"To grieve with the world is to become part of it."
— Whispered teaching, source unknown
⸻
One morning, the Hermit did not wait beneath the Ash-of-Many-Eyes.
Instead, a trail of pale dust and green feathers led toward the eastern grove—where even the wind moved warily, and birdsong faded at the edge of something older than fear.
There, rooted in cracked earth, stood a tree.
Dead—but still listening.
Its bark was scorched at the base, curling like skin kissed by fire and left to mourn. Its leaves drooped, brittle with sorrow, too tired to fall. Around it, the forest leaned away—reverent. Guilty.
The Hermit stood near a low ridge, his staff sunk into the soil like an oath. His expression: unreadable. Not stern. Not soft.
Just worn by time.
"There's rot beneath it," he said. "Not sickness. Memory. Something buried that refuses to pass."
He crouched, pressing his hand to the ground. Threads flickered faintly around his fingers—sharp, brittle, cautious.
"This tree was once a sentinel," he murmured. "It sang with the Threads of this glade. But grief rooted too deeply. Now it forgets how to grow."
Casamir stepped forward.
Slow. Steady.
And yet… drawn.
He could feel it again—that pressure beneath the Threads. Not rejection. Hesitation. As though the world had curled its grief so tightly, it forgot how to speak.
"They won't respond to me," he said softly. "They never do."
The Hermit tilted his head.
"Then don't speak like yourself."
⸻
Casamir knelt at the roots.
He didn't reach.
Didn't summon.
Didn't command.
He just opened his hands.
Closed his eyes.
Listened.
At first—nothing.
The silence between the Threads was sharp. Cold. Like falling through frozen water.
But deeper, beneath bark and sorrow—
Something stirred.
A single thread.
Faint.
Dry.
Buried like a splintered vow.
It trembled.
A mother's lullaby. A battle prayer. A name whispered at the edge of breath.
It was still trying to remember how to sing.
And it recognized him.
⸻
A storm.
A horizon split by fire.
Smoke curling where laughter once lived.
A warrior—bloodied, armored—knelt at the tree's base, cradling a child wrapped in red and wool.
No breath.
Only stillness.
"Remember them for me," the warrior whispered, voice cracked and hollow.
Then silence.
Not empty—
But waiting to be carried.
The thread shuddered.
Casamir gasped.
Not pain.
Recognition.
⸻
"Too much sorrow," the Hermit said gently behind him. "If you carry it with your will, the Threads will snap. If you reject it, they'll close forever."
Casamir's body trembled. The grief wasn't his.
But it wore his shape.
It echoed through him like a place he'd once loved and lost.
The tree… wept.
Not with sap.
With ache.
So he did what no spell could do.
What no force could command.
He offered.
He gave it Karnox—not all at once. First the edges. The little wounds.
The way the red dust clung to the windows after firestorms. The feel of iron stairs that burned his palms. The sharp scent of metal near sleep. The small ritual Narel had for chasing silence away—clicking her tongue like a bird, then laughing when it echoed.
He gave it the moment he failed to make her laugh again.
He gave it the sound of her scream—and the silence after.
He gave it the observatory ceiling collapsing—not from rage or war, but from age, from sorrow.
He gave it the sound of a thousand children holding their breath.
And the emptiness left in him, when they stopped.
He gave it the way Narel looked at him once and said, "Promise me something will outlast this." And how he never could.
He gave it—not his power.
His longing.
Not all of it.
Just enough.
Enough to say:
I remember, too.
⸻
The tree didn't flinch.
It leaned.
Wood creaked—slow, reluctant. A single branch shifted. One brittle leaf, long dead, blushed faintly green.
The thread moved. Not like light.
Like cloth.
Slow. Soft.
A breath returning to a forgotten lung.
Two griefs.
One wound.
For a moment—
The tree remembered how to feel.
Its leaves stirred. Its roots sighed. One bark-knot along its spine began to soften.
Casamir collapsed backward.
Breath shaking.
Hands open.
The air shimmered faintly around him—like recognition.
The Hermit stepped forward, pressing his hand to the bark.
"You didn't fix it," he said. "You reminded it how to grieve."
He paused, hand resting on the living scar of bark, as if listening to something old and careful beneath it.
"There are wounds so old," he murmured, "they forget they were ever bleeding. Grief becomes soil. Becomes stone. And still it waits for someone to listen."
He looked at Casamir—not with pride.
With kinship.
"You didn't offer healing," he said. "You offered memory. That's rarer."
Then turned, studying him for a long moment.
A pause.
Then—
A whisper of a smile beneath his voice.
"You're not bound," he said. "Not yet. But something's starting to listen."
Casamir didn't answer.
He watched the tree—not with wonder, but with something smaller.
Like apology.
A single leaf had turned. That was all. But in that shift, the world had said: I heard you.
And that, somehow, broke him more than silence ever had.
He touched the soil with one hand, fingers sinking past the surface—into damp roots, into what lingered beneath. He could still feel the sorrow echoing in the Threads below, not gone, not soothed.
Just seen.
For the first time, he understood what the Hermit had meant by presence as practice. It wasn't about waiting. It was about being held—by place, by stillness, by things that had no words left but still leaned toward light.
The Hermit watched him quietly. Then, in a voice just above breath:
"We want to save what we love."
A pause. "But some things do not need saving. They need remembering."
He tapped his staff once against stone.
"And some griefs cannot be lifted. Only honored."
Casamir closed his eyes.
For a moment, he imagined the wind in Karnox carrying this moment back—carrying green across rust, silence across fire. But no. Karnox was gone.
Still, the tree had taken something of it. And that meant it would never fully die.
⸻
The night did not still.
Fireflies hummed in slow circuits.
Elder trees murmured in the root-tongue—soft syllables that only bark remembered.
The Hermit stood near the southern stones, his staff buried in loam like a promise.
He tapped his staff once.
A thread shimmered in the air.
Red-gold.
Not fire.
Not severance.
A rhythm like ember-breath.
A pulse that did not belong to the glade.
He reached—not to take.
To witness.
It stirred.
Not in fear.
In distance.
The spiral shimmered—irregular, unanchored. A scar, not a glyph. A memory pulled too far from its source.
It flickered with hesitation—like it didn't know who had called it, or why.
But it circled, slow, uncertain.
Not warning.
Searching.
The Hermit narrowed his eyes.
"This isn't ours," he murmured.
He turned toward the hut.
⸻
Inside, Casamir slept.
Curled on his side.
Hands twitching.
Not dreaming.
Threading.
Light pulsed beneath his skin.
Veins of memory.
Veins of coal.
Not awakened.
But remembering.
Something in him had called.
Something old had begun to answer.
⸻
Far off, in a vault the Empire no longer claimed, a glyph blinked into half-light.
Not imperial. Not bound.
A symbol carved for mourning—and forgotten.
It split—not cleanly, but like a voice trying to speak again.
And somewhere between Thread and Dream—
The origin of the toll did not sound.
But it watched.