Renkai's claws retracted slowly as the last of the brush fell away. What lay ahead wasn't a clearing—at least not in the way the forest usually offered. It was more like a hollow carved from time itself. The trees stood still here, unmoving, as though watching. The air was wet and heavy, every breath a struggle as the fog thickened into swirling curtains.
Then it came.
A low rumble shivered through the ground. Not a growl—deeper than that. Ancient. Like a mountain shifting in its sleep.
Lira froze. The shape they had glimpsed through the mist was moving.
At first it looked like a mound of stone draped in moss and old vines. But as the fog stirred around it, something massive began to rise. A long, plated back arched upward, slow and deliberate, as though waking from centuries of stillness. Jagged scales covered its form—dark and ridged, like tree bark fused with iron. Vines wove through the gaps, some pulsing faintly with green light, others brittle and dead, coiled tight like restraints or veins.
Two eyes opened—dull gold with slitted pupils—and exhaled.
The breath was deep and wide, curling out into the air in long, swirling gusts that rolled over the ground like waves. Fog thickened instantly, spreading out in tendrils that clung to the trees and their skin like cold silk.
Thalanir let out a low sound, not fear—something closer to awe.
Renkai stepped slightly in front of Lira, his posture protective. "I thought they were extinct," he said under his breath. "Or maybe just… legend."
The creature turned its massive head toward them, its jaw opening slightly—not to roar, but to breathe again. With each exhale, the fog pulsed outward, hiding its limbs and tail in curling white.
"What is it?" Lira whispered.
Renkai's voice was tight. "A vinebound drake. They were guardians of sealed places. They breathed the mist to keep intruders from ever finding the way in."
The creature didn't attack. But it didn't move aside either. Its body was a wall of scales, vines, and ancient silence. Its breath continued, rhythmic, as though it breathed the forest in and out.
Lira took a cautious step forward. "Does it remember us? Or is it just doing what it was made to do?"
Renkai didn't answer. The air was thick now. Every breath tasted of root and stone and something older still.
Then, as if responding to her voice, the creature tilted its head slightly. One massive eye fixed on Lira.
The vines across its chest pulsed once. Then again. Like a second heartbeat.
Something was waking. Or recognizing.
The vinebound drake shifted again, heavier this time, and its clawed limbs pressed into the damp earth with purpose. Vines pulled taut along its body like muscles awakening from centuries of stillness. A deep groan echoed from its chest, and its breath came heavier—each exhale a thick wave of fog that rolled like stormfronts across the ground.
Lira stepped back instinctively, hand brushing against Thalanir's warm flank. Even he, proud and fearless in his stag form, had lowered his head and begun to paw the earth cautiously.
Renkai's claws snapped out once more, gleaming under the pale light. "It's preparing to defend the threshold," he warned, voice tight. "We've been seen as intruders."
The drake's eyes narrowed, and it let out a sound—not quite a roar, but a resonant thrum, like wind through stone. Its body moved with sudden speed for something so massive, vines snapping loose as it lunged forward. The fog moved with it, rushing toward them in a blinding wave.
Renkai reacted instantly, meeting the charge with a growl. He slashed across the creature's face, but his claws barely scraped the thick bark-like scales. The drake swung a massive vine-wrapped limb, catching Renkai across the ribs and sending him crashing into the underbrush with a strangled gasp.
Before Lira could call out, Thalanir surged forward with a wild cry, green fire flaring around his antlers. He lowered his head and charged, striking the creature's shoulder with force enough to crack boulders. The drake staggered—but only for a moment. It responded with a coiling motion, vines lashing out like living whips. One struck Thalanir's flank, slicing through fur and drawing blood. He stumbled back with a pained snort.
"Stop!" Lira cried out—but neither beast nor forest heeded her.
The drake loomed over them now, breath billowing in thick, suffocating clouds. Renkai was already pulling himself up, blood trickling down his side. Thalanir stood tense, head lowered, antlers glowing but dimming from strain.
Then Lira felt it—a pull. Not from outside, but inside. A hum beneath her ribs, an old warmth threading through her breath.
She stepped forward.
The fog parted around her as though commanded. The drake paused mid-step, its massive head tilting. Its eyes—gold and ancient—locked with hers.
"Don't!" Renkai rasped, reaching out, but Lira ignored him. She didn't know why she moved. Only that something deep, bone-deep, told her to.
She took another step, then another.
The drake lowered its head slightly, vines twitching along its back like wind-touched branches. Its golden eyes stared through her.
Her heart pounded, but she didn't stop. She raised her hand—not high, not threatening, but open and steady. The fog curled around her wrist like smoke dancing toward firelight.
A whisper stirred the air. Not in words, but in memory. Recognition.
The vines pulsing on the creature's chest throbbed in time with her own heartbeat.
Renkai stood frozen now, bloodied and silent. Thalanir's glow flickered again—this time, calmer.
Lira placed her palm gently on the drake's thick scale. It was rough like old bark, warm beneath the cold mist.
The creature exhaled once more, and the fog rolled around them—but it no longer suffocated. It wrapped them gently, shielding, protecting.
"It remembers," she whispered. "Or it knows something I've forgotten."
Slowly, the creature lowered itself, massive limbs folding like tree roots finding rest.
An invitation.
The creature drew in a long breath, and this time, the fog it exhaled parted around her instead of smothering. It moved like wind around a flame.
Then it lowered its head.
Vines coiled loosely around its neck and shoulders, and now they pulsed in harmony with her breath. The rhythm matched. Lira reached out, trembling, and placed her hand upon one of the scales. It was rough like old bark, warm from within. Life pulsed there. Recognition passed between them, wordless but certain.
Renkai stood frozen. His claws slowly retracted, gaze locked in disbelief. "It… it chose you," he murmured.
Thalanir shifted beside him, antlers still glowing, but the tension in his stance melted into something softer.
Lira turned to them, hand still resting on the creature. "It's not just guarding something. It's been waiting."
The drake's long, vine-wrapped tail curled around behind her like a shield. The fog continued to billow from its sides and mouth, but now it moved with purpose—flowing outward like it was clearing paths rather than hiding them.
Beyond the fog, something ancient stirred: ruins, hidden stones, sunken archways almost devoured by roots. The threshold the drake had protected for so long was beginning to reveal itself.
"I think it remembers me," Lira said softly, voice touched with awe. "Or someone I once was."
The drake shifted beside her, lowering itself slowly—an invitation. A mount. A guardian.
Renkai stepped forward carefully, eyes narrowed in thought. "This changes everything."
The forest around them was no longer still. It breathed with her.
But to understand how she came to stand in the breath of a forgotten god, face to face with the last vinebound drake...
We must begin earlier.
Before the fog. Before the guardian. Before the forest even knew her name.
We must return to where it all began — to a child born beneath trembling stars, and the secret buried in her blood.
...
The forest did not welcome all who entered, but it had grown accustomed to her. At first, the trees only watched in silence as the child was laid upon the mossy earth, her cries swallowed by the thick morning mist. Her mother did not linger-no tear, no lullaby, only the trembling of her hands as she placed the wrapped bundle beneath the roots of a twisted oak. A whispered prayer to silence her guilt, then the rustle of skirts as she fled. The child was no ordinary babe, and the village midwives had seen it in her eyes-a flash like moonlight on still water, something not of their world.
She was born a witch.
No name was spoken aloud. No cradle rocked in a warm hearth-lit room. Instead, shame buried her deeper than the soil under which the villagers later claimed she had perished. Only her older brother, barely a boy himself, knew the truth. Once every few days-or weeks, depending on his courage and his father's rage-he would sneak away with a cloth-wrapped loaf, a dried root, a pouch of berries. He never stayed longer than a few minutes, never said more than her name in a whisper: "Lira."
Lira grew not like the children of the village but like the forest's own. The wind was her lullaby, the wolves her distant cousins, the stars her oldest friends. She learned to chew bark to soothe hunger and to follow ants to hidden stores of honey. She listened when the birds argued, mimicked their calls, and learned the time of year by the taste of the river.
At night, she would press her palms to the earth and feel a pulse beneath-faint, slow, patient.
Magic.
It wasn't taught to her. It was simply there, waiting for her to notice. Her fingers began to tingle when she touched wounded animals. Her eyes glowed faintly when she stood barefoot under full moons. Herbs called to her. She could smell their purpose-the fever-leaf for heat in the body, moonflower for sleep, and the secret thistle that could dull grief.
She built her first shelter from deadwood and moss, leaning it against the stone side of a hill. It leaked rain, harbored spiders, and froze through the long winters. Still, she persisted. By her twelfth winter, Lira had a garden of her own-small but vibrant, hidden among wild growth. Her hands were rough, stained with green and dirt, but her heart had softened toward the forest. It was not a prison. It was her sanctuary.
Only once had she wandered too far. A bear had snarled from the brush, not out of hunger but warning. Lira had frozen, eyes locked with the beast. In her panic, her power surged-uncontrolled, fierce-and the vines curled around her wrists, her ankles, dragging her down as if the forest itself feared her loss.
She had cried that night-not for her family, but for the not-knowing. Why was she hidden? Why was her blood different? Her brother had stopped coming days ago. Maybe he'd grown afraid. Or maybe, like the rest, he'd chosen to forget.
The loneliness settled like morning fog. Heavy. Clinging. But with it came resolve.
Lira began to keep a journal carved into birch bark, marking not only plants and seasons, but thoughts and dreams. She dreamed often of a wide world-of markets humming with voices, of other women with power in their bones, of fires shared with strangers who did not fear her eyes.
And one day, the forest whispered back: It's time.
She stood at the edge of her home-bare feet planted in the loam, heart pounding like the drumbeat of a coming storm. Her garden behind her, the worn paths of her childhood trailing off into shadow. Ahead, the unknown.
But Lira was no longer just the girl left beneath a tree.
She was a witch.
The forest was her cradle, and time its lullaby.
Now a teenager, Lira moved with confidence through the underbrush, no longer flinching at the sudden crack of twigs or the flap of startled wings. The forest had accepted her, shaped her, and in turn, she had shaped a corner of it into something like a home.
Her shelter had changed with her. What began as a shivering lean-to of branches had slowly transformed into a patchwork dwelling made of scavenged wood, discarded cloth, and forgotten things lost or thrown away by others. Rusted nails, warped boards, frayed ropes-all treasures. She lined the inside with thick moss, old cloaks found tangled on low branches, and feathers collected from fallen nests. A small stone fire pit lay at its heart, encircled by smooth river rocks she'd carried one by one. It did not warm much, but it gave light, and in the dark, light was a powerful comfort.
She had made furniture from fallen logs, shelves from split bark, even a window shutter out of a cracked mirror tied with twine to a branch. Each item told a story of wandering, of patience, of finding value in what others discarded.
Sometimes, on long walks toward the distant edge of the forest-days away by foot-she would find remnants of the world she'd never known. Ripped blankets, chipped pottery, broken wagon wheels, old buttons. Once, she found a cracked toy soldier missing its arms. Another time, she uncovered a tin box full of moldy sweets. She stared at the colorful wrappings for hours, wondering who they were meant for and what sweetness might taste like.
Her brother's visits had become rare, but not forgotten. When he came, he left strange treasures wrapped in rags or tucked under a stone near the twisted oak: things other children might take for granted. A wool sock with a hole in the toe. A candle stub. Scraps of fabric too worn to be useful to anyone else. And sometimes, most precious of all, books.
Not whole books-those were too precious, too suspicious. But pages, covers barely clinging to spines, whole chapters torn and water-stained. They smelled of smoke, age, and sometimes sorrow, but Lira adored them. She read the faded words by firelight, sounding them out slowly. The stories inside were often fragmented, like dreams half-remembered, but she pieced them together with the hunger of someone starved for other lives.
And when she couldn't make sense of the words, the dreams came.
In sleep, voices whispered to her in languages she didn't know she knew. Hands appeared in darkness, pointing, guiding, showing her herbs she'd never seen or spells she hadn't read. She awoke sometimes with words on her tongue or images burned behind her eyes-a circle of stones around a fire, a chant in rhythm with her breath, a vision of someone long dead bending to touch a sprig of sage.
Were they ancestors? Spirits? The forest itself? She didn't know, but she trusted them.
Her days followed a rhythm that was hers alone. Morning: gather herbs, mend clothes, check traps for food. Midday: read, practice simple spells, tend to her garden of roots and hardy greens. Evening: walk, sometimes far, collecting treasures and wondering about the world beyond the trees. Night: journal, dream, and learn.
She had names for animals who visited often-the crow with the crooked wing, the squirrel she found and healed, the deer who let her sit near him in silence. She spoke to them softly, not expecting answers but offering stories in return. When she cried, which happened sometimes without reason, the forest did not mock her. It hummed and held her.
Still, a quiet ache lingered. A pull.
The edge of the forest was far, and dangerous, her brother had warned. "They'll know what you are," he had once said, eyes dark with fear. "They'll see it in you. Don't go there, Lira. Not yet." But he hadn't said never.
And so sometimes, she went close. Just to look. Just to feel the open sky. Just to wonder.
And in those moments, standing in the place where the forest thinned and the unknown loomed beyond, something stirred within her. Not fear. Not quite longing.
Readiness.
Copyright © Dionida Rachel 2025.
This story is an original work of fiction written by Dionida Rachel. All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the author's prior written permission. Any similarities to real persons, living or dead, or actual events are purely coincidental.