more whispers.
No more warnings.
Just the path ahead.