Rowan Deeproot's Arc

Chapter 7 of 7

The mist wall held, but not well. On the far side, something struck it. Rowan felt the blow travel through the moss and into their roots. A second strike came, then a third. Each one thinned the pale barrier. The sap Rowan had given kept trying to fill the gaps, but the beast broke it faster than the grove could mend. Aldric watched the wall shudder. His warm pendant flared with every hit. "It's learning the rhythm," Aldric said. "It waits for the mist to close, then it strikes the weak spot." He pressed a hand flat to the barrier. "I can feel it thinking. It knows I'm empty." Rowan bit their wrist again. More sap fell onto the roots. The wall brightened, then dimmed under the next blow. Rowan swayed. They could not bleed fast enough. Waiting was not a plan, but neither was dying at the door. A torch light came through the trees. A woman walked toward them, staff in one hand, flame steady at its top. Rowan had never seen her. She wore dark robes marked with thin moons. She did not slow when the wall boomed under another strike. "You're feeding it wrong," she said. Her voice was flat and sure. "That's a boundary. I read boundaries." She knelt by the sealed door and pressed both hands into the soil, the way a person tests thin ice. "I am Nystis. I open gates like this one. But this gate should stay shut." "Then help me shut it," Rowan said. Nystis looked at the sap on their wrist. "You're pouring life into a wall. A wall only delays. You need a seal." She dug her fingers deeper. "A seal takes soil, blood, and the right pressure. You have the blood. I know the pressure." Another strike split a crack across the mist. The myconid squealed and hid behind Rowan's leg. "Tell me what to do," Rowan said. "Bleed into the ground, not the air," Nystis said. "Down here, where the roots meet the door." She pulled Rowan's bleeding wrist to the soil at the base of the threshold. "Let it soak the boundary line. I'll set it." Rowan pushed their wrist into the dirt. Sap ran down into the crack where door met earth. Nystis spread both palms over it and pressed. She spoke low words Rowan did not know. The soil warmed. The mist wall sank into the ground, drawn downward, and hardened along the seam of the door. The beast struck once more. The seal did not thin. It held solid, sap and soil fused into a dark line across the threshold. Silence, then, from the other side. Nystis lifted her hands. "Sealed. It will not thin now." She wiped dirt from her palms. "But a seal like this is not free. It's tied to me while I stay. Move me from this grove, and the door opens." Rowan looked at the still wall, then at the stranger now bound to it. The door held. The cost had only changed shape.