Solara Brightbloom's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Solara Brightbloom pressed her palm to the dying oak and felt the cold seep back through the bark. Her light healed the tree for one breath. Then the blight swallowed it again. She was a cleric of sunshine, born to carry warmth into every corner of the fae realm. But the heart-tree of Hawthorn Maw had sickened, and its rot dimmed the eternal sun. If she could not heal the heart-tree, the whole realm would darken. She had come this far to try. The trouble was the path. Shadow spilled from the blight like spilled ink, drowning the trail to the heart-tree. Solara took ten steps into it and lost the way. Trees she had passed reappeared. The ground felt wrong under her feet. When she raised her hand, her light shrank to a coin of glow. Alone, she would wander until the dark took her too. She backed out and followed a lantern's shine to a roadside inn. Flowers climbed every rail and window box. Inside, she asked the keeper for a map to the heart-tree. The keeper only shook her head. No map showed a path the blight kept moving. "You need a guide, not a map," said a voice near the fire. Solara turned. A slender fairy sat wrapped in a white robe stitched with frost patterns. His hair fell pale as snow, and his skin held no warmth. Frost bloomed on the mug in his hands, though the room was hot. He watched her the way winter watches a candle. "You're the sunshine cleric," Yawen Winterveil said. He did not rise. "Half the realm knows you came to heal the tree. The other half is betting you'll die trying." "Which half are you?" Solara asked. He almost smiled. "I don't bet. I know the shadow. My cold cuts through it." He set down the mug. "The blight hides the path from your light. It cannot hide it from my ice." Solara did not trust him. His chill made her own warmth flicker low. But she had no map, no path, and no time. "Why help me?" she said. "The dark spreads toward my home too." Yawen stood. Frost spread from his feet across the floorboards. "I want the sun back as much as you do. I just don't glow about it." They left the inn together. At the edge of the shadow, Yawen raised one hand. A blade of ice grew from his palm. He swept it through the dark, and the shadow cracked like thin glass. Beneath it lay a frozen trail, hard and clear, leading inward. "Walk where I freeze," he said. "Don't step off." Solara stepped onto the ice. Her light steadied. For the first time, she could see the path to the heart-tree. She was no longer alone in the dark. But every step now bound her to a fairy whose cold ate her warmth, and the heart-tree still waited, sicker than before.