Chapter 5 – Ash Beneath the Roots
Night fell on Elsera'Veyr,and the Songtrees low, mournful songs hummed through the branches. Aurther sat by the bowed window of his moss-spun room, looking at the stars—so close, so impossibly within reach.
He hadn't spoken much since the Council. Since he'd learned the truth: that he had died, that he was something else now. A shell filled with something ancient. Something that didn't belong.
Lysaria entered silently, her cloak pulled tight around her. "You've been awake all night."
"I cannot sleep," he said. "Every time I shut my eyes, I see that tower. That version of me… watching the world burn."
She crossed the room, sat beside him, and lowered her voice. "The Seer of Mossglass. We go out tonight."
Aurther blinked. "But the Council—"
"They forbade it. I know. But Thaerion gave us this." She pulled from her sleeve a leaf-shaped medallion, silver-veined and warm to the touch. "It will open an old, forgotten tunnel under the rootwall. Old ways. Dangerous, but unguarded. For the moment."
He stared at her.
"You'd risk exile for me?"
Lysaria looked away. "It's not just about you. Something stirs in this world again. And if you're the tempest on the horizon, I must know what kind."
They moved under the veil of night.
Lysaria led them along garden-paths darkened by shadow, past sleeping glow-orbs and mute sentinels. Aurther followed, the leaf-medallion hidden under his tunic, every step a thunderclap in his head.
At the outer rootwall of Ysmeraehth, they found it—a mossy archway grown into the side of an ancient root. Lysaria held the medallion against the wood, and the bark creaked open.
Inside: a tunnel. Black, wet, cold.
"Hold your breath," she whispered. "The air here remembers."
They had not gone far when the sound of boots echoed behind them.
"Halt!"
They turned.
A band of elven wardens—seven, maybe eight—stood in moonsteel and leafmail armor, weapons drawn. One stepped forward. His eyes were ice.
"You defy the Council. Turn back now."
Lysaria whispered, "Run."
But Aurther did not move. His arms were stone. His breath was frost. The guard's words echoed in his mind, but so did another sound—older, deeper.
A whisper.
"Let them try…"
He blinked. The world darkened at the edges.
And the air changed.
The nearest guard stepped ahead, sword in hand.
Lysaria screamed, "Aurther—!"
She was too late already.
The shadows on the ground at Aurther's feet stirred.
A pulse—a wave of unnatural chill spread outward. The guards faltered. One fell back as black tendrils sprouted from the ground, coiling around his leg, dragging him down.
"What sorcery is this?!"
Aurther's hands trembled, and then black mist burst from them—slow, famished, curling like smoke from a dead pyre. The runes on the tunnel walls throbbed, as if in pain.
A voice in his mind said:
"You are not of the Twelve. You are of the Forgotten One."
Then silence.
The shadows vanished.
The guards were ripped apart limb by limb, Aurther was covered in blood.
Lysaria grabbed Aurther's wrist. "We have to go—NOW!"
They ran.
Through thorns and bare roots, on paths forgotten but for fungi lantern light. Behind them, horns. Alarm calls. The trees whispered.
They emerged far outside the walls, gasping, just as the horizon began to bleed light. A high hill stood before them, crowned with a broken statue—a stone stag, mossgrown and cracked. It faced east.
Towards Mossglass.
Towards the Singing Tree.
Aurther fell to his knees, breathing hard. "What was that… what the fuck was that?"
Lysaria whispered. "That wasn't elven magic or any other type of magic I have ever seen." "
"That wasn't of the Twelve."
He looked at his hands. They were coved in blood, with his fingertips blackened.
Lysaria laid a hand on his shoulder. "I promise we will figure out what's happening to you, and try not to lose your humanity."
They saw the smoke pouring from the spires of Elsera'Veyr from the high ridge. The horns still rang in the far distance.
A sigil branded the air above the city—a mark of exile. A spiraling scar.
"They'll never stop hunting us," Lysaria said.
"Then they will come to fear what hunts back," Aurther whispered.
They turned their backs on the city and began their descent eastward. The path to Mossglass lay before them—long, broken, filled with the remnants of the ancient world.
They would learn the truth of the Ancient 12.
They would uncover the history of the Blood War.
And Aurther would begin to understand what had taken root within him.
Not a gift.
Not a curse.
But something older than both.
Something waiting to awaken
[End of Chapter 5]