The road out of Silvermoon was quiet beneath a silver dawn.

  Matrim and Narianna rode in silence, cloaked in muted leathers and stripped of any sigils that would mark them as Guardian or citizen. They moved like exiles—not because they had been cast out, but because the path ahead demanded secrecy, and the truth they hunted was too fragile to survive the politics of the city.

  The Guardian Archives had revealed names. Not many—most lost to time—but a few survived. Records of old Vigil members, those who had scattered after the gate was sealed. Most were dead. One, however, had vanished without a trace.

  Vaelen Thorne.

  An archivist turned warrior, once a Guardian, then a dissenter. Last seen leaving Silvermoon nearly thirty years ago.

  But there was a note. A mark on an old ledger, half-buried under layers of dust and silence.

  “Ashgrove. Deepwood. Warden’s Circle.”

  It was a druidic enclave. Remote. Ancient. Hidden in the folds of the Emerald Expanse beyond the city’s western reach.

  Matrim didn’t know druids well. He’d fought beside one, once. She’d used roots like spears and spoken in a language the wind seemed to understand. But this? This was deeper magic. Earthbound. Pre-dating the city’s leyline network.

  The kind of place that might remember what the Vigil wanted forgotten.

  Their journey was long and quiet, the sky overcast, the forests silent. No birds sang. No wind stirred the boughs above them. As they moved deeper into the Expanse, the trees grew stranger—twisted in elegant, unnatural ways, leaves shimmering faintly with green-gold hues that shifted with the light.

  “This forest feels… alive,” Matrim muttered.

  “It is,” Narianna said. “The druids don’t just live here. They shape it. And it shapes them.”

  He cast a glance sideways. “You’ve been here before?”

  “Once,” she said. “On a diplomatic escort. We didn’t go past the outer glades.”

  “And now?”

  “Now we go uninvited.”

  As they entered the grove’s heart, the air grew thick with damp, moss-sweet scent. The trees stood like ancient sentinels, watching. Testing.

  And then the forest opened.

  The Warden’s Circle wasn’t a village in any traditional sense. No houses, no roads—just a ring of colossal oaks with roots grown into shapes that resembled halls and chambers. Vines shimmered with faint sigils. Small lights danced in the underbrush, vanishing when approached.

  And in the center of it all, cloaked in robes of bark and ash, stood the druids.

  Dozens of them. Silent. Still.

  One stepped forward—tall, broad-shouldered, skin like old bark and eyes the color of storm-touched stone. He bore no weapon. He needed none.

  “You walk the edge of the Veil,” he said to them. His voice was deep, quiet, but powerful. “And it stains your scent.”

  Matrim shifted slightly. “We came seeking one of yours. A man named Vaelen Thorne.”

  The druid did not move.

  “He was once Vigil,” Narianna added. “He may know how to stop what’s coming.”

  Another silence stretched between them.

  Then the druid nodded. “Vaelen lives.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Matrim blinked. “He’s here?”

  “He is what remains of him,” the druid replied. “Follow. But tread with purpose.”

  They were led through a winding root-path into the heart of the grove, where the oldest tree—massive and hollowed with age—rose like a pillar to the sky. Within it, a chamber had been shaped. Crystals glowed faintly along the walls, illuminating a circular space filled with moss, stone, and an old man seated in meditation.

  He was thin. Pale. Skin veined with faint ley scars. Eyes closed, but not asleep. His presence felt… rooted.

  When they entered, he opened his eyes.

  Matrim felt it immediately.

  Recognition.

  Not of his face, but of his presence.

  Vaelen’s voice was little more than a whisper, but it carried clearly. “You found the door.”

  Matrim stepped closer, slow. “You knew I would.”

  “I dreamed of you,” Vaelen said. “Of fire, and fractures. Of a choice that would open the world, or end it.”

  Narianna’s hand hovered near her weapon.

  “Then you know what’s beneath the gate,” she said. “You were part of the Vigil.”

  “I was,” Vaelen replied. “Until I realized the seal wouldn’t hold forever.”

  “Then help us,” Matrim said. “Tell us how to stop it.”

  Vaelen looked at him—eyes full of something that was not hope, but sorrow.

  “You can’t stop it,” he said. “You can only choose how it returns.”

  The silence in the heart of the grove pressed in like mist—thick, still, charged with the kind of weight that came before storms or confessions. Vaelen Thorne sat cross-legged in the hollow of the ancient tree, and in his presence, even the magic in the air seemed to hold its breath.

  “You said I have to choose,” Matrim said. “What does that mean?”

  Vaelen’s eyes—clouded with age, yet sharp as shattered glass—held Matrim’s gaze.

  “Erythos is not a creature born of malice,” he said. “It is a wound. A remnant. A being forged from the ley itself—raw, unshaped, and alive with everything the ancients feared and hoped for.”

  Matrim clenched his jaw. “Then why seal it?”

  Narianna stood beside him, arms folded, her expression tight.

  “Because they failed to control it,” Vaelen said simply. “The ancients—those who shaped the first Guardians, the first oaths—they tried to use the nexus for more than balance. They sought to rewrite it. To reweave reality through the ley.”

  He exhaled, slow and ragged. “Erythos was the result.”

  Narianna’s voice was cool. “And you were part of the Vigil sent to bury it.”

  Vaelen nodded. “We sealed the gate with more than magic. We gave it part of ourselves—those attuned, bound by blood and will to the leyline’s memory. That sacrifice is what kept Erythos dreaming, not dead.”

  Matrim’s stomach twisted. “But now the seal’s failing.”

  “Because you were born,” Vaelen said.

  The words struck like thunder in a quiet valley.

  Matrim stared. “What?”

  Vaelen’s voice dropped, as if naming it aloud could summon something. “You carry the resonance. A bloodline once tied to the Vigil. Lost. Forgotten. But the ley remembers. And when Silvermoon’s defenses faltered—when the Court poisoned the root—Erythos felt you. It called.”

  Matrim took a half-step back. “I didn’t ask for this.”

  “No one ever does,” Vaelen said. “But choice doesn’t wait for permission.”

  Narianna moved closer, but her voice remained even. “Is he the only one?”

  “Now?” Vaelen’s brow furrowed. “Yes. You are the last of the resonance lines. The last piece of the seal unclaimed. Which means Erythos will seek you to complete its awakening.”

  “And if I deny it?” Matrim asked.

  Vaelen looked at him for a long time. “Then the Court will find another way. They always do. But without you, Erythos will rise wild, untethered. Without form. Without reason. The city—perhaps the world—will fracture beneath it.”

  A long silence followed.

  Matrim turned, pacing the moss-lined chamber. “So I either let it in and risk becoming something else—or deny it and let it destroy everything.”

  “There’s a third path,” Vaelen said quietly.

  Matrim stopped. “What?”

  Vaelen leaned forward, the faint glow of the crystals casting his weathered features in pale gold. “There is a way to bind it. To absorb its awakening—but control its expression. Shape what it becomes.”

  Narianna narrowed her eyes. “And what’s the cost?”

  Vaelen’s expression turned grave. “Your identity. Once you begin the bond, the leyline changes you. You don’t simply control Erythos. You become its vessel. And if your will falters for even a moment…”

  Matrim finished the thought, voice hollow. “It takes over.”

  The weight of it settled over the chamber like a shroud.

  “You said I have to choose,” Matrim said at last. “When?”

  Vaelen closed his eyes. “Soon. The gate won’t wait. When it opens next, it won’t ask.”

  Narianna stepped closer to Matrim. “We’ll find another way.”

  Vaelen’s voice was gentle. “You can try. But the Court moves quickly. Their agents are deeper in the city than you know. And the Masked King…”

  Matrim turned. “You know him?”

  Vaelen’s eyes opened. “I trained him.”

  That landed like a hammer.

  Narianna stiffened. “He was Vigil.”

  “For a time,” Vaelen said. “Until he chose ambition over balance. He wanted to use Erythos—not to destroy the old order, but to remake it in his image. He is not insane. He is patient.”

  “And he knows the cost,” Matrim said quietly.

  “Yes,” Vaelen murmured. “And he’s willing to pay it. That’s what makes him dangerous.”

  The roots above them shifted faintly. The grove whispered—warning them.

  Vaelen’s face darkened. “They’ve found me.”

  Matrim drew the Vigil blade.

  Narianna’s eyes flashed. “Then let’s show them they’re too late.”