The heartwood seed was gone, and Obloe could smell the grove dying without it. He was an old black dragon, big as a fallen tower, and he had guarded this grove for three hundred years. The seed anchored the grove's deepest magic. Now gray rot climbed the ancient oak, one branch at a time. Obloe wanted only to sleep. Instead he lifted his heavy head and stared at the empty hollow where the seed had rested. Someone had stolen it. He did not know who. He did not know where. So a search meant stumbling blind through the whole forest while the rot ate faster than he could crawl. He was too tired to guess. He needed a witness. Two blind mice lived in the roots of the oak. They could not see, but they felt every step through the ground. Obloe pressed his snout close and rumbled a question. The brown mouse squeaked and traced a shape in the dirt with one paw: small feet, hopping, a heavy weight dragged behind. The gray mouse tapped twice toward the north path. A hopper. Something that jumped. That narrowed the world, but not enough. Obloe growled and hauled himself up. His joints cracked like breaking ice. A voice cut across the clearing. "You are slow. The rot is not." Obloe turned. A jackalope stood at the edge of the roots, antlers high, a tidy suit buttoned to the throat. Woga Dimples. The posh little creature came here sometimes, always watching, always writing nothing down that Obloe could see. Obloe had never trusted anyone who dressed better than the forest around them. "You saw the thief," Obloe said. It was not a question. "I see everything," Woga said. "I keep records. A hopper crossed the north path three nights back. It carried a seed wrapped in cloth. It went toward the old theatre." Obloe's tail stilled. The dark red theatre stood empty at the forest's north edge, near where the decay pushed in. "Why tell me?" "Because if the grove dies, my name still is not in the book," Woga said. "You need a witness. I need something worth recording. We are useful to each other." Obloe hated the bargain the moment he understood it. But the mice had pointed north. Woga pointed north. The rot pointed north. Three arrows, one direction. "North theatre," Obloe said. "You lead. I follow." Woga's ears twitched. He hopped onto the north path without another word. Obloe dragged his great body after him. The blind search was over. He knew where the seed had gone now, and he knew who took it. But the theatre sat inside the reach of the decay, on ground the rot had already claimed. To take back his seed, the sleepy old dragon would have to walk straight into the poison.

The theatre rose from the poisoned ground, dark red and black, nymph statues twisting up its face. Obloe stopped at the doorway and breathed the rot deep. Woga hopped beside him, suit still buttoned, antlers high. "You brought me here," Obloe rumbled. "Now take me to the seed." Woga's ears flattened. "I watched the hopper carry it inside. I did not follow. My records end at the doors." He tapped one gloved paw on the threshold. "The outside I know. The inside I do not." Obloe's heavy head sank. The halls beyond were black and rotting. He could crawl through them for days while the decay ate his strength. He did not have days. He barely had hours. A witness who knew only the outside was no witness at all. "You made a bargain," Obloe growled. "A record with no ending is worth nothing." "Then help me finish it," Woga said. He did not raise his voice. A cold voice answered from the dark doorway. "He cannot. He is a rabbit with antlers." A small shape stepped into the gray light. Black eyes, no white in them. Two black ram horns curled from its head. It wore torn dark cloth. It did not blink. Obloe had never seen this thing, but the rot leaned toward it and did not touch it. "Who are you," Obloe said. "Saturn. A god the others chose to forget." The dark entity looked up at the dragon without fear. "I live in the empty places now. This one is empty enough." Woga's paw crept toward Obloe's foreleg. Obloe felt the small creature shaking. "I know where your seed sits," Saturn said. "Below the stage. In the old prop room. The hopper left it and did not return." "Why tell me?" Obloe asked. "Because you will fail anyway." Saturn's flat voice did not change. "The decay takes everything. I only tell the truth. Truth is all I have left to give." He turned and pointed a thin arm down a black hall. "That way. There is a stone passage behind the curtains. Narrow. It runs under the stage. The rot is thin there." Obloe studied the horned thing. A liar would flatter. This one only promised ruin. That felt closer to true. "Show me the passage," Obloe said. Saturn walked into the dark. Obloe dragged his great body after, scraping the rotted walls. Behind a curtain waited a narrow stone arch, worn and old, words carved above it. The passage sank down toward the stage. Woga stopped at the arch. "Write this," he whispered. "Write that I brought you to the door." "You brought me to the door," Obloe said. "Saturn brings me to the seed." He pushed into the narrow passage. The rot was thin, just as the god had said. Ahead, past the crumbling stage, a heavy shape sat wrapped in cloth. His seed. And curled beside it, watching the passage with pale glowing eyes, waited a great spectral hound.

The hound rose on pale legs. Its jaws glowed. Obloe crouched at the mouth of the passage, the wrapped seed just past the beast, close enough to smell. He knew the moment he lunged, those teeth would find his throat. He needed the hound gone, and he had no way to move it. Then a small light dropped through a crack in the ruined ceiling. Ashles landed on a broken beam, wings still. He had not expected her here. She had sent him north with a warning that the rot would eat his grove too. Now she had followed the rot herself. Dirt streaked her arms. Her band was smaller than before, and it showed in her face. "The decay is spreading south past your tower," she said. "I came to see if you were dead." She looked at the hound, then the seed. "You are not. Good." "It guards the seed," Obloe said. "I cannot reach it." Ashles studied the beast. "It is made of despair. Not flesh." She glanced up, toward the stage. In the dark above, Saturn watched with black, unblinking eyes. He had promised Obloe would fail. He did not speak now. He only waited. "Despair feeds on the willing," Ashles said. "Give it nothing to grip, it fades." She pointed at Obloe. "Stop bracing for the bite. Walk to your seed like the hound is already gone." Obloe's chest tightened. Every part of him wanted to fight. That was the wrong move, and he saw it. The hound grew brighter each time he flinched. It was drinking his fear. He forced his shoulders down. He fixed his eyes on the cloth and not the teeth. He took one heavy step. The hound snarled, jaws inches from his skull. He did not stop. He took another step. The light in its jaws dimmed. He pushed his fear down into the stone and kept walking. The hound lunged. Its teeth passed through his neck like cold smoke and closed on nothing. Obloe reached the seed and pulled it under his foreleg. The hound thinned to gray haze and was gone. Above them, Saturn made a low sound. "You borrowed her strength," he said. "Alone you would have flinched." Then he stepped back into the dark. Obloe held the seed against his chest. It was warm. But when he loosened the cloth, his breath caught. The heartwood had split down the middle. A thin black thread of rot ran through the crack. The seed still lived, but the decay had already reached inside it. Ashles saw it too. "It is dying," she said. "Slowly. You have days. Maybe less." Obloe had the seed at last. It would not save his grove unless he could pull the rot back out before it took the core.

Obloe held the cracked seed under his foreleg and turned for the doors. He needed clean ground fast. Every minute on this poisoned earth fed the black thread inside the seed. The rot spread faster here. He could feel it, a cold itch against his scales. One clear path led out. Something stood in it. Saturn filled the aisle between the ruined seats. Black eyes. Black horns curled from a shape made of despair. The forgotten god did not move to strike. He only blocked the way and smiled. "Leaving so soon," Saturn said. "With a dead thing in your claws. Stay. Watch it rot in your arms." He gestured at the poisoned floor. "The ground will finish what the thief started." Obloe knew the trap now. Saturn wanted him to fight. To rage. Despair grew fat on that. He had beaten the hound the same way, by giving it nothing. He pushed his anger down and studied the wall behind the god. Then the far doors groaned open on their own. A huge shape poured through. A lion's head above a serpent's body, mane the color of dead grass. Rot trailed from every scale. Obloe had heard the fairies whisper his name in fear. The maker who cursed all who would not name him maker. Yaahahahahaawayyy had come to see his poison at work. Saturn's smile faltered. He shrank back a step. The forgotten god feared the thing that fed the whole decay. "This theatre is mine," Saturn said. "Nothing is yours," Yaahahahahaawayyy said. "I made the ground you stand on. I will unmake it." His yellow eyes found Obloe and the seed. "That is a living thing. Living things defy me." The two turned on each other. Saturn hurled shadow. The serpent answered with a wave of rot that ate the front row of seats to dust. The clear path split open as they clashed. Obloe did not wait. He ran for the gap their fight had torn in the wall. He burst into gray daylight. His claws struck soil, but the soil was still poisoned. Ahead, beyond a dead field, he saw color. A small house woven from blossoms and mushroom caps sat on a patch of green grass. Living ground. The fairies' cottage. He drove his tired body toward it. He reached the grass and collapsed. He set the seed on clean earth and pried the cloth back. The black thread had grown. It reached halfway through the core now. The living soil slowed it, but did not stop it. A small light drifted from the cottage window. Ashles landed beside him, wings low. In her hands she held a glass bottle. Soft light curled inside it. "I could not pull the rot alone," she said. "So I saved this. Bottled hope. It may hold the seed a little longer." She looked north, toward the theatre. "But he is loose now. We are out of time."

The living water had brought Obloe back, but it had not been tested. His fire was a young thing again, freshly lit. He flew south over broken land, and every wingbeat asked the same question. Would the fire hold, or would it gutter out and drop him into the rot below? He could not know until it failed. If it failed high, he would not reach the grove. Woga Dimples ran beneath him where the ground allowed, antlers cutting the gray air. The jackalope in the dark suit had already saved him once with a flask. Now he pointed with a white glove toward a low structure ahead, its wooden arch carved like fairy wings, crystals hanging from its eaves. "Land there," Woga called. "Test your fire on solid ground. Not in the sky, where a stall kills you." Obloe dropped to the retreat's clearing. His chest heaved. He breathed a thin line of flame at a dead branch. The fire caught, then thinned, then coughed and died. The branch smoked. His fire was weaker than he knew. In the air, that stall would have been the end. A delayed step scraped the stone behind him. Daath came from the shade of the arch, the undead elf who had read his empty seed once at the ancient oak. Her limbs moved a moment after she willed them, catching up late. She held a curved metal thing under one arm, a segmented demon shape of red plates and glowing runes, cold and heavy. "Your fire is hollow," Daath said. She set the metal thing down. "I studied rot in trees for twelve years. I know hollow when I see it. You need heat you did not make yourself." She tapped a rune on the machine's flank. It sparked. "This holds stored fire. Occult work, old. Breathe into it. It will feed your coal until it burns on its own." Obloe distrusted the thing. But he trusted the grove less to its rot. He lowered his head and breathed his thin flame into the automaton's open jaw. The runes flared. Heat ran back up the line into his chest. The coal there swelled, then roared. He felt his fire settle deep and steady, no longer a guttering thing. He turned to the dead branch again and breathed. Full flame poured out, white at the core, and did not thin. It held as long as he willed it. His fire was tested now, and it answered. "Better," Daath said flatly. The machine had gone dark, spent. "It gave what it had. It has no more." Obloe spread his wings and lifted clean off the clearing. No sway. No stall. Woga watched him rise, then bolted south along the ground. "Fly true," the jackalope called. "The seed is close now." The fire held through every wingbeat south. His grove waited below the horizon, its heartwood seed still creeping with gray. But now Obloe knew his fire would carry him there.

Obloe crossed the last stretch of broken land and dropped into his grove. The heartwood seed sat in its bed, half-swallowed by creeping gray. But a worse sound stopped him. To the north, the pinned decay god thrashed. Yaahahahahaawayyy lay buried under moss and vine, the lion head snapping at the grass that held him. Each heave of his body pulled at the roots. Gaia's green net strained. The grove's living barrier bent with every lunge, and a seam of it had already split. Obloe understood at once. The god was dying because his source had been destroyed, but a dying thing thrashes hardest. If he tore the barrier, the rot behind it would flood the seed bed and choke the anchor for good. Obloe had crossed a void and burned rot from his own chest to save this seed. He would not watch it drown now. Woga Dimples arrived behind him, antlers cutting the gray air, his dark suit streaked with ash from the run. The jackalope studied the split seam with one glance. "The vines will not hold him long," Woga said flatly. "Cover the tear, or the bed floods. You have moments." "Fire will burn Gaia's net," Obloe said. "If I burn the vines, I free him." "Then do not burn the vines." Woga pointed a white glove at the god's open jaw, where the moss had thinned. "Burn the thing inside him. The old serpents rot from the mouth. Aim there." Obloe looked. The god's throat still pulsed with a last knot of gray light, a scrap of the source he had carried inside himself. That was the engine of the thrashing. Kill it, and the body would fall still. He planted his claws and breathed. His fire came full now, white at the core, the fire Daath's machine had steadied. He did not spray wide. He sent a thin lance straight down the god's open throat. The gray knot inside flared, screamed, and went out. Yaahahahahaawayyy shuddered once. The great body slackened. His lunging stopped. The vines around him stilled, then tightened, pressing him flat into the earth. The split seam in the barrier sagged closed as the strain left it. The god did not die and did not rise. He lay pinned and quiet, an empty husk under the green. Obloe's chest heaved. He turned to the seed bed. The gray at its edges had crept a finger closer, but the barrier held. The immediate flood was stopped. "You held the wall," Woga said. He brushed ash from his sleeve. "Barely." Obloe looked at the seed. It was safe for now, but still half-gray, still unhealed. The god was silenced, yet the rot already inside the bed had not gone anywhere. He had bought the anchor its life. He had not yet cleaned it. The seed needed more than a stilled enemy. It needed the gray driven out of its bed entirely, or the whole grove would rot from the root.

The god lay still, but the barrier that held him was dying. Obloe saw it now. Gaia crouched beside the pinned husk, her green wings sagging. The moss and vine she had grown over Yaahahahahaawayyy came from her own strength, and that strength was draining fast. Her scales had gone dull. Where her net thinned, gray rot leaked through, creeping toward the seed bed. If the barrier fell, the fresh decay would flood the anchor he had crossed a void to save. "I can't hold it," Gaia said. She did not soften it. "The vines feed on me. When I empty, they rot. The rot behind him comes next." Obloe's fire could not help here. Flame would burn the net faster than the rot. He looked at the leaking seam and found no answer in his own body. Woga Dimples stepped past him, boots quiet on the gray earth. The jackalope carried a glass tub between his white gloves. Inside, a ruby liquid glowed, its surface rippling on its own. "From the fae retreat," Woga said flatly. "The still pools there strip the sickness from anything they touch. I took what I could carry. Pour it on the net, not the god." Obloe stared at the small tub. "That will not cover him." "It does not need to cover him." Woga set the tub down at the seam's edge. "It cleans what it touches. Feed it into her vines. The vines will carry it." Gaia understood first. She pressed one claw into the ruby liquid. The glow climbed up her foreleg and into the moss. Where it spread, the gray rot curled back and went pale, then green. The leaking seam sealed. But Gaia gasped. The cleansing drew on her too, and her last strength was going with it. "She'll empty," Woga said. "The net needs an anchor that isn't her." Obloe pressed his own claw to the seed bed. The refilled heartwood seed sat in the soil, half-gray still. He did not breathe fire. He breathed slow, pushing his steadied warmth down into the roots the way he had anchored himself at the void door. The seed's buried threads caught the ruby cleansing and drank it. Gray drained out of the bed. Green rose in its place. The seed became the anchor Gaia's net needed. Gaia pulled back from the vines. They held without her now, rooted to the clean seed. She sank onto the grass, hollow but breathing. "It holds," she said. "On its own." The barrier stood. The god lay buried and quiet beneath living green. The rot at the bed's edge had pulled back, and for the first time the seed sat in clean soil. But the seed was still only half-full. Its magic had been poured in once and nearly lost. It anchored the net now. It did not yet anchor the grove. Obloe had cleaned its bed. He had not yet woken its power.

The barrier held, but Obloe could not move. His warmth was the only thing binding the half-full seed to Gaia's root net. The moment he pulled back, the anchor would come loose. The vines would die. The rot behind the buried god would flood the clean bed. He crouched over the seed and breathed slow heat into the soil. He could not leave. He could not rest. The seed still slept, and he was its only chain. "You cannot hold this forever," Woga Dimples said. The jackalope stood at the bed's edge, white gloves folded behind his back, suit smooth despite the gray dust. He studied the seed the way he studied everything, looking for the exact flaw. He had guided Obloe to the stolen seed in the first place, and he had kept returning when no one asked him to. "You are the anchor now. That is not a plan. That is a cage." "The seed is half-empty," Obloe said. His voice came out thin. "It cannot hold the net on its own. It needs to wake. I do not know how to wake it." "Then you do not wake it with fire." Woga turned his head. Across the clearing, a white woolly mammoth moved through the drying moss. Its tusks curled like brass horns. Soft notes trailed from each slow step. Obloe had heard that sound on the wind for a day and thought it was the rot playing tricks. "What is that?" Obloe asked. "A traveller. It walks the broken lands and plays over the dying. The seed is young. It was filled by fear and nearly lost. It does not trust its own roots." Woga's voice stayed flat. "It needs a reason to settle, not a hand to force it." The mammoth stopped beside the bed. It lowered its great head. Air moved through the horn-shaped tusks, and a low, warm tone rolled out across the clearing. It was not Rollesio's pipe, which stole the mind and dropped a listener into sleep. This was slower. It did not command. It calmed. The dying moss on Gaia's net stilled its curling. Gaia lifted her head from the grass. "Now," Woga said. "The sound settles it. Give it your warmth one last time, then let go. If it has taken, it will hold itself. If it has not, the bed is lost." Obloe understood the risk. If he pulled back and the seed slept on, everything broke at once. He pressed his claw to the soil. He pushed his steadied heat down into the buried threads, as deep as it would go, while the mammoth's long note rolled over them both. The seed drank the warmth. The sound wrapped around it. For one breath Obloe felt the seed stop pulling at him, as if it had found the floor beneath itself. He lifted his claw. The seed held. Then it pulled the other way. Green threads shot out from it into the clean bed, down and wide, catching the dying roots beneath the rot and waking them. The anchor net went taut without Obloe touching it. The half-gray husk flushed dark, then deep living green, swelling until it split its own shell. A shoot rose from the crack. The gray rot at the bed's far edge recoiled and sank. Across the grove, from the far trees to the choked pool, the brown ground answered. The seed had woken. It anchored itself, and through itself, the whole grove. Gaia stood on steady legs for the first time in days. "It's full," she said. "It holds everything now. Not just the net. The grove." Obloe sat back on the fresh grass. His fire had nowhere left to go. The source in the decay realm was gone. The god lay buried and still. The seed he had chased north, pulled from a hound, cleaned of rot, carried across a void, and anchored with his own body, now held the grove without him. He did not have to hold it anymore. He could finally rest. Woga Dimples drew a small worn book from his coat. He uncapped a pen and wrote one line, then turned it so Obloe could see the words. "The jackalope who stayed," it read, beside the grove's name and the date. "I keep my bargains," Woga said. "You will be in the grove's history. So will I." The mammoth played a last soft note and walked on toward the broken lands, trailing music over ground that was already turning green behind it. Obloe lay down in his grove, under the new shoot of the heartwood seed, and let the warmth of the living earth hold him instead. For the first time since the seed was stolen, the old dragon slept.