Eryos's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Eryos woke to the pull of something dying. He surfaced slow, dragged from sleep by a thread of need so faint he almost missed it. His fingers hit dirt. Cold. Dry. The wrongness of it spread through his palm like poison, and he knew before he opened his eyes that he'd slept too long. The flower lay curled at his knees, petals blackened at the edges. The blight had already reached it. He reached for the fire inside him, the ember-gold that should have poured through scale and claw. Instead, human hands pressed against the stem. The magic came wrong, sluggish, forced through a form that couldn't hold it. He poured everything he had into the dying bloom anyway. The petals flickered orange, then gold, then blazed like living flame. The flower straightened. The blackness peeled away. But his chest burned hollow, and when he looked up, the forest boundary showed him the cost. Leaves hung dark and brittle where green had been. The blight hadn't paused while he slept. It had spread. Eryos stood on legs that didn't remember how to balance. He turned toward the cave entrance, toward the forest that was killing itself trying to stay alive. He had a body he couldn't use and magic that leaked through his fingers like water. But the forest had called him awake for a reason. He would find out what it needed him to do.