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.

Solara walked the frozen path an hour before her hands began to shake. Yawen's ice held the shadow open ahead of her. But the cold that cut the dark also crept into her skin. Each step drank her warmth. Her light, once bright as noon, had shrunk to a dull glow at her fingertips. She stopped and leaned against a black trunk. Her breath came white. She had come to carry the sun to the heart-tree. Now the sun inside her was going out. Yawen turned back. Frost spread where he stood. "You've slowed," he said. No worry in it. Just a fact. "Your cold is taking my warmth," Solara said. "If it keeps on, I won't reach the tree. I'll be too weak to heal anything." He studied her the way winter studies a candle. "I can't stop being cold." "I know." She pressed her palm to her chest and felt how faint the heat had grown. She thought of her light like a fire in a windy field. It needed shelter, not more fuel. "Then I stop giving it away." She knelt on the ice. She stopped pushing her light outward to fight the dark. Instead she pulled it inward, close to her heart, and let it burn small and hot. She wrapped it in herself like hands around a coal. The glow at her skin dimmed to almost nothing. She looked snuffed out. "You've gone dark," Yawen said. His flat voice held a crack of something. Doubt, maybe. "That was your only defense." "Watch." Solara held still. The cold pressed on her from every side. But it found no open flame to feed on now. It slid over the shell she had made and could not reach the fire beneath. Slowly, the shaking in her hands eased. Her breath warmed. The heat did not grow, but it stopped bleeding away. She stood. She was not the sunshine she had been. She was a covered lamp in a cold house. But she was steady. "I can walk now," she said. "As far as we need." Yawen looked at her for a long moment. "You'll be harder to see," he said. "The shadow finds bright things first." He turned and cut the path forward again. Solara followed. Her warmth was safe, but her light no longer pushed the dark back. She had traded her glow for her strength. Now the blight pressed closer on both sides, and she carried no lamp to hold it off. Somewhere ahead the heart-tree waited. She would have to reach it before the shadow reached her.

Yawen stopped. His ice met the shadow and slid off it. Solara looked past him at a wall of black that filled the path from ground to sky. It did not drift like the shadow behind them. It hung solid, thick as stone. Yawen threw frost at it. The cold crawled up the wall and died. He tried again. Nothing froze. "I can't cut this," he said. "It's too deep." Solara stood behind him, her light banked small in her chest. The heart-tree waited on the other side. She had no way through. A cold nose touched her hand. Solara jumped. A coyote stood beside her, its coat dark as the wall, its edges smoking like a snuffed wick. Its eyes were pale blue and calm. Behind it stood a goose, white with feathers that shone purple and black. The goose stretched its neck toward the wall and hissed. Its whole body leaned away from the dark, as if the shadow burned it. Solara had seen no living thing in the blight until now. "They came from the side," Yawen said. "Through a gap." The coyote turned and trotted a few steps, then looked back. It wanted them to follow. The goose kept its eyes on the wall and would not turn its back to it. Solara followed the coyote off the frozen path. Yawen laid new ice as they went. The coyote led them along the base of the black wall to a place where the shadow thinned. Not a gap Yawen's cold could hold, but a seam, a narrow fold where the dark did not press so hard. Roots wove across it. Among them grew a single flower, yellow as noon, its petals layered in tight rings. It glowed faintly. It was the only bright thing in the blight, and the shadow had not touched it. "Sunlight," Solara said. She knelt and cupped the blossom in both hands. She had drawn her own light inward to save it. This flower held light that was not hers to spend. She pulled the warmth into her chest, and her banked fire swelled. Heat filled her hands. She pressed both palms against the seam and let the light out for the first time in hours. The shadow burned back. Where her hands touched, the black wall thinned to gray, then split. A path opened, low and narrow, but open. The coyote slipped through first. The goose followed, quick, glad to leave the wall behind. Solara crawled through after them and stood. The heart-tree rose ahead, close now, its split bark black with rot. She could see it plainly at last. But her chest ached where the borrowed light had drained. She had spent the flower's warmth to break the wall, and she had none saved for the tree. She had reached it empty.

Solara stood at the base of the heart-tree, empty of light. The bark had split down the middle. Deep inside the split, the rot glowed sick and dark. She reached her hand toward the gap, but she could not see where the blight began or ended. The core of it hid too deep. She could not heal what she could not find. "I don't know where to put my light," she said. "Even if I had any left." "Then you need eyes that read blood," said a voice behind her. A dark fairy stepped from between the roots. Red streaked her black hair, and old scars marked her arms. She looked at the tree the way a healer looks at a wound. This was Crimson Thornwhisper, a blood fairy who worked the magic other fairies feared. Yawen went still and put himself half between the women. Solara had never seen him wary of anyone. "I felt this rot from far off," Crimson said. "Blood magic tracks blood. The tree bleeds." She did not smile or soften. "I can find your core. That's what you want. I'll tell you where to burn." "Why help me?" Solara asked. "I'm looking for something that isn't here. But I hate this blight more than most." She shrugged. "That's the whole reason. Not noble." Yawen spoke low. "Her magic takes." "It takes a little," Crimson said. "I won't lie about that." She held out one hand. "A drop of yours. I read the rot through you. Then you'll see it plain." Solara looked at the split trunk. She had no plan of her own. She pressed her thumb against a thorn on Crimson's wrist wrap. Blood welled. Crimson closed her fist over it and shut her eyes. Cold crept up Solara's arm. Her own pulse thudded slower. "There," Crimson breathed. She opened her hand and touched the bark. Red light traced the wood. It ran down into the split, deep and deeper, and stopped at a black knot low in the heart. "That. The rot starts there and climbs. Kill that knot, the rest dies." Solara saw it clearly now, a fist of black buried where the two halves of the heart pulled apart. She knew at last where her healing must go. But she felt the cost. Her arm hung numb. The reading had drained what little strength she had scraped back. "You're weaker now," Crimson said flatly. "I did say." Yawen's cold pressed at Solara's other side. Between the frost and the blood-drain, her banked fire guttered. She had found the target. She had no fuel to strike it. She stared at the black knot deep in the split, close enough to touch, and her hands shook too hard to burn.

The black knot pulsed inside the split trunk. Solara watched it climb. New rot crept up past the fork, faster now that the core lay bare. Her hands shook. She had no fire left to strike, and no way to slow the spread while she rested. If the knot climbed beyond her reach, she would lose it for good. "It's moving," she said. "I need time I don't have." Crimson crouched at the roots, watching the dark veins grow. The blood fairy had found the core for her, then drained her doing it. Now she studied the tree like a problem she half regretted. "You won't get time," she said. "Not standing here." Yawen stepped close. His cold rolled off him. "I can freeze it," he said. "Stop the spread. Not kill it." "Your cold drains me," Solara said. Every time his frost touched her, her light thinned. "Then don't stand near it." He knelt at the split and pressed both palms to the bark. Ice spread from his hands. It sheeted over the black veins and held them fast. The rot stopped climbing. But the cold reached Solara too. Her banked fire guttered lower. She backed away and it steadied, just barely. The knot was pinned now, frozen in place. She had her time. She still had no fuel to burn it. A soft glow moved through the roots. A turtle crawled toward her, its shell marked with faint symbols. Warm light curled off its head like steam. Behind it came the coyote and the goose from the shadow wall. The goose fixed its dark eye on the frozen rot and hissed. Solara knelt. The turtle pushed its head against her open hand. Warmth flowed into her arm, slow and steady, filling the place Crimson's magic had emptied. Not a blaze. A trickle. But it did not stop. "It heals," Crimson said. She sounded almost surprised. "That's real magic. Take it while it lasts." Solara held the turtle and drank the warmth in. Her numb arm woke. Her pulse climbed. The banked fire in her chest grew from an ember to a flame. Yawen held the ice. The rot stayed frozen and could not climb. She fed on the turtle's gift until her hands stopped shaking. "Now," Yawen said. "Before I have to let go." Solara reached into the frozen split. She laid her palm on the black knot through the ice. Her light poured out, gold and hot. It sank into the core. The knot cracked. It hissed and shrank and blackened to ash. The frozen veins above it went gray and dead. She pulled her hand back. The knot was gone. But the tree was not healed. The dead rot still clung to the trunk, and the roots stayed pulled back and bare. She had killed the source. The tree itself hung silent, waiting to be brought back to life.