Five years passed like water through my fingers.
Greenhollow grew. What had been a cluster of huts became a proper village, then a town. The twin Heartwoods towered at its center, their golden leaves a beacon visible for miles. People came from across the continent—to see the trees, to meet the Gardener, to start new lives in land that had once been blighted.
I helped where I could. Taught the farmers better crop rotation. Showed the healers which plants held which properties. Sat with the old and played with the young and tried to be the thing the stories said I was.
It was peaceful. It was good.
But peace, I'd learned, was always temporary.
---
The first sign came on a spring morning, seventeen years after I'd first woken in that tiny room in Whitefall.
I was twenty-seven now. No longer a boy. My white hair had grown long, streaked with the same gold as the Heartwood leaves. My eyes still held their strange duality—one green, one touched by something older. My Sylvan Circuit had expanded over the years, nodes scattered through my body like roots through soil, my power measured not in rank but in depth.
I sat beneath the Heartwoods, as I often did, when a leaf fell into my lap.
Not a golden leaf. A black one.
I picked it up, my heart suddenly cold. The leaf was withered, corrupted, utterly wrong. It hadn't fallen from my trees—it had been placed.
A message.
I stood, scanning the town. Nothing seemed wrong. Children played. Farmers worked. The usual bustle of a peaceful afternoon.
But in the shadow of the larger Heartwood, a figure waited.
I walked toward it slowly. As I approached, the figure stepped into the light.
Mira.
She looked older, harder, her dark hair now streaked with grey. Scars crossed her arms that hadn't been there before. But her eyes—those flat, watchful eyes—were the same.
"Roy."
"Mira." I wanted to embrace her, but something in her stance stopped me. "It's been years."
"Five years, three months, and eleven days." She almost smiled. "I counted."
"Why now? Why not before?"
She reached into her cloak and withdrew a rolled parchment. "Because I finally found proof. Proof of what's coming." She handed it to me. "Read it."
I unrolled it. It was a map—crude, but detailed—showing the Dark Forest, the surrounding lands, and something new. A symbol I didn't recognize, drawn in what looked like dried blood.
"What is this?"
"The Demon Lord's next move." Mira's voice was flat. "He's not coming with an army this time. He's not coming with lieutenants or generals or any of the things we can fight. He's coming alone. For you."
The black leaf in my pocket seemed to pulse.
"How do you know?"
"Because I've been hunting his servants for five years. Interrogating them. Breaking them." Her eyes met mine. "They all say the same thing. The Demon Lord doesn't fear the Five. He doesn't fear the armies or the magic or the power. He fears one thing: the Gardener. The one who planted the trees that drove him back."
I thought of that day on the battlefield, the Heartwood roots wrapping around the Demon Lord, the light consuming him.
"He wants to destroy me."
"He wants to consume you. Take your power, your connection to the Heartwood, your ability to grow life from corruption. If he succeeds, he becomes unstoppable. The Five won't be able to touch him." Mira stepped closer. "We have to move. Now. Before he finds you."
I looked at the town. At the people I'd come to love. At the life I'd built.
"If I leave, he'll target them."
"Then we take them with us."
"There are hundreds—"
"Then we warn them. Give them a choice. Stay and risk being used against you, or come and find safety elsewhere." Mira's voice softened, just slightly. "You're not alone anymore, Roy. You haven't been for a long time."
I closed my eyes, feeling the weight of seventeen years, of two lives, of everything I'd built and everything I stood to lose.
Then I opened them.
"Gather everyone. Town meeting. One hour."
Mira nodded and vanished into the shadows.
---
The town square filled quickly, confusion on every face. I stood on the steps of the small hall we'd built, the twin Heartwoods behind me, and waited for silence.
When it came, I told them the truth.
About the Demon Lord. About his plan. About the danger of staying. I didn't soften it, didn't sugarcoat it. They deserved to know.
When I finished, silence stretched.
Then a farmer I'd known for years—a woman named Sara whose children I'd taught to garden—stepped forward.
"You saved this town, Gardener. You saved our families, our homes, our lives. If running keeps you safe, we run." She looked at the crowd. "Who's with me?"
Hands rose. Voices called out. Within minutes, the decision was made.
Greenhollow would move.
---
The evacuation took three days.
We packed what we could carry, loaded wagons, organized the young and old into groups. The twin Heartwoods couldn't come—they were rooted too deep—but I took cuttings from both, small branches that would grow into new trees wherever we planted them.
On the third night, as the last wagons prepared to depart, a figure appeared at the edge of camp.
Vance.
He was older now, broader, with grey at his temples and a weathered look that spoke of years in the field. Behind him rode Dorn, massive as ever, and Elara, her hair now entirely silver but her eyes bright.
"We got Mira's message," Vance said, dismounting. "Figured you could use some muscle."
Dorn grinned. "We hit things."
Elara embraced me. "We came as fast as we could."
I looked at them—my party, my friends, my family—and felt something I hadn't felt in years.
Hope.
"We have a long road ahead," I said. "And an enemy who knows exactly where we're going."
Vance shrugged. "Good. Let him come. Party 147 doesn't run forever."
Dorn nodded. "We fight."
Elara smiled. "We heal."
And from the shadows, Mira's voice: "We watch."
I looked at the road stretching east, toward the mountains, toward the ancient places where the Heartwood had first grown.
The Gardener was leaving his garden.
But he wasn't going alone.
---