The Thorn-Wombed Queen did not stir at first.
She hung as she always had. A cruciform colossus of rot and reverence, vines coiled around her limbs like ceremonial bindings, her crown of bone petals tilted just slightly toward the horizon. The paladins stood in their circle, spears lifted, lips moving in rigid devotion. Their prayers sounded like waves breaking over stone: rhythmic, trembling, hollow. Some had grown bolder. A few had even begun to approach, step by armored step, beneath the illusion that the thing was harmless, or maybe even spent and utterly useless.
What came instead was a shift in the air, subtle at first, a pressure behind the lungs, like the moment before thunder. The paladins closest to the root-ring took half a step back, their armor clinking, their discipline momentarily frayed. Something about the Queen's stillness had changed. She no longer hung limp like an offering or a grotesque relic. The vines that held her were tense now. Drawn taut
