Faelith Nymwren's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

For two days Faelith and Caelan walked the dark trail together, and for two days their magic fought. She would coax green up a rotted trunk with a whisper. He would touch the same bark and force it whole with a hard word. His way was fast, but the healing cracked and blackened by morning. Her way was slow, and the rot crept back before it took. Every tree they passed showed the same scar. Their gifts undid each other. "Stop pushing it," Faelith said. She knelt by a fern he had just mended. Its leaves already curled brown. "You order it. It hates being ordered." "My forest is dying now," Caelan said. Flat, no give in it. "Slow won't save it." They did not solve it. They followed the worn path until it opened into a clearing. Stone stood there, wrapped in moss, half swallowed by vine. Water slid down a shallow ledge into a clear pool. Blue mushrooms glowed among the cracks. Both of them stopped at once. Something in the place pulled at them, quiet and strong. Beyond the mossy stone rose a tall pillar. Worn runes climbed its face, some blue, some gold. A black handprint was carved into the middle. Below it, words: Only true Guardians can awaken. Faelith stepped close. The handprint was small. Her size. "It's asking," she said. "Not telling. Like the ferns." She looked back at Caelan. "You force. Let me ask." She laid her palm flat against the cold stone. Magic burst up her arm. Not a push. A flood that met her own and joined it. The blue runes lit. The gold runes lit. They glowed together, one light, not two. The warmth poured out of the pillar, down through the ground, out past the mossy altar into the trees. Faelith felt it run through the whole clearing at once. Outside, the dark trail changed. Green ran up the black trunks and held. It did not crack. It did not blacken. The rot let go. Her own magic woke deep in her chest, brighter than it had ever been, and it did not fight Caelan's. It carried it. "It stayed," Caelan said. He knelt by a healed root and pressed it. Whole. Still whole. "Yours and mine. Together it stayed." Faelith drew her hand back. "That's the answer. Not your way or mine. Both. Ask and give at once." Caelan stood. Something at his boot caught the mushroom light. He picked it up. A ring, woven from living wood, glowing soft. Runes marked it, blue and gold, the same as the pillar. He turned it in his fingers. "These are the crests," he said quietly. "Wystlera. And yours." He held it out to her. "Our two peoples. On one ring." Faelith took it. The wood was warm. Their magic had made this once, long ago, flowing as one. Now she knew how to make it flow that way again. The heart-tree waited ahead, and for the first time she knew the way to wake it.