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Chapter 21 - The Lone Tree

Asha stirred awake to the slow drip of water echoing through stone. The air was damp, heavy with silence and the faint scent of moss and minerals. The last thing she remembered was the river's fury—the fall, the cold, the chaos.

Then her eyes fell upon Kai.

He lay beside her, curled slightly, his body shivering despite the cavern's relative warmth compared to the water. His back was torn open from shoulder to hip in jagged, red gashes. Bruises and cuts littered across his arms and legs from the fierce grinding of the river and rocks.

Old blood matted with new, crusted across his skin, and the breath that escaped his lips came faint and shallow.

"No," she whispered, crawling to him on hands and knees. "No, no, no—Kai, please."

The sight of her son riddled with such dreadful wounds brought her to tears, instantly waking her up.

She pressed her palm to his cheek. Cold. Too cold. She unfastened her tattered cloak and wrapped it around him, pulling his head gently into her lap. Her own wounds—scrapes along her arms, bruises blooming beneath her skin, the pounding ache in her head—were forgotten in an instant.

Her son was dying.

She held him tighter. Her eyes only beheld his young, but wan face, with fresh cuts already scabbing over.

She could still see the echoes of childishness. Memories of him as a newborn surfaced. How happy she felt as she cradled his tiny, vulnerable form in her arms.

Proof that she wasn't alone.

Asha could only bemoan that time passed by too quickly, that her baby is growing up far too fast.

She felt a suffocating pressure rising from her chest filled with helplessness.

She could only look around as she thought about what to do.

The cavern around them was vast, echoing in all directions, the ceiling a jagged dome of stone far overhead. A single shaft of sunlight poured from an opening high above, a golden beam stabbing through the gloom. It pierced the cavern's heart, and where it landed—at the center of the island—they had washed upon—a tree grew.

A single, lone tree.

It stood barely taller than a man, its slender, pale trunk smooth as bone. From its branches hung delicate pink leaves that fluttered despite the still air. The tree grew directly in the circle of sunlight, as if placed there by design—an altar of life beneath the eye of heaven.

Asha's gaze lingered on it. She had never seen anything like it. Not in the forest village, not in the frozen mountains, not in any tale whispered around old fires. It stood untouched, glowing softly like a memory made real.

But she didn't have time to marvel.

Kai needed warmth. Heat. Fire.

She laid him gently down, covering him as best she could, and rose on trembling legs. Her joints protested, but she forced them into motion, staggering toward the tree. If it had lived here this long, its wood must be dry enough to burn. A few sturdy branches could mean the difference between life and death.

She reached out, fingers closing around one of the lower boughs.

It moved.

In a flash, the branch recoiled like a whip, snapping backward and sending her flying. She landed hard on her side, the breath punched out of her lungs, stars bursting behind her eyes.

What...?

She lay still for a moment, stunned. The tree was motionless again, as if nothing had happened.

She pushed herself upright, wary now. Her gaze darted around the cavern for signs of danger—none. The water lapped calmly against the island's edge. The shaft of sunlight still bathed the tree in radiance.

But the tree had moved.

It had thrown her.

Otherwise had she thrown herself?

Although Asha didn't feel herself to be in a good condition, it wasn't to the point that she was hallucinating.

There was nothing else around except for her and this lone tree.

Asha's heart pounded against her ribs. Was it cursed? Possessed? Some guardian left behind by old magic?

She hesitated, then took a tentative step forward.

"Are you..." Her voice cracked. She swallowed and tried again. "Are you...alive?"

No response. Not a quiver. The leaves rustled faintly, like whispers she couldn't hear.

She drew closer, step by step, until she stood at the edge of the tree's reach.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I thought—I thought my son might die. I just needed firewood. Just a branch."

Still, nothing.

She circled slowly around it, careful not to step too close again. Her hands wrung together unconsciously, fingers trembling. "If you're something old… something sacred—I didn't mean to insult you."

Silence.

She sank to her knees, staring at the roots that curled like ancient fingers around the rocky soil. "I know how it sounds," she muttered. "Talking to a tree. Have I lost my mind?"

Her voice cracked again. She looked up toward the beam of light that framed the tree in gold. If she squinted her eyes, she could just make out the pale blue sky far beyond.

"I can't lose him," she whispered. "I just got him back. You don't understand. He was all I had left in this world—and then I almost lost him. And now... I don't know what to do. There's no healer here. No help. No one."

She covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders trembled slightly.

"I tried to be strong. For him. But I'm scared. I'm cold. I don't know how to save him."

Tears spilled through her fingers. The grief she'd kept locked deep within finally cracked, flowing freely.

Only she knew how much she had been holding back. Maintaining a strong front so that the burden on her son would be lessened.

He has enough on his shoulders as it is and he's still so young, not even an adult. Yet, she relies on him more than he relies on her.

She is a lonely person after all. Born without a family. Cursed then abandoned by her tribe. Abducted by a wild savage who cared little for her except as a breeding sow.

It was only her son that was the first and only person who has ever expressed such love and care for her. He was truly even more precious than her own life. Just the thought of living without Kai by her side, her heart couldn't bear it.

She would gladly trade her life for his if it was possible, for then she could finally be of use to him. So that she can protect him.

She knelt there, sobbing quietly, her voice vanishing into the cavern's wide emptiness. The tree said nothing.

Until it moved.

A branch, no thicker than a reed, lowered slowly toward her. Asha flinched and looked up.

It was gentle this time.

The branch curled forward and touched her cheek, dabbing away a tear with the tip.

Asha froze. She didn't know what to think.

She had witnessed all sorts of strange creatures throughout her journey, but a tree that could move its branches with human-like grace was completely new to her.

She had always thought plants were just plants, they only knew how to grow. But this—this was beyond her comprehension.

And then, before her stunned eyes, a bud swelled on the tip of the branch. Its delicate casing unfurled with a soft rustle, petals opening like the yawn of dawn. From within bloomed a figure—small, strange, and wondrous.

It wasn't floating. It was still part of the branch itself.

A tiny form, no larger than an apple, emerged from the blossom. Its upper body rose from the wood like a sculpture coaxed out of bark and leaf—shoulders and arms shaped from smooth grain, tinged with hues of pink and green, its skin like the petal-veined surface of a blooming flower. Pink leaf-like hair fanned out around a face with wide, curious eyes the color of wet moss.

It tilted its head. It's face still resembled a human's, with two eyes and a mouth.

Still connected to the tree by its lower body, the sprite swayed with the branch's motion, as if the tree itself breathed through her. She did not speak. She only looked at Asha with a quiet, enigmatic gaze.

Asha blinked, her breath caught. "You…"

She didn't finish.

The sprite's tiny hand—leaf-thin and faintly translucent—reached forward with the slow grace of vines unfurling toward sunlight. It touched Asha's chest, just over her heart. A gentle pulse bloomed there.

Warm. Alive.

And in that moment, Asha felt something impossible: recognition.

Not from gods. Not from beasts. Not from the hungry, hollow world above. But from something softer, natural—a presence born of root and stone, grown in quiet darkness and fed by the beam of a forgotten sun.

Asha lowered her head, tears brimming again.

The sprite didn't flinch. She simply watched, and as a teardrop fell, another small bud bloomed at the base of the branch.

Asha's breath hitched. She looked back toward Kai's broken form.

And she dared—quietly, painfully—to hope.

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