Kael pressed deeper into the trees as the air grew heavier the farther he went, and soon every breath he made felt like it was being filtered through a damp cloth. The path he was taking if there had ever been one was now gone and what lay ahead was only more of the same: endless trees packed so closely together that the space between them was so narrowed. He had to turn sideways to squeeze into places with the branches constantly scraping his shoulders.
The forest seemed to breathe together with him. He could feel it in the earth underneath him, the faint tremor that pulsed through the roots. Every few steps, he would pause and listen, trying to find the direction of the whispers. But they were everywhere—above, below, beside him—murmuring like a thousand unseen mouths just beyond the range of sight.
Then came the words again.
"Turn back. "
"Please. "
"It's not yours to take. "
He froze, gripped with fear. The voices were clearer now, threaded with emotion—fear, sorrow, pleading. He turned around, searching for anyone, anything that was there. But there was only the green and the slow mocking of the owls.
He forced himself to laugh trying to maintain a sense of being. "It must be the drunken stories and wind," he muttered, clutching the strap of his pack. But his voice was shaking.
The forest answered him. If only he had listened well.
He continued his journey.
As he went deeper and deeper into the woods, the trunks were more closer together, rising like cathedral columns. The forest's unnatural light fell between them, catching on webs that glimmered like glass. Somewhere far off, a branch snapped—a clean, deliberate sound, not the wind's doing, Kael was sure and his hand went instinctively to his knife.
Then, between the whispers, came another sound: weeping. Faint, distant, almost human.
He turned toward it before he could stop himself.
Each step in that direction felt heavier, as if the air was thickening around him. The whispers multiplied. He caught fragments that made his blood run cold.
"Help us… "
"…you shouldn't have come… "
"…run, please run… "
Then, something brushed his arm—a low-hanging branch, he told himself, though it had felt soft, almost human. He didn't wait to make sure as he moved faster, breath hurried, until the trees suddenly opened up into a clearing no wider than a cottage.
At its center stood an oak unlike any he had ever seen. Its bark was pale as bone, its surface twisted and slick with sap that glowed faintly blue. The ground around it was bare of mushrooms, bare of life at all—only roots, twisting like the limbs of the dead.
Kael stepped closer.
Then he saw the faces.
They were everywhere—impressions pressed into the bark like shapes beneath thin cloth. Some serene, some contorted in silent screams. Eyes closed, mouths open as if mid-breath. Dozens of them. Hundreds, perhaps. Each one detailed enough that he could see wrinkles, strands of hair, teeth.
He stumbled back, fear rising in his throat. The whispers surged again.
"Kael… "
"Kael... "
He froze.
That one had spoken his name.
He looked around wildly. "Who said that? "
"Kael, please… "
The voice was feminine. Familiar in a way that clawed at his gut.
He turned toward the largest of the faces—a woman's, eyes shut, mouth parted as though caught between sigh and scream. The bark around her lips shivered as if something beneath was trying to move.
"Go back, my love. "
His heart stopped.
"Lira? " His voice cracked. "No. No, it can't be— "
The face twitched. The lips opened just enough for sap to drip from the corner like tears.
"Leave the gold. Leave us be."
He staggered forward, reaching out—and the instant his hand brushed the bark, the temperature dropped to nothing. Frost rimed his fingertips. The whispering voices became a single, deafening scream that filled his head until he thought his skull would split open.
He tore his hand away, gasping greatly, and the noise vanished.
When he looked again, her face was gone—just rough bark where her features had been.
"Tricks, " he whispered hoarsely. "Illusions. That's all. "
But the words didn't sound convincing, even to him.
He stumbled backward through the clearing and nearly tripped over another body—not flesh this time, but *wood*: a shape lying half-buried in moss. The outline of a man, but his limbs were twisted, bark-veined, half-consumed by roots. A hand reached upward, forever frozen mid-gesture. His mouth was open, caught between scream and prayer.
Kael stared until he realized he could see the faint glint of metal near the corpse's chest. A sword hilt. He crouched, brushed aside the moss, and revealed an insignia etched into the pommel—two entwined spirals, the mark of the Architect's Guild.
Kael's pulse quickened. The old stories had been true. The Architect—or one of his men—had made it this far.
He rose, gripping the sword. The whispers quieted, as if watching patiently. The air seemed to hold its breath in anticipation of something.
Then a voice spoke again, clear and close, like someone whispering directly into his ear.
"Gold beneath the roots…"
Kael spun toward the sound, knife drawn. "Where? "
"…at the heart…"
He could see it now: a faint, pulsing light deeper within the woods, shining between the trunks like the last light of a dying fire. His heart banged once, twice, in answer.
He should have turned back. Every instinct screamed it.
But the word gold had anchored itself in his chest like a hook and wouldn't just let go.
He pushed on.
And the deeper he went, the louder the whispers became—not chaotic anymore, but almost rhythmic, like a chant. He could feel them vibrating through his bones, threading through his heartbeat. Faces blurred past in the dim light—men, women, children—all half-swallowed by trees. Their mouths moved soundlessly, but he could feel their intent pressing against his mind.
By the time he realized he was crying, he didn't know why.
He tripped over a root and caught himself against a trunk. Beneath his hand, the bark was warm. A pulse throbbed faintly beneath it, like a vein. He jerked his hand away.
Somewhere ahead, the trees opened once more like earlier, and he saw it clearly now: a vast clearing at the forest's center. Something huge dominated the middle—a tree so immense that its roots rose like towers and its canopy vanished into darkness. Even from this distance, he could see carvings etched deep into its bark—spirals**, hundreds of them, twisting inward toward a single point.
The whispers dropped to silence. For the first time since entering, Kael could hear nothing at all. No wind, no birds, not even his own heartbeat. Only the soft hum of the tree's inner glow. He took one unsteady breath and stepped forward.
The clearing at the Woods' heart was larger than Kael had imagined, a cathedral hollowed from nature itself.
Roots rose from the ground like pillars, sprawling into arches that framed the central tree — the Architect's Tree, if the stories were true. It was ancient beyond reckoning, its trunk wide as a watchtower, its bark carved with spirals so deep they seemed to tunnel inward forever. Between those grooves, light pulsed in slow waves of pale blue, as if something within were breathing.
Kael stepped forward, mesmerized.
The air shimmered faintly with heat and something heavier, like the pressure before a storm. Beneath his boots, the earth trembled with the pulse of the roots. When he touched one, it thrummed faintly, alive. The texture was wrong — not rough like bark, but smooth, almost metallic. He drew his hand back, his fingers tingling.
Then he saw it: gold.
Lots and lots of gold.
Threads of it glinted beneath the roots, thin as veins but spreading outward like an underground river. At first he thought it was merely mineral — the kind of that drove miners to madness. But the gold moved, rippling slowly under the surface like something liquid, alive.
He knelt, brushing soil away with shaking hands. The spiral carvings caught the faint light of his lamp, and for a moment he thought he could read them — lines of geometry, patterns repeating through infinity. A language older than kingdoms.
Old Eldorian.
He couldn't understand it, hell not even the most learned of them scholars could. But that was the least of his concerns.
"There was gold, " the whispers breathed around him, faint and distant.
"There was always gold. "
He laughed for once — a dry, broken sound. "Then you'll forgive me for taking some. "
He set his pack down, pulled free a small spade, and began to dig.
The earth resisted him. Every stroke of the spade hit something fibrous beneath the dirt — roots that flexed away from his blade, then returned when he withdrew. Sweat ran down his neck, cold and oily. He dug faster, the hunger rising in him with every inch. The glow intensified, throwing long shadows that bent unnaturally against the trees.
When his spade struck metal, he cried out.
Beneath the last layer of soil, something shone — not coins, but plates, wide and curved, covered in the same spiral symbols as the bark. Gold, yes, but shaped with purpose.
Not ordinary treasure but architecture. The remains of a structure buried deep beneath the roots, as if the tree had grown over it, consuming what once stood there.
He crouched, brushing dirt away with trembling fingers. His mind raced. The stories had never said what the Architect had built, only that he had vanished into the Woods. Could this have been his final project — a monument swallowed by his own creation?
The whispers trembled.
"Stop."
"It sleeps. "
"Please. "
"Don't wake him. "
Kael froze, spade still in hand. The air vibrated with soundless tension, and he suddenly felt like a trespasser in some vast, living cathedral.
He should have turned back.
But greed, once awakened, is its own kind of ending.
He leaned closer, staring at the gold beneath the roots, tracing the spiral patterns with one dirt-streaked finger. The designs seemed to move beneath his touch, rippling like water. His reflection flickered there — his face drawn and hollow, his eyes wide with awe and exhaustion.
"It's beautiful, " he whispered.
The tree's glow flared in answer.
The roots shifted.
Not subtly — not the lazy stir of wind through branches but a deep, motion that made the ground heave beneath him. Kael staggered back as the great tree groaned, its bark cracking like old stone. The whispers shrieked all at once, overlapping until they became a single wordless cry.
"DON'T. "
He stared down at the gold beneath the roots. It was now gleaming bright, like the heartbeat of something immense. Every instinct screamed at him to run.
Instead, he reached out.
"Just a handful ," he murmured. "Just enough to start over."
The moment his hand brushed the metal, light exploded through the clearing — pure, blinding blue, brighter than lightning and colder than ice. It swallowed his entire world, poured through his veins, burned behind his eyes. He tried to scream, but no sound came. The last thing he felt was the ground shifting beneath him, roots coiling around his legs, pulling him down.
The last thing he heard were the whispers, no longer warning — only weeping.
But the light had already consumed everything.
End of Tale I — Part 2, The Whisper's Begin.