Dom Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 6 of 14

They walked deeper, the satyr gone now, and the wood grew quiet in a way that felt watched. Dom kept the older journal under his arm. The wanderer walked a step behind, the antler blade loose in his hand. They were looking for nothing in particular. The forest gave them something anyway. The second tree stood in a small clearing, twice the size of the first. Its trunk was split by a dark hollow shaped like a door. Carvings ran up the bark in a language Dom could not read, but he knew the shapes. They matched the shapes that had spelled his own life on the first tree. These shapes spelled someone else. Around the roots, the stone was worn with prints. Bare feet. Sandals. Hooves. They circled the tree like a path walked for years. At the base of the trunk lay a sheepskin scroll weighted by a flat stone tablet, both etched in the same old hand. Dom knelt. The wanderer did not. Dom unrolled the scroll. It was not his life. It was not the wanderer's. It told of a woman who stole a blade from a stone shrine, who killed a beast inside a place of healing, who died at the hands of her own guild. Renni. Her whole life carved and written before she lived it, same as his. He set the tablet down with shaking hands. There had been others. There would be more. A dry sound moved above them. Dom looked up. The moth-stag stood at the edge of the clearing, lantern eyes steady, wings folded close. It was not afraid. It had been waiting at this tree, as it had waited at the first. Dom understood then. The trees were not warnings. They were a list. And the stag was the one turning the pages.