Dom Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 5 of 14

The satyr led them to a tree that should not have been there. Its trunk was old and split, but its branches bloomed with bright roses, and shapes were carved deep into the bark. Dom stopped at its roots. The wanderer set a hand on the wood and stepped back, as if it had stung him. Dom opened the older journal beneath the blossoms. The second rider's page had been waiting for him. He read it slow. A boy raised in a stone house by the river. A father who worked iron. A sister who died in winter. A man who left a quiet trade behind when a stranger smiled at him from a tree line. His hands went cold. That was his life. Every line. Written in ink that had dried long before he was born. The wanderer watched him. "What does it say." Dom did not answer. He dug into his coat and pulled out a thing he had carried for years without telling anyone — a small brass compass from his father's house, the back scratched with his own name and a date. He turned it over. The date on the metal matched the date inked at the top of the journal page. Centuries old. His name. His date. His life, recorded before it happened. He looked up at the carved tree. The shapes in the bark were the same shapes as the journal's letters. The prophecy had been here longer than his bloodline. He was not chosen at the tree line three years ago. He had been named long before that, and the smile in the woods had only come to collect him. Dom closed the journal. The dread he had carried like a lantern burned steadier now. He was not hunting the moth-stag. He was finishing a page someone else had written. He put the compass back in his coat, and for the first time since Mothwood found him, he understood he had never been free to refuse.