Meadow Whisp had told three people a tree tried to kill him, and all three had laughed. That was why his sword arm would not move. The blade hung from his fist, but the fist would not swing. He stood frozen in the cold berry wood, caterpillar body coiled on a low stone, top hat tipped against the fading sun. He had once been a warrior who feared nothing. Now he feared being right. He had come out only for berries. His pail sat half full by his feet. But the walk had carried him past the carved stones, the old burial markers with their strange cut letters, and past them stood the thing he could not forget. A towering cluster of slender bamboo rose at the clearing's edge. Between the pale stalks, something taller waited. He had glimpsed it two nights ago. Teeth. He was sure he had seen teeth in the bark. No one believed him. The sun dropped lower. Shadows pooled between the bamboo. Meadow forced himself closer, because proof was the only cure. If he could see the teeth in real light, his arm would unlock. He would know he was not mad. He pushed through the stalks. At the center leaned a weathered wooden board, propped against a trunk like a forgotten sign. Someone had carved a sleeping face into it. The face was a tree-man, eyes shut, roots braided into a beard, branches curling from its skull. Dark grooves ran deep as real wrinkles. Meadow stared. This was it. This was what he had seen. Not a living monster. A painted board left by travelers. No teeth. Only closed eyes and quiet wood. His arm sagged. Relief and shame mixed in his chest. He had frozen over a picture. He almost laughed at himself. He reached out to touch the carved face, to prove the wood was only wood. The ground gave way. Branches snapped under his weight. He dropped into a pit someone had dug and hidden beneath leaves. He hit packed dirt and lost his breath. The sword clattered beyond his reach. Above him the hole framed a square of darkening sky. He clawed at the walls. The soil crumbled in his grip. Then the carved board shifted at the pit's rim. Dirt trickled down. The painted eyes were open now. They had not been open before. The wooden mouth split, and inside the grain he saw them at last, clear and close in the last gray light. Teeth. Rows of them. The carving leaned over the edge and looked down at him. Meadow's sword lay above, out of reach. His arm was free now, and it shook. He pressed his back to the dirt wall and stared up at the thing he had sworn was real. He had his proof. No one would hear it. The teeth parted wider, and a low sound rolled down into the pit.

The carved board hummed above the pit. Its painted eyes glowed, and words flickered across the dirt wall. THE MONSTER IS COMING. Meadow pressed low against the earth. Far off, past the bamboo, a tall shape began to drag itself toward the sound. It moved slow. One root-foot, then another. The board wanted it close. Meadow had time, but not much. He looked up. The walls rose too high and crumbled at every grip. Dirt fell on his top hat. Going up was useless. So he looked down instead. The floor was square and broken. Snow dusted the rim far above. Rough wood fragments lay half buried in the packed soil. Old boards. A dug pit meant diggers, and diggers made ways in and out. Maybe a tunnel. Maybe a drain. Meadow set down his hat and began to clear the floor. He lifted twigs and tossed them aside. He pried loose stones and rolled them from the center. His sword lay far above, useless, so he used his hands. Under one flat board he found a gap in the dirt. Cold air breathed from it. A passage. His heart jumped. He clawed at the edge to widen the hole. One large stone blocked the way. It sat heavy in the soil, round and gray. He dug his fingers beneath it and heaved. The stone came free faster than he planned. It tipped from his grip. He twisted to dodge, but the weight dropped straight onto his foot. Bone cracked. The sound came before the pain. Then the pain arrived, white and huge. Meadow bit down a scream and sank against the wall. His foot bent wrong beneath the stone. He shoved the rock off and saw the swelling start. The gap still breathed cold air beside him. A way out lay open. But he could not stand. He could not crawl fast. Every push sent fire up his leg. Above, the hum grew louder. The dragging shape had reached the bamboo now. Red hollows glowed in its twisted trunk. Clawed limbs parted the stalks. Bones swung from its branches. The thing he had sworn was real leaned over the rim beside the carved board, and both looked down at him. Meadow gripped the edge of the tunnel with both hands. He had found his escape. He had also broken the one foot he needed to reach it.

The creature leaned over the rim, It was too wide for the pit's square mouth. Meadow pressed into the dirt wall and watched. The thing's clawed limbs scraped at the edge, snagged on the frozen rim, and stopped. Meadow breathed out. He checked his foot it was broken . He dragged himself to the far corner of the hollow as to avoid the monsters gaze, it watched him as if it was the monsters prisoner waiting. Meadow covered by leafe and rocks and tore a strip from his coat. And sap from a nearby tree to use as an ointment, He wrapped his foot tight, teeth clenched, while the beast groaned above. He looked around and realized it was getting pretty cold, So he built a small shelter, He then looked around for sticks he found a few but not enough, He realized most the sticks were above, he jumped and grabbed at a nearby root the monster groaned, He had grabbed a root from the monster. Each day he would hoist himself up just enough to see over the ledge and would watch the monster, Meadow had built a ladder from makeshift rocks and wood, He looked out and he studied the monster, He noticed that for the first week he watched, That the monster would sometimes disappear, Then at night the monster was immensely quick for reasons unknown. Shadows crawled across the floor. It was getting dark. At night it turned fast. Clumsy, yes, but fast. So Meadow used the last light. The sun slipped. The hollow went gray, then black. Meadow lost the shape above. He stared at the rim and saw only snow and sky. The groaning stopped. Silence pressed down. His heart slammed. He could not find the beast. It had gone still, it was seemingly no longer there While it thrashed, Meadow dragged himself to the breathing gap in the floor. His bound foot held just enough. He shoved his shoulders into the tunnel and pulled with both arms. Cold air swallowed him. Meadow crawled into the dark. His foot throbbed with every pull. But the tunnel curved, and the scraping fell behind him. He was alive, underground, and moving. The creature could not follow him here. But he was trapped in a tunnel now, and who knows what other powers that monster has.

The tunnel swallowed the last of the light. Meadow crawled on his elbows, dragging his broken foot behind him. Each pull sent pain up his leg. He could not see his own hands. The passage curved left, then split. Two black mouths opened before him. He had no way to tell which led out and which led down into the earth forever. He pressed his palm to the right wall and felt it. The stone was slick. A thick, oily liquid dripped from a seam and pooled under his fingers. He sniffed it. Sharp, chemical, flammable. His mind raced. If he ever found a spark, this seep could give him fire. But fire needed light, and light needed something he did not have. He wiped his hand on his coat and chose the left passage, guessing. It narrowed fast. Soon his shoulders scraped both walls. He pushed on until his head struck rock. A dead end. His chest tightened. He was wedged in, unable to turn, and his foot screamed when he tried to back out. For a moment he thought the dark had won. Then a sound. Small claws, ticking over stone. Something moved ahead in the black. Meadow froze. A shape brushed his hand. He felt scales, cool and dry, the animal was the size of a house cat It was a lizard. A dragon-thing with a long body and a whipping tail. It did not bite him. It circled his hand, then turned and ticked away down the right passage, the one he had not taken. Meadow understood. The creature led him to an item on the ground a thick set of branches hewn together to form a torch, Now if only he had a way to light it, His mind raced he then realized the oil was flammable but how would he light it? He took his dead torch threw some oil on it took some stones and began to clash them together it worked he now had a torch but he had a new problem the cave was covered in the oil and he had just lit it.

The torch bloomed into a monster of its own. Flame raced across the oil-slicked floor and climbed the walls in a sheet. Heat slammed Meadow's face. He turned and ran, dragging his broken foot, the pain lost under terror. Fire chased him down the tunnel. He did not know the way. He knew only that the flames were faster than he was. The lizard appeared ahead, scales flashing orange in the firelight. It darted left, then looked back at him. Meadow understood. It was showing him the path. He lunged after it, half-crawling, choking on smoke. The little creature led him around a bend where the air felt cooler. For one breath, he believed he would live. Then fire caught the oil along the lizard's track. A ribbon of flame rolled over the creature. It shrieked and thrashed. The sound cut through Meadow worse than the heat. He threw his coat over it and smothered the burning oil. The lizard went still, then slumped, legs folding. It had fainted. Meadow knelt and looked at it. Its scales were not just scales. Thin cracks ran through them, glowing. Tiny seams of orange light, like lava under a crust, pulsing brighter with each moment. He had never seen a living thing like it. For a heartbeat he forgot the fire. Here was proof the world held things no one in his village believed. Things with teeth. Things with fire inside them. The flames around the lizard died, starved of oil. But the fire behind Meadow surged forward and wrapped the walls on every side. He was ringed in. Smoke poured into his lungs. His head swam. He pulled the lizard against his chest and tried to stand. His legs would not hold. The heat pressed him down. His strength drained out of him. He sank to his knees, then to his side. The roar of the fire faded to a dull hum. His eyes blurred. Through the blur, at the edge of the flames, a shape moved. A tall figure, slow and certain, stepping into the smoke where no person should be able to walk. A frost-white beard. A battered staff tapping stone. A robe stitched from old, faded maps. The old man raised the staff, and the fire bent away from him like water around a rock. He looked down at Meadow with sharp, unsurprised eyes, as if he had expected to find a boy and a glowing lizard here all along. "Hold still," the old man said. "You've found something you weren't meant to find." Meadow tried to answer. No words came. His gaze fixed on the figure's pale hat as his eyes slid shut. The last thing he felt was the lizard's warmth against him, and the strange relief that someone, at last, had come. He then awoke in a strange new place a Dull seemingly abandoned house

Meadow woke to a low ceiling of gray boards. He lay on a cot near a fire. His foot was wrapped in fresh cloth, tighter than he had tied it himself. For a moment he forgot the tunnel, the flames, the glowing lizard. Then he remembered, and he sat up too fast. Pain shot through his leg. He grabbed his sword from the floor beside the cot and held it close. The old man sat across the room, stirring a pot. His frost-white beard caught the firelight. His robe was stitched from faded maps, the paper soft with age. His battered staff leaned against the wall within his reach. He did not turn. "Lie back down," he said. "I set that foot while you slept. Break it again and I won't set it twice." Meadow kept the sword up. "Who are you? Why did I wake here?" "I saw the cave catch fire," the old man said. He ladled broth into a bowl and crossed the room slow, favoring one hip. "I'm glad I was able to help. Not many would walk into that smoke." He set the bowl beside the cot and stepped back. "My name is Aldric Ashe. I read old stones. I've read every mark at the winter camp for forty years." He studied Meadow with sharp eyes. "You carry a sword to bed. What made a boy so afraid?" Meadow lowered the blade an inch. "If I tell you, you'll say I'm mad. Everyone does." "Try me," Aldric said. So Meadow told him. The carved board with the sleeping tree-man. The eyes that opened. The teeth. The pit. He braced for the laugh he always got. It did not come. Aldric's face went still. "The sleeping one," Aldric murmured. "On the stones there's a mark I never knew. It appeared one night, with no carver." He looked at Meadow hard. "You've seen the thing that made it." "You believe me," Meadow said. His voice shook. No one had. Then a dry rasp came from a basket near the hearth. Meadow turned. The lizard lifted its head over the rim. Burn marks crossed its scales, but the orange light still pulsed beneath them. It fixed its blue eyes on Meadow and flicked its tail. Aldric froze. "That came out of the ground with you?" His grip tightened on the staff. "These guide folk through the tunnels. They don't leave them. Not for anyone." He searched Meadow's face now with something new, half wonder, half fear. "It chose you, boy. That changes what you are to me." Meadow set the sword down at last. For the first time since the pit, he was not alone with the truth. "Then help me," he said. "Help me prove what lives in those trees." Aldric explained well you see that Ent Creature is made of mythici wood its rather strange that it appeared here, Its several hundred thousand million miles away from its home, in fact id say its not even from your same universe, Meadow I need your to stay here recover, keep the Lizard at your side he is your Guardian now he chose you, im off to go to the one place that has clues of that creature the Ancient Viking Burial Site forged in ruins of men’s tongue and the forgotten minds of the mystical kingdom that awaits calm as a river yet pulsing as a living soul. Im off to the Ruins, please stay here you will be safe here i have a magical barrier and much much more that will keep you safe, that lizard is very important consider it a gift from me. Then Aldric left for the burial site.

Morning light leaked through the board walls. Meadow sat up and tested his foot. The pain had faded to a dull ache. He could stand now, if he leaned on the wall. The lizard watched from its basket, orange light flickering under burned scales. Aldric was gone. His pot sat cold by the dead fire. Meadow decided to search the shelter. Aldric knew the tree creature. The truth must be here somewhere. He limped to a shelf of old things. There he found a stack of scrolls, tied with cord. He untied them and spread them flat. The paper was worn soft. Lines of cramped writing filled every inch. Some of it he could read. It was the same words his village spoke. But the sentences made no sense. They were riddles. One said the answer lay within. Another said to seek the pattern no one sees. Meadow traced a finger down the page. Strange marks sat between the words. Arrows. Circles. Little drawings he did not know. He read a riddle twice, then a third time. It twisted back on itself every way he turned it. He set the scrolls down, frustrated. Whatever Aldric hid here, the man had locked it behind puzzles. Meadow could read the words but not the meaning. The truth stayed shut. He searched on. Behind a cloth he found a thick book. A deer's face stared up from the cover, two heads joined, antlers wide. The eyes glowed like dim coals. He opened it. The pages were worse than the scrolls. Row after row of symbols he had never seen. No village letters at all. Just marks, like the one Aldric said appeared overnight on the stones. Meadow turned page after page. His chest tightened. These were the notes on the creature. He was sure of it. The tree thing, the teeth, the pit. The answer to everything he had suffered lay in this book. And he could not read a word of it. He wanted to throw it across the room. Instead he set it down with shaking hands. Then he saw the cage. It stood in a dark corner, iron bars thick as his thumb. Inside hung a sword. Purple light ran along its blade like water. Faint marks curled up the metal, the same strange symbols from the book. A brass lock held the door shut. Meadow stepped closer, leaning hard on the wall. The lizard rose from its basket. It crawled to the cage and pressed its nose between the bars. Where its glow touched the blade, one symbol lit up gold. Then the matching symbol lit on the open book behind him. The two shone the same. Meadow caught his breath. The lizard knew the marks. Its light answered them. He could not read the symbols. The book stayed locked, the sword caged, the truth out of reach. But he understood something new. The lizard was the key. If he kept it close and followed its glow, it could read what he could not.

Meadow brought the book to the table. He set the caged sword beside it and opened the pages wide. The lizard climbed from its basket and followed. Its burned scales still glowed, cracks of orange light running down its back. Meadow had figured out one thing. The lizard's glow lit the symbols. But that was all. Two marks would shine gold, one on the sword, one on the book, and Meadow still had no idea what either meant. The secrets stayed locked. He needed a way to read the lizard's answers. He grabbed a scrap of paper and a stub of charcoal. "Show me," he said. He pointed at a symbol on the blade. The lizard pressed its nose close. The mark lit gold. The matching mark in the book lit too. Meadow copied them both, side by side. Then he turned the page and did it again. And again. His hand cramped. The pile of copied marks grew. But Meadow saw it now. Each sword symbol matched one book symbol. The book was a key. If he learned the pairs, he could read the pages. He worked faster. The lizard crawled from mark to mark, patient, its whiskers twitching like a true small dragon. By afternoon he had mapped them all. Meadow went back to the first page. One mark at a time, he traded sword-sign for book-word. Slowly the lines turned into his village speech. He read them aloud, voice shaking. The book spoke of the trees. Not as wood. As living things. Ents, it called them. Giant and old. Some had teeth and claws and hunted. But others were peaceful. The book said Ents had lived in this land for thousands of years, mostly kind. Then Meadow read a line that stopped his breath. His own tree. His home. The great trunk he lived inside was an Ent. A sleeping one. It had dozed for a thousand years, gentle and still. And soon it would wake. In a few weeks it would open its eyes and walk, leaving to migrate, then return. Meadow stared at the words. He was not crazy. The trees did move. Some had teeth. He had been right from the start. He turned the page, hungry for more.. the The writing began to explain about a caterpillar wearing a top hat reading this very book it began to say that the ancient secret power within meadow could be unlocked by simply . One word stood dark and heavy: CONFIDENTIAL. Below it, the page was torn. A ragged edge ran across the paper. The rest was ripped away. Meadow ran his thumb along the tear. The lizard lit the last whole symbol. It shone gold, then dimmed. There was nothing left to read as the next few pages all said CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL MEADOW CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL UNLOCK CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL UNIVERSAL CONFIDENTIAL, then the rest of the book was stained ripped cut And censored.

Meadow closed the book. The torn pages told him no more. His foot ached less now, but the word CONFIDENTIAL still burned in his mind. He sat alone in the old villager house, its gray walls bowing with age. One shutter hung loose. Dust floated in the last light through a cracked window. The lizard slept in its basket, its burned scales dim. He decided to search for clues the book had hidden. He limped from room to room. He checked under the table where he had read. He opened a chest by the cold hearth and found only folded maps, the same cloth as the old man's robe. He ran his hands along the walls. He pried at loose boards. Nothing new. The house kept its secrets as tightly as the torn pages. The light faded fast. Shadows swallowed the corners. Meadow could barely see his own hands. He knew the tree creature moved fast at night, and the thought chilled him. But his eyes were heavy, and his thoughts were tangled. Trees that walked. A power inside him, torn out of the book. He needed rest to make sense of it all. "Sleep helps," he told the lizard. He lay on the thin cot and pulled a blanket over his broken foot. His mind spun, then slowed. He slept. He woke to warmth and light. A bird stood at the foot of the cot. It was made of fire. Orange flames shaped its wings and curling tail. Its feathers crackled like a small hearth, yet nothing around it burned. A pheasant, but alive with flame. Meadow sat up fast, hand reaching for his sword. "No need for that," the bird said. Its voice popped like sparks. "The old man sent me. It is my job to watch Aldric Ashe." Meadow lowered his hand. "Aldric? He left days ago." "He is far from here now," the bird said. "I check on him. Then I come back and report to you. That is the task I was given." It tilted its burning head. "He is alive. He is working. You will know what he learns." Before Meadow could ask more, the bird spread its flaming wings and vanished through the cracked window. The room went dark again. But Meadow was not afraid now. He had a messenger. A link to the one man who believed him. Far away, Aldric Ashe knelt among tall stone pillars. Snow crusted their carved faces. Weathered symbols covered every slab, blue and gold and red. He brushed frost from one pillar and traced a mark with his thumb. It matched a symbol from his book. He pulled out a scrap of paper and copied it, hands shaking in the cold. The ancient camp held the rest of the answer. Aldric rose, stared at the great stone arch, and began to read the oldest stone of all. Aldric hmm perhaps this, said aldric, eh no thats not it, oh whats this? Ah yes no nevermind, ah perhaps, yes thats it, eh no, Aha finally here we are if i view the relic on the stone, then, aldric ran over to a pillar he held one of the scales of the Komoto Dragon, which he had taken. he crushed it in his hand, flaming embers came from it, then he sprinkled it around at each pillar, each pillar glowed a different color, Gold Silver Maroon and finally White, each stone pillar had a different relic and each glowed for a special reason, finally he walked to the middle, and he put down blood that he harvested from Meadows wound, the blood glowed white and all the pillars erupted in magical colors then the heavens came down, the northern lights above touched the earth and all spirit animals deers bears wolfs antelopes squirrel lions tigers all danced together as spirits then a lion spoke, Have you come to learn or Meadows Destiny? Of he whos blood glows white as the moon of he who had riddles in his mind and of he who has lost many memories in his life forbidden and lost to time. Of he who gave his life to prevent hurting others due to his unique Universal Power. Aldric spoke yes it is him. Aldric then say the Pheasant, He then gave instructions to tell meadow about everything Except what the spirit lion had spoke of, he must not learn the truth not yet he isnt ready. This is very important shield this truth from him my friend. Then the Lion spirit came down and gave a single flower the flower of life and eccense of eternity to Aldric, then he said his farewells then aldric said to the pheasant, You can give meadow some hints but speak in riddles complex riddles that are mysterious and beautiful.

Meadow stuffed the last of the bread into his pack and limped to the door. His foot still ached under its bandage. The orange lizard climbed onto his shoulder, its scales warm with cracks of light. Outside, the gray house sat quiet in the morning cold. Meadow pulled the riddle scroll from his belt and read it again. Four stones burning in four colors. A lion that spoke true. But the words gave no direction. He didn't know north from south. Guess wrong, he thought, and I walk alone into nowhere. He stood between two faded villager houses and listened. A farmer passed with a cart. Meadow asked about four stones and old pillars. The man shook his head. But a woman hanging wash spoke up. "The ruins past the ridge," she said. "Four stone posts round a cave mouth. Folk don't go near." Meadow's heart jumped. Four posts. That had to be it. He thanked her and set off, sure he had unfolded the last riddle at last. The path climbed over broken ground. By midday he reached them. Four ancient pillars framed a dark cave mouth, carved with faded swirls. Vines hung across the stone. "Four stones," Meadow whispered. "This is the place." He stepped between the pillars, sword drawn, the lizard tense on his shoulder. Inside, the walls rose jagged and sharp. Loose rock covered the floor. He saw no burning stones. No lion. Only shadow. The lizard dug its claws into his shoulder and hissed. Meadow froze. Ahead, a boulder shifted. Then another. What he'd taken for rocks were backs and shoulders. Stony hides split with veins of purple light. Yellow eyes opened in the dark. A pack of them. They had lain still as stones, waiting. The nearest one rose on four clawed legs and snarled. "No," Meadow breathed. "Wrong place. Wrong riddle." He backed toward the entrance. His bad foot caught a rock and he stumbled. The lead creature lunged. Meadow swung his sword and the blade scraped its armored jaw. The hit barely slowed it. Two more crept along a ledge above, cutting off his left. He had guessed wrong, and he had walked straight into their den alone. And now he was in danger, As the pack of rock monsters sealed off his exit, he thinks of what to do, he says to himself do i hide run fight or negotiate maybe they are peaceful. They are not peaceful and they want to eat some dinner and their favorite food is Komodo Dragon, oh and humans. Now he will have to fight, them but oh wait his sword is broken chipped in two and it barely works.