Sylvi's Arc

Chapter 10 of 13

The path north cuts through dense undergrowth where the forest floor has changed. Green mushrooms crowd the ground in thick patches, their caps glossy and swollen. They weren't here three days ago. They spread from where the creature dissolved, feeding on the grief it returned to the roots. Sylvi reaches the barrier at midday. The mushrooms rise before her in a wall taller than her oldest branches, their stems twisted together like woven fingers. Dark green caps form a ceiling overhead, blocking the sky. The air beneath them tastes thick and wet. She pulls a needle from her bark and watches it darken—the barrier carries memory, the forest's worst wounds pressed into fungal flesh. Walking through will force her to live each one. But the northern path runs straight through the center, and going around will cost her the day she bought from the scouts. She reaches into her bag and closes her roots around the crystal wand she took from the fae prison. Its pastel glow warms against her bark. She steps into the barrier. The first cap brushes her shoulder and the forest screams. Fire roars through her heartwood—she sees the gnarled tree that was once a dryad, its branches twisted into claws, its trunk split by the axe that killed it. She feels the blade sink deep, hears the wood cry out. The vision floods her senses until she can't tell where the dead dryad ends and her own bark begins. She grips the wand tighter and pushes forward. Another cap touches her, and she drowns in the memory of saplings crushed under wagon wheels, their roots torn from soil that will never hold them again. Sylvi staggers through the barrier step by step, each mushroom forcing another wound into her mind. She sees clearings where groves once stood. She feels roots severed by plows. She tastes smoke from fires set by hands that did not ask permission. The wand's glow dims in her grip, but she does not let go. When she finally breaks through the far side, she falls to her knees on clean soil. The northern path stretches ahead, empty and waiting. Behind her, the barrier pulses with the forest's grief, holding every loss she just endured. She has crossed it, but the memories cling to her bark like sap. She knows now what the forest carries, what it tried to forget. And she cannot unknow it.