Chapter 81 — Whispers in the Roots
The Blackwood had gone unnaturally still.
Not the peaceful silence of rest.
But the silence of breath held too long.
Leaves no longer rattled in the cold breeze. Insects vanished. Even the mist, which once crept like a living thing between the roots, now lay motionless over the ground as if frozen in time.
Ironroot stood in the center of the clearing where the lattice had flared. His palms pressed into the soil. It was still warm from the burst of energy he had forced into it. But underneath that warmth, he felt something new.
A second heartbeat.
Slower. Deeper.
Not his.
Not the forest's.
Something else had wrapped itself around the roots beneath him, something patient and ancient. It hadn't retreated into the fissure. It had anchored itself.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Shadowblade murmured beside him, her voice low and razor-sharp.
Ironroot nodded once. "It didn't leave. It only sank deeper."
Titanbound paced a short distance away, molten cracks glowing faintly along his arms as his body cooled. His eyes scanned the woods. "It's playing a longer game. Wearing us down. Like a siege."
A faint echo rolled through the forest.
Not sound—memory.
A pressure that brushed against the inside of Ironroot's mind like fingerprints over glass.
Images not his own tried to surface: a forest choking on ash, roots twisted in agony, entire landscapes swallowed by black fractures. Civilizations buried beneath corrupted earth.
He gasped, pulling his hands from the soil.
Shadowblade grabbed his wrist. "What did you see?"
"Not what," he said hoarsely. "When."
The ground beneath the clearing trembled lightly.
Then stopped.
Then pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Like a distorted heartbeat.
Titanbound stepped closer, brow furrowing. "It's syncing with you, Ironroot."
"I know…"
The realization hit him with icy clarity.
The fissure isn't trying to destroy me.
It's trying to connect.
A faint whisper unfurled within his mind.
Not loud.
Not threatening.
Just… certain.
You walk within borrowed power. I remember the first root. I remember the first blood that touched the soil.
Ironroot staggered. Shadowblade tightened her grip, but he barely felt it.
"Speak," he whispered into the silence. "Show yourself."
The forest before them… answered.
Shadows between the trees thickened, gathering into a tall, incomplete silhouette. It did not form a full body, only a suggestion of one — tall, fractured, twisting between existence and memory.
Its "face" was nothing but negative space, yet Ironroot could feel its gaze like cold iron pressed to his skin.
Titanbound burned brighter in response, fire flaring along his arms. "Is this it? The core mind?"
"It is not a creature," Shadowblade said slowly. "It is a will… attached to the land."
The presence pulsed once more. The ground cracked in thin lines around it.
I am what remains when forests forget how to die, the voice echoed in all three of them at once. And you… Ironroot… are standing where kings once begged the earth for mercy.
Ironroot swallowed, heart pounding. "Then you know who I am."
No, the presence replied, pressure increasing. I know what will replace you.
A sharp pain sliced through Ironroot's temples. He clutched his head. Visions burst open: himself standing alone in a dead forest… roots wrapped around his limbs… his eyes glowing the same darkness as the fissure.
Shadowblade stepped forward. "Get out of him."
The shadows shifted toward her, curious now.
You are carved of silence and blades, it whispered. You are what cuts rot from truth… yet you walk beside it.
"Say. That. Again." Her voice dropped dangerously low.
Titanbound stepped in, placing himself between her and the silhouette. "You don't get to judge us. You're the rot here."
The presence studied him.
And you… burning one… you carry a heart forged for war, yet you protect what will end the world.
The air trembled as if reality itself had hesitated.
Ironroot forced himself upright. "If you know the future so well… you're afraid to change it."
The presence faltered.
Just for a fraction of a second.
Enough.
Green energy flared along Ironroot's arms as he drove his connection into the soil. Roots surged subtly beneath the surface — not violent, not wild — but firm. Controlled.
A territorial response.
The shadow recoiled slightly, retreating a step.
A tremor rippled outward from its form.
Not an attack.
A warning.
The Blackwood was not meant for unity, the voice hissed. It was meant for dominion. And something else stirs in its far veins… something older than even me.
Shadowblade's eyes sharpened. "Something older than you?"
And much more interested in you three.
The fissure, distant in the mountain face, flared violently in response — a thin line of red light splitting through the absolute darkness within it.
But something else answered it.
Far deeper in the forest.
A low, resonant pulse rose up like a buried drum being struck once.
Then again.
Then again.
Each thump sent ripples through the Blackwood.
Ironroot felt the rhythm align with his heartbeat. Then fight against it.
Then copy it.
Titanbound spaced his stance. "That isn't the fissure."
"No," Ironroot breathed.
"It's a second core."
Silence settled over them like a funeral cloak.
The shadow presence began to thin, retreating into the cracks of the earth.
You do not stand between light and darkness, Ironroot, it whispered as it dissolved. You stand between two hungers. Choose which one deserves you.
Then it was gone.
But the silence it left behind was heavier than any scream.
The forest was no longer empty.
It was occupied.
Shadowblade looked slowly around the clearing. "Two forces in one land… that never ends peacefully."
Titanbound exhaled hard. "So what now?"
Ironroot stared at his hands — faint cracks of green light spidering along the veins beneath his skin, more than he'd ever seen before.
Now they glowed faintly even when he wasn't calling the forest.
"It marked me," he said quietly.
"And the forest," Shadowblade added.
"And us," Titanbound finished.
Another pulse thumped far in the distance, stronger now.
Closer.
Ironroot lifted his eyes to the dark trees ahead.
Somewhere out there, hidden beneath miles of root and rot, something massive had begun to stir.
Not an ally.
Not yet an enemy.
Just a force… awakening.
And it had felt them.
Ironroot clenched his fists slowly.
"Whatever it is," he said, voice low but steady, "it's not taking the Blackwood without a fight."
The three of them stood shoulder to shoulder, staring into the crawling darkness.
The forest, at last, exhaled.
Not in relief.
But in dread.