*The Sylvan Border - Day 7 After the Fall*
The forest announced itself through smell—green and aware, like thoughts growing. Then sound—not wind but breathing, words in language older than speech. Finally, feeling—being observed by something vast and unsympathetic.
Ora stood where grass met shadow. Behind her, seven days' journey north, Crysillia had become the Harmonic Graveyard—a place where crystal songs burst randomly from the ruins, lethal melodies that could turn flesh to glass in seconds. Time stuttered there differently, moments repeating or skipping. The crystallization disease was already spreading among scavengers foolish enough to approach.
Colors had degraded further. Greens looked gray now, reds had become brown. Day seven, and the world was losing its palette. The constant taste of ash had settled permanently on her tongue—not just the memory of Crysillia's burning, but something deeper, like her saliva had turned to dust. Her body ran five degrees colder now, cold enough that her breath misted even in warm air. The woods recoiled from her presence. Not physically—trees didn't move. But air shifted like a great eye blinking in disgust.
The path appeared without her looking for it. One moment, wall of trees. Next moment, suggestion of softer earth between roots, barely visible unless you knew how to see it. The Sylvani didn't build roads—they convinced the forest to allow passage.
An hour in, her skin began to itch. Not surface irritation—this was under the skin, in the meat, like her muscles were growing fur on the inside. She scratched until she bled. The blood came out wrong. Too dark. Too thick. When it hit the forest floor, moss recoiled in a perfect circle.
Then, singing.
Not human song. Not even normal Sylvani song. This was language that grew rather than was spoken, sentences that started as seeds in the throat and bloomed into meaning by the time they reached ears. The Crystal Mother's stolen omnilingualism translated, but reluctantly:
*"Death walks among us on legs of flesh and sorrow, Corruption spreads from footsteps knowing no tomorrow, The crystal child brings the doom she fled, Walking, walking, walking, though her heart is dead."*
"I hear you." Her voice cracked on the second word. "Show yourselves."
The singing stopped like a throat being cut.
They emerged from within trees. Not behind them. Not stepping out from cover. They came *through* the bark like it was water, leaving no mark, no damage. Wood and flesh were negotiable boundaries here.
Three Sylvani, though she could feel dozens more. In the roots beneath her feet. In the canopy above. In the air itself, riding pollen like tiny ships.
The eldest stepped forward. Gender was meaningless—the Sylvani grew their bodies like gardens, changing with seasons and needs. This one had chosen to be ancient today, bark-rough skin and lichen beard, eyes like knotholes that had seen centuries.
"Ashkore."
The name hit her like a slap. She wasn't Ashkore yet. Was she?
"Burned Child. Crystal Corruption. Walking Death. Song-Breaker. Memory Thief." Each title came with weight, pressing down on her shoulders. "We've been discussing you for three days."
"Three days? I only just—"
"The forest knew you were coming the moment you chose this path. Every bird carried news of you. Every root tasted the death you trail. Every leaf turned to watch you approach." The elder circled her, not walking but flowing, feet never quite touching ground. "You're more broken than we expected."
"I need help."
"No." The second Sylvan laughed like wind through bone chimes. Younger-seeming, though age meant nothing here. Wearing flowers that bloomed and died and bloomed again in fast-forward. "You need power. Help would be teaching you to live with what you are. Power is becoming something else entirely. Don't confuse them."
The elder's hand stopped an inch from Ora's skin. "You leak corruption like a cracked vessel leaks poison. Every moment you exist, you damage the Weave."
"The Weave?"
The third Sylvan hadn't spoken yet. Now they did—form shifting constantly, painfully. Young warrior with fresh scars became old crone with ancient ones. Child with fearful eyes became elder with knowing ones. Male-female-neither-both, every self this being had ever worn or would wear crowded into the same impossible space.
"She doesn't even know what she's breaking." The shifting one's voice came from all ages simultaneously. "Typical crystal-child. All knowledge, no wisdom. All power, no understanding."
"The Weave is connection," the elder explained. "Every living thing connects to every other. Trees to fungi to insects to birds to clouds to rain to trees again. Infinite web of relationship. You're acids on silk. You dissolve connections just by existing."
"Then help me stop."
"Why?"
The question was genuine curiosity. Why would beings of pure life help an avatar of death?
"Because the dragons will come for you next. They destroyed Crysillia looking for something. How long before they decide the Sylvan Realm has what they want?"
"Dragons are broken." The flower-wearer spoke with petals falling from their lips. "We felt their Chorus shatter. They'll never sing together again. A thousand years before they remember harmony."
"But they're still alive. Still angry. Still powerful."
"So are avalanches. We don't negotiate with those either."
The shifting one stepped closer. Reality warped around them, trying to accommodate all their temporal states at once. Ora's eyes began to bleed from trying to focus.
"But you're not here to negotiate. You're here to become."
They all looked at something behind her. She turned.
A tree that was not a tree. Or maybe a tree that was too much tree. Or maybe the idea of tree given form and set loose to grow.
Massive didn't describe it. The trunk was wider than city blocks. Branches touched clouds that hadn't existed moments ago, called into being just to give perspective. Roots probably went down to the world's heart.
Near its base, she saw them - five figures who seemed to always be there, wherever she went. Sicc'ius was building something from fallen branches, his hands never stopping. Ky'arah knelt beside a wounded bird, healing with quiet efficiency. S'pun-duh examined fungi growing on the bark, muttering about impossible mycological phenomena. Thom'duhr sat writing, documenting everything. And F.D... F.D. just watched, smiling like he knew how it all would end.
"The Heart Tree." The elder's voice had gone reverent. "First tree. The seed that dreamed the forest into being. It can metabolize anything—poison, disease, corruption, death itself. Eat it, digest it, transform it into something else."
"What's the cost?"
The Sylvani smiled with too many teeth. "Clever crystal-child. There's always a cost. The Heart Tree takes your corruption, yes. But it gives its nature in exchange. You become bridge between death and life. Kill with one hand, resurrect with other. Very useful. Very powerful. Very dangerous."
"Dangerous how?"
"You'll be bound to every forest, everywhere, forever. Every tree that grows will know you. Every seed that sprouts will carry your name. And if you ever become purely destructive, if you ever forget the balance between death and growth, every tree in the world turns against you. Imagine making enemies of oxygen itself."
Ora looked at the Heart Tree. Looked at her corrupted hand where veins ran black like underground rivers. Looked at the Sylvani who waited with patient curiosity to see what she'd choose.
"Will I remember her? My sister?"
The shifting one spoke in all voices at once: "You'll remember everything. Every death you've caused. Every life you've touched. Every moment of existence burned into consciousness that can never forget. Memory is the forest's gift."
"And its curse," the elder added. "Trees remember every drought. Every fire. Every axe. Now you will too."
"Then yes."
She walked to the Heart Tree. Each step, the ground tried to hold her back. Grass tangled her ankles. Roots rose to trip. The forest's last warning.
She placed her corrupted hand on the bark.
The reaction was immediate and violent and wrong.
Pain wasn't the right word. This was fundamental restructuring. Every cell in her body screaming as it was convinced to become something else. Like being burned alive and frozen solid and dissolved in acid and rebuilt from scratch, all simultaneously, all without the mercy of unconsciousness.
The Heart Tree drank her corruption like pus from infected wound. Black ichor flowed from her veins into its bark, and where it went, the tree didn't die. Didn't even sicken.
It transformed the corruption into something else. Something worse. Something better.
Her bones began to branch. Not breaking—growing. Spreading through her flesh in patterns that mimicked leaf veins, river deltas, lightning strikes. Her skeleton became a tree inside meat, branches reaching through muscle, roots digging through organs.
Her skin cracked like bark in drought. But instead of bleeding, she seeped sap—golden and viscous and smelling of pine and pain. The cracks sealed themselves with new growth, smooth as bark on young trees, rough as ancient oak, constantly cycling through seasons of damage and healing.
Through it all, memories flooded backward. The forest had been watching always. She saw her whole life from its perspective—every moment near a tree, every secret in shade.
Including things she'd never known.
"Lyra knew," she gasped. "Lyra knew dragons were coming."
The memory bloomed: her sister three days before, speaking through communication crystal.
*"Dragons' guilt is breaking. Someone's manipulating them. We need to evacuate—"*
*"Impossible without proof."*
*"Then I'll get proof. But if something happens, watch over Ora. She's... different. Special."*
Ora pulled her hand from the Heart Tree. The connection settled like roots finding depth. Still linked but separate.
"Show me who she talked to."
The elder looked afraid. "Some knowledge burns—"
"Show. Me."
The forest couldn't refuse. She was part of it now.
The memory unfurled with the sound of glass shattering—the truth finally breaking through whatever illusions she'd clung to.
Councilor Netharion. Who'd stood that final morning arguing against evacuation. Who'd insisted dragon sightings were migratory.
Who'd condemned thousands with his lies.
But worse—the forest showed deeper. Netharion meeting shadows. Taking strange coins that hurt to perceive. Each coin was wrong—not metal but compressed souls, dozens of them screaming in perfect silence. The coins whispered without sound, promised without words. One showed a child's terror crystallized into currency. Another held an elder's wisdom tortured into negotiable form.
*The Distillatori.*
Even through memory, the word made reality flinch. Seventeen of them, the forest knew. Always seventeen, replacing themselves when one fell, maintaining their perfect number like a disease maintaining its optimal infection rate.
"Where is he?" Ora's voice was winter wind and wildfire.
"Dead with the city—"
"No. Every death echoes in the Weave. He escaped. He's alive."
She turned. Forest's attention turned with her. Every tree for a thousand miles focused south toward the Desolation where even seeds refused to grow.
"He's there. Hiding where nature can't see. But I'm not entirely nature anymore."
She flexed fingers. Thorns extended and retracted like claws.
"I'm going to feed him to the forest. Slowly. Every tree his actions orphaned gets a piece."
The corruption hadn't been destroyed—it had been integrated. She could kill now not just by draining but by forcing growth. Roots through living flesh, branches through veins...
The forest whispered her new name to the wind:
*Ashkore comes. The forest remembers. And she is hungry.*
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*End Chapter 7*
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