We didn't stop running until the forest stopped being a forest at all—
and became something older.
Selaithe dragged me through narrow clearings and choking thickets, her grip iron-tight around my wrist. Branches clawed at my cloak, tearing fabric. Roots rose from the earth like reaching fingers, lunging for my boots as if the ground itself wanted to trip me, claim me, keep me.
Behind us, the horns of the Grand Church faded—first into distant echoes, then into memory. The village fell away. The banners. The shouting. The almost-home.
Ahead of us, the trees remembered things older than the Fall.
Their trunks leaned inward, warped by centuries of twisted mana flow, bark split and blackened in places where the Waeve had pooled and rotted. Vines coiled around them like veins, pulsing faintly with sickly yellow and green light. Leaves didn't fall so much as drift, caught in a wind that didn't exist—circling, orbiting, as if something unseen held them in place.
The air hummed. Not sound. Pressure.
The Waeve was thick here. Tangled. Breathing.
Sel slowed.
Her grip tightened, then loosened, then tightened again. She looked back at me, eyes wide—not sharp, not feral, not the Wild Fang I knew.
Just… afraid.
"Something's horribly wrong…" she whispered.
Her voice wavered. For a heartbeat, she didn't sound like Selaithe at all—
but like a little girl who'd stepped somewhere she wasn't meant to be.
"I—I really don't like this…"
I stopped.
She took two more steps before realizing I wasn't moving, then nearly stumbled as the pull between us broke.
"Selaithe—are you okay?" I asked.
The forest seemed to lean closer, listening.
"I am…" she said automatically.
But her hands were shaking.
I saw it clearly now—the tremor in her fingers, the tightness in her shoulders, the way her breath came shallow and uneven. Something was wrong. Something deep. Something that wasn't just fear.
The mana here was wrong. Heavy. Overgrown. Pressing against the skin like damp cloth. And the Waeve—
The Waeve was alive.
It glowed in my sight like a web of fractured light, threads too bright and too tight, pulling inward toward a center I couldn't see. Even without looking, I could feel it tugging at me. At my aura. At the thing inside my chest that never stayed quiet for long.
Sel couldn't see the Waeve.
But she could feel it.
Her aura reacted violently—flaring, recoiling, then bristling like an animal sensing a predator it couldn't name. Wood elves were born to forests, but this place… this place wasn't natural. It was sick. Or worse.
⟡
I felt it before I understood it.
Not heat. Not cold.
Sound.
A pressure-wave, deep and subsonic, rolling through my spine from where Ashriven rested against my back. It came in intervals—steady, patient, merciless. Every few heartbeats, the pulse returned, vibrating through bone and breath alike, like seismic tremors crawling up from the roots of the world.
Ten seconds.
Again.
Ten seconds.
The blade was not moving. The cloth around it did not stir. And yet it beat, like a second heart I had never been meant to have.
Calling.
Not loudly. Not urgently.
Certainly.
My fingers twitched before I told them to. My breath shortened. The Waeve around us tightened, threads drawing inward toward the sword as if Ashriven were a nail being driven through reality, pulling everything else with it.
Selaithe noticed before I spoke.
Her step faltered. Her shoulders went rigid. Slowly, she turned her head, eyes dropping—not to my face, but to the hilt over my shoulder.
"…Kaelen," she said. My name came out wrong. Thin. Frayed. "Your sword."
"I know," I whispered. My teeth were clenched so hard my jaw ached. "I feel it too."
Another pulse rippled outward.
The trees groaned. Leaves spiraled tighter in their impossible orbit. The pressure in the air thickened until breathing felt like pushing through wet cloth.
My hand rose, unbidden, fingers curling around the wrapped hilt.
Selaithe lurched forward, grabbing my sleeve with both hands.
"D-don't," she said, and this time there was no sharpness in her voice at all. Only fear. Naked and shaking. "Don't do anything stupid. I don't—" She swallowed hard. "I don't feel like I could rescue you this time."
I looked at her then. Really looked.
Her pupils were blown wide. Her aura—usually wild, coiled, ready to strike—was recoiling in on itself like an injured animal. The forest pressed too close around her. Whatever lived here did not recognize her as kin.
This place had taken something from her already.
"I'll be careful," I said.
I don't know if I believed it. I only know I needed to say it.
I drew Ashriven.
The moment the blade cleared the cloth, the world screamed.
Not outward.
Inward.
A shriek of forged metal tearing through my skull, sharp enough to split thought from thought. I cried out and dropped the sword instantly, clutching my head as pain detonated behind my eyes. The sound wasn't sound at all—it was recognition collapsing into noise, a cathedral bell struck inside my brain.
I hit the ground on my knees.
The forest reeled. Light fractured. The Waeve convulsed, threads snapping taut, vibrating so violently they burned white in my sight.
When the dizziness finally loosened its grip, I lifted my head, gasping.
Selaithe stood where she had been.
Breathing. Steady. Unharmed.
Watching me with wide eyes—but not in pain.
Not reacting.
As if nothing had happened.
As if the scream had been meant for me alone.
A cold realization slid into place.
"…You didn't hear it," I murmured.
Sel shook her head slowly. "Hear what?"
My gaze dropped to the sword lying in the dirt between us. Silent now. Innocent. Just a wrapped length of metal resting among leaves and rot.
Of course.
Ashriven was soul-bound.
Not attuned.
Bound.
It almost made sense. Almost. A weapon tied not to sound or steel, but to me. To the thing I carried in my chest that the Waeve never quite accepted.
But then—
Why scream now?
Why here?
In a place drowned in mana so thick it felt rotten. In a forest where the Waeve breathed wrong. In a land that predated names and borders and bloodlines alike.
I staggered to my feet and approached the blade again.
This time, when I lifted it, the sound did not explode.
It whispered.
Hiss.
Hiss.
Creak.
Like ancient hinges opening somewhere deep inside my skull.
The forest leaned closer.
And then the voice came—not through my ears, but behind my thoughts, filling every hollow place at once. It was vast and fractured, layered with echoes of iron and oath and ruin.
A voice that did not ask.
A voice that remembered.
"Heir of Selkareth…"
My breath caught.
"Bearer of ash."
"The one who doomed the bloodline."
The sword grew impossibly heavy in my hands.
⟡
"He must prove that he is worthy…"
"…of whatever he believes himself to be."
Ashriven did not speak to me.
It spoke through me.
The words did not arrive as sound but as pressure—concepts forced into my mind like iron pressed into soft clay. I knew, instinctively, that the blade did not recognize Kaelen. It recognized a position. A lineage. A failure that had not yet finished echoing.
Me.
"What do you—" I swallowed hard. Even that small movement sent a lance of pain down my throat. My voice came out hoarse, scraped raw from the inside. "What do you mean?"
Each word felt stolen. As if the sword were borrowing my mana to speak, draining it not violently, but inevitably. The Waeve inside me twisted tight, threads drawn inward, consumed by the act of listening.
"The heir stands upon rot."
The forest dimmed.
"This land is Zharuval Hezkironn."
"Domain of the Xiraveth."
"Originator of the Beast Style."
My breath caught.
The Xiraveth.
Not a master. Not a founder in the way the Academy used the word.
A source.
Someone—or something—that had not learned the style, but birthed it. A living contradiction etched into the Waeve itself.
Beast Style.
The way my body moved when my mind couldn't keep up. The instinct that guided my blade when thought failed. The thing Calden had never taught me, only warned me about.
"The heir must advance."
The pressure deepened.
"The statue calls."
And just like that—
Silence.
Ashriven's weight shifted in my hands, becoming merely heavy instead of unbearable. The pulse vanished. The screaming tension in the Waeve loosened, threads slackening like a breath finally released.
The forest did not return to normal.
But it stopped pressing.
I stood there, staring at the blade, chest rising and falling too fast, heart hammering like it was trying to outrun what I had just heard.
What had just happened?
Questions crowded my mind, tumbling over one another.
What is this place?
Who was Zharuval Hezkironn?
What is a Xiraveth really?
And why did Ashriven bring me here?
One thing settled beneath the confusion like a stone sinking through water:
We hadn't wandered into danger.
We had been led.
Somewhere ahead of us—past the warped trees, past the sick glow and knotted mana—something waited. Not a creature. Not an ambush.
A relic.
A proving ground.
A memory that refused to stay buried.
A mana abomination, perhaps—but one with intent.
"Kael?"
Selaithe's voice cut through the fog, sharp enough to anchor me. Her hand tugged at my shoulder, grounding, real.
"Why are you talking to your sword?"
I blinked and turned toward her.
She looked… better. Still pale, still tense, but the raw panic from earlier had dulled. She wasn't the Wild Fang yet—but she wasn't that frightened girl anymore either.
"I…" I exhaled slowly, forcing my breath to steady. "I honestly have no idea what just happened."
That much was true.
"I just know," I added, quieter now, "that we have to keep going forward."
Her brow furrowed immediately. "How do you know that?"
She pressed the waterskin into my hands, watching me carefully as I drank. The cold water burned on the way down.
"The—" I stopped myself.
For some reason, the words stuck. Not fear. Not mistrust.
Something else.
A sense that whatever Ashriven had spoken… wasn't meant to be shared yet.
"That's not important right now," I said instead. "I'll tell you later."
I looked past her, toward the thinning tree line where the forest opened into a distant clearing. The air there shimmered faintly, as if something massive had once stood and left its shadow behind.
"How are you feeling?" I asked.
Sel hesitated, then nodded. "Better." She rubbed her arms once, as if shaking off a lingering chill. "I don't know what came over me earlier. That place just—" She stopped, jaw tightening. "It felt wrong."
"I know."
We stood there for a moment, neither of us moving.
We're still just kids, I thought.
Two children running—from Veyr, from Calden, from the Church, from banners and horns and the truth carved into the stone halls of my home in Tharionne.
And yet the Waeve kept dragging us toward things far older than any of that.
I tightened my grip on Ashriven.
Whatever waited ahead—
It wasn't finished with House Selkareth.
And it definitely wasn't finished with me.
⟡
"Can we just… rest for a bit?" Selaithe whispered.
She sounded thin. Worn around the edges. Not teasing. Not sharp.
I slowed and turned. She stood there with one hand braced against a tree, shoulders rising and falling too fast. The forest pressed close around us, the air still thick with that wrongness I couldn't stop feeling.
"We've been running for miles," she went on quietly. "I don't want to push myself more. Not like this."
"What's happening, Sel?" I asked. "You haven't been yourself since we crossed into this forest. I know a lot's happened, but—"
"Don't worry about me, Kael." She waved it off too quickly and dropped down cross-legged right in the middle of the path, grass whispering under her weight. "I just need a minute."
I frowned. Sitting in the open like that was careless. Not like her.
"…Alright," I said after a moment. "I'll keep watch."
She tilted her head, eyes glinting again—there it was, the familiar spark. "Or," she said lightly, "you could finally show me how good you are with that sword. You carry it everywhere, but the last time you actually used it was back in Sylrienn."
She smirked. Daring me.
I snorted. "You really think I won't?"
"Oh, I'm counting on it."
I sighed and reached back, drawing Ashriven.
No weight pressed into my bones this time. No hum. No pulse. Just steel—wrapped, quiet, obedient. A normal sword, if such a thing could exist anymore.
Sel watched me with open curiosity now, chewing slowly on a piece of bread she'd pulled from her pouch.
I remembered Calden's voice.
Structure first. Control before force.
"Dragon Style," I muttered.
First form.
Horizontal guard. Blade angled down. Elbow tucked. Left foot forward. Right heel light.
I pointed with my chin. "That tree."
"Mhm," Sel hummed, unfazed.
I stepped in and slashed.
Boink.
The blade bounced.
I tried again—cleaner, sharper.
Boink.
The tree stood unscarred, unmoved.
"…Shit."
Sel stared for half a second—then burst out laughing.
"Oh gods," she wheezed. "Kael. Have you ever actually held a sword before?"
"Shut up!" My ears burned as I lowered the blade. "It's not—"
"What was that?" she grinned. "I've never seen that style."
"It's Dragon Style," I snapped. "Noble form. You wouldn't know it."
"That's all you know?" she shot back, still laughing.
"No."
And that was true.
I let the guard drop. Let the rules fall away.
Beast Style didn't begin with thought—it began with intent.
The tree stopped being a tree.
It became prey.
I moved.
Low. Forward. Fast.
My body took over, every step sharp and predatory. No flourish. No wasted motion. Ashriven cut through bark like it wasn't there—branches falling before Sel could even gasp.
Then—
Veilstep.
The world folded.
I was behind the tree in a blink, driving the blade forward. Wood split with a deep, hollow crack as Ashriven punched clean through the trunk.
I exhaled hard, chest heaving. "…Hah. That was—"
I blinked. "Huh. I didn't even realize I'd improved."
Sel wasn't laughing anymore.
She stared at the ruined tree, then at me, eyes wide and unreadable.
"…Kaelen," she said slowly. "You really surprised me."
I chuckled, relief creeping in. "Yeah? Then why don't you show me what you can do? You're always dodging the question. What style do you even use?"
Her gaze lingered on Ashriven for a second too long.
Then she smiled.
"Ever heard of Demon Style?"