They didn't rest long after meeting Wren. The Guild of Reckoners didn't believe in trust. It believed in documentation.
The hall was carved from a dead ruin, one of the old world's forgotten wounds. Iron beams groaned overhead, holding back collapse. Symbols of broken gods circled the ceiling in faded paint. People moved inside like they had nowhere else to go. Mercenaries, scavengers, healers with blood still drying on their hands. Even the drunk ones never turned their backs to the door.
Joe felt the weight of eyes on him the moment they entered.
"You want to live here," Wren whispered, "you play by the guild's rules. No papers, no job. No job, no coin. No coin…"
He let it hang. The clerk behind the counter wore fingerless gloves and had one eye sewn shut. He didn't look up when Kaelen placed a sigilstone on the desk.
"Iron-rank. One frost mage. One paladin. One storm-touched anomaly. Group sanctioned but untested."
He didn't blink. "You want gear, supplies, Vault access, or leave clearance, you take a contract. And don't die. Death invalidates payment."
Joe stared. "That's a rule?"
Wren muttered, "It's happened enough to write it down."
A battered folder dropped on the counter. "Two open contracts left this cycle. One's cleanup duty in the plague-ring. Burn the rot, get hazard pay. The other's from a border settlement east of the Timber."
Kaelen's eyes narrowed. "The Hollowed Timber?"
The clerk nodded. "Yeah. Caravan went missing. Whole route went dark. Last runner back had no skin left. Just teeth and screams."
Joe felt something tighten in his gut. Wren leaned closer and said, "Take the plague job. Trust me."
Joe took the Timber file. Kaelen said nothing. Riven only grunted. The clerk marked their names in ink that steamed as it dried.
"Payment's guaranteed if you bring back proof. Hazard bonus if anyone comes back speaking."
Joe didn't ask what that meant.
They left the hall with a map, a half-broken compass, and a few packs of warding salts and compressed food. It wasn't much, but it was more than they had before. Joe looked at the token in his hand, part of the guild's mark. It read: Blood for Coin. Memory for Worth. He shoved it in his coat.
The static in his bones didn't fade. If anything, it grew louder with every step east.
They had left Ascalith under gray skies, following one of the old routes marked on Kaelen's recovered map. Monarch Ellara's information had been limited, but she mentioned a leyline disruption deep within a corrupted forest to the east, a place even the Ashguard wouldn't patrol.
Kaelen had called it a fracture too deep for the city to patch. Wren just called it stupid.
The Hollowed Timber.
The trees pressed too close, not like a forest, but like ribs. There were no birds, no wind. The deeper they walked, the more sound vanished. Their footsteps became suggestion, the crunch of rot a memory.
Joe's storm itched against his skin, reacting to something nearby but refusing to strike. Riven kept his hand on his blade.
"It's too quiet."
Kaelen's frost shimmered along their fingertips. "Because this place feeds on noise. Thought. Presence."
They found the first body by accident.
It hung six feet off the ground, caught in the limbs of a bent tree. A woman. Or what had once been one. Her skin had sloughed off like old bark. Her face had been carved into a wide, grinning spiral. No blood. Just symbols etched into the exposed muscle, still pulsing faintly with glyph-light.
Wren turned pale. "These weren't animals."
Kaelen stepped closer. "No. They were studied."
Beneath the corpse lay the remnants of a cart, splintered wood and shattered wheels. A twisted set of child-sized crutches lay tossed aside like garbage.
Joe couldn't breathe. There had been a family here.
He touched the cart, and the storm surged. The air split, not forward, but back.
He saw flashes.
Children hiding beneath canvas, clutching each other. A man screaming. Trees moving like tendons. Something tall, cloaked in torn robes and bark-like armor kneeling beside a wounded girl and whispering words that unraveled her.
Joe staggered.
Kaelen caught him. "You saw it?"
He nodded. "They didn't die fast."
The forest changed as they moved deeper. Roots shifted when they weren't looking. Trees bled sap that hissed on contact. Time slipped. The sun never moved. At one point, they walked for ten minutes only to find their own footprints coming back toward them.
They almost didn't hear the crying. Soft. Guttural. Wrong.
Joe followed the sound, heart clenched tight. They found a hollow beneath a rotting pine. Inside, a small boy sat alone, eyes black, mouth open, but not breathing.
Wren whispered, "Don't."
The boy looked up. His mouth kept crying. His throat was full of teeth.
Joe stepped back, but the sound hooked into his bones.
You let me die. You didn't come back. You ran.
Kaelen whispered a counter-rune. Frost veiled the creature, and it crumbled like burnt paper.
Riven didn't speak again for an hour.
By dusk, they found what was left of the village.
Shattered shacks. Rusted wells. Scraps of prayer banners tangled in the black branches. A makeshift shrine built of children's toys stood in the center. Around it, piles of clothing, clean, intact, but filled with ash.
Kaelen touched one tunic. "This is where they burned."
Joe whispered, "No. This is where they were burned."
A wind howled, sudden and sharp. Behind the shrine, something rose.
Twisted antlers. Long arms. A mask made of children's faces stitched together into a single expression. Its chest was a cage. Inside, bones rattled. Some small. Some still clutching carved toys.
It did not speak. It screamed. And the Timber screamed with it.
Joe didn't remember the battle. Only flashes. Riven shouting. Wren bleeding. The scent of ozone and bone. Kaelen's voice calling his name through the trees.
And then nothing. Only black. Only cold.
When Joe opened his eyes, he couldn't feel his body. He lay in the ruined shrine, half-buried in ash and broken memory. His limbs wouldn't move. Kaelen knelt over him, hands pressed to his chest, eyes glowing with frigid light. The frost mage looked gaunt, strained, like part of them had been poured into the healing spell and wasn't returning.
"You're not allowed to die," Kaelen whispered. "Not like this. Not here."
Joe's lips trembled. "Did… we stop it?"
Kaelen didn't answer. Because in that moment, they weren't entirely in the present anymore.
They were back.
Back in another ruin. Another forest. Another storm.
The last storm-born had been a prodigy. Brighter than Joe. Faster. Hungrier. A boy named Etris who laughed like lightning and dreamed of breaking Torn open to rebuild it.
Kaelen had trained him. Cared for him. Believed in him.
Until the visions began. Until the power devoured his soul from the inside out.
Etris begged them to sever his core. To silence the storm before it broke.
Kaelen hesitated. And by the time they acted, half a continent was ash.
Etris was consumed. And the world would never forget his name.
Now, kneeling over Joe, Kaelen felt the same storm pulsing under cracked skin. The same power. The same risk.
But something was different.
Joe wasn't reaching for destruction. He was clinging to something smaller. Not glory. Not salvation. Just life.
Kaelen's voice cracked. "You are not him. You are not Etris. You still have a choice."
Their fingers glowed blue-white as they drew the last sigil of stabilization. The glyph seared into Joe's chest, anchoring him. Freezing the rot that had started to take hold.
Joe gasped and coughed sparks.
Alive.
Kaelen leaned back, trembling, and whispered to no one, "I won't fail again."
Joe blinked up at them, vision still swimming. "I saw him. The thing in the spire. It remembers me."
Kaelen didn't ask what he meant. They simply helped him sit up.
"I didn't save you," they said. "You're not saved. You're delayed. But that buys us time."
Joe's voice was a rasp. "To do what?"
Kaelen stared toward the black heart of the forest.
"To finish what he started."
They found the others in pieces, but breathing. Riven's arm was in a makeshift sling, Wren's ribs were wrapped tight, and neither spoke more than necessary. They had driven the Caretaker back. Not killed it. Not cleansed the Timber. Only survived.
They built a fire in silence. Not for warmth. For light. For the illusion that the things beyond the trees would keep their distance.
Joe sat beside it, cloak wrapped tight, hands trembling as the storm coiled inside his core. He looked at Kaelen.
"You knew this would happen."
"I suspected. Not this… but something. The Timber is a wound Torn doesn't want healed."
"We should leave," Riven said. "Take what's left of the bounty. Report it. Rest."
Wren scoffed. "And let whatever that was fester until it crawls out and eats the next caravan? You saw what it was building. A shrine of bones. A cage for something bigger."
Joe said, "It's not done."
Kaelen looked at him. "No. But you are."
Joe stood. "Then you better be there to put me back together."
Kaelen looked at Wren. "How far to the Rootspire?"
"Farther than we want, closer than it should be. But I know the path."
Riven sighed. "Then I guess we follow the madman."
Joe looked up through the trees, where the sky bled crimson behind twisted branches.
"Whatever's at the heart of this place… it knows I'm coming."
And the storm, faint but steady, whispered in agreement.