Barik cursed under his breath. "Darn. I don't have powder anymore."
The dark didn't wait for him to finish the thought.
The last blue spark died, and the forest immediately contracted. A heavy silence collapsed over them, smelling of damp soil and the sharp, chemical sting of Dara's failed powder. Barik's torch guttered, casting erratic, shallow light against the encroaching trunks. The wood was moving—a deliberate, crowded mass choking out the sky.
Dara dropped her empty leather pouch. It hit the mossy roots without a sound. Her fingers remained hooked in the air where the defense line had just vanished.
"Barik," she said. Her voice lacked its usual sharp edge. It was flat.
"I see it," Barik growled. He shifted his grip on the axe haft, his knuckles white under the dying torchlight. He didn't look back at the third figure behind them, but his shoulders squared.
The circle of light shrank to three paces, casting erratic, shallow reflections against the encroaching trunks. The wood was a deliberate, crowded mass choking out the sky. Beyond that radius lay the absolute black of the timberland, and whatever the Shadows had sent to hunt them down.
The old wards were gone. The lore was dead wood.
For a fraction of a second, Barik's axe gleamed in the dark, catching the last flicker of flame. Then, nothing.
Black all around.
The dark pressed in. Thick. Heavy.
Under the mountain root, sunlight was a myth. The blackness was total.
Barny the mule shifted. His hoof struck something soft. He squealed.
Something under my hooves. The thought was so sharp, so instant, he almost bolted.
No. Just a tendril. He stamped again. Hard. Stone this time.
In the blindness, their other senses sharpened to a terrifying degree. The blue smoke and the silver light had vanished. With the protection gone, the mountain began to move.
The wood groaned around them. A deep splintering sound.
Branches twisted and writhed in the dark, the dry scrape of thorns sliding over the stone floor as the forest began sealing the path behind them.
The horses and mules shifted, their hooves clattering in a sudden panic as the wooden cart creaked under the pressure of the encroaching walls.
Jag stood still. To the rest of the camp, she looked paralyzed by the dark, but her mind slammed into Eris, sharp and commanding.
She was readying the pack, holding them like a coiled spring, poised to strike the moment the vines broke loose.
In the back of the wagon, the children began to whimper—a raw, primal sound of pure terror in the dark.
Only Barny kept his footing, his eyes fixed on the shadows ahead.
"Light the torch!" Barik shouted, his voice cracking slightly as the sound of snapping timber crept right up to his boots.
His voice didn't echo. The dark swallowed it.
"Light it now!"
Flint struck. Once. Twice.
The spark died before it touched air.
The children stopped breathing. One of them whimpered. Jag's growl started low—a deep, subterranean vibration that held its ground. It didn't rise. Not yet.
Kaylah's hand found Eris in the dark. Her fingers were ice.
The corridor narrowed with every breath. Black vines slid over stone with a dry scraping sound, their thorns glinting. The gap ahead of the convoy, already too small, continued to shrink.
The air smelled of damp earth and something older. Rot. Stagnant water. A place that had not welcomed living things for a very long time.
Barik spat on his palms and regripped his axe, the new firelight throwing his massive shadow against the wood. He glanced back at the pale faces in the cart and snorted.
"Don't fret, little ones," he called out, gesturing at the walls with his blade. "They're just angry bushes. I've chopped down worse for firewood."
Nobody laughed. Dara only glared. But the tight, suffocating panic in the hollow seemed to break, if only for a second.
Dara kept one hand on the black stallion's reins. The other on her blade. The horse's ears were pinned flat, its nostrils flaring. Its eyes stayed on Eris, unblinking.
The children huddled together. The youngest had begun crying silently. Faces were pale in the dim light. Even the wolves had stopped growling, their fur bristling as they pressed close to Jag.
Eris looked at the walls of the black forest. The vines were not attacking; they were waiting.
He sensed them now, beyond the reach of sight or sound. Beneath the ache in his muscles and the silver still burning through his veins, a presence stretched through the mountain—deep, heavy, and more insistent than before.
The Brier.
A thick vine dropped from the dark overhead. It stopped an arm's length from his face. It did not strike. It bent, swaying, testing the air.
Eris squinted with his Serpent's eye, the deep-seeing iris shifting in the dark.
Slowly, he raised his left hand. His fingers closed around the vine that approached him, caressing the cold bark. The scar in his palm burned, a dull, insistent pulse against the wood.
The entire forest stopped moving. A low vibration traveled through the stone beneath their feet, resonant and deep, like the heartbeat of the mountain itself.
The mountain was listening.
So was the Brier.
Eris swallowed the dryness in his throat. "Open up."
The words were a mere reflex; his mind had already bled into the wood.
The spoken command hung in the air, heavy with the weight of the Brier's silence. The forest held its breath.
There was no wind. No movement. The world had shriveled down to the strained breathing of the people behind him and the faint creak of leather harnesses as Barny shifted his weight.
One second…Barik didn't lower his axe. Dara didn't blink.
Two…Kaylah stepped forward, almost running to Eris for one last embrace. She was bracing for the worst, entirely willing to be the sacrifice as long as he survived.
Three…A low vibration rippled through the mountain floor. It didn't hit their ears first, but the soles of their boots—steady, heavy, and sending a sudden tremor up their legs.
The black wood responded. The movement was slow, creeping without sudden force or the violent tearing of timber. Thorns parted with a dry, splintering creak as branches twisted and peeled back away from the threshold.
Barik finally let out his breath. "Hah! It worked."
Eris stared into the opening. "No," he said.
The corridor stopped widening. There was no room for the horses, much less the cart. No room for anyone except him.
The triumphant grin died on Barik's face, his jaw going slack as his eyes tracked the narrow margins of the stone.
The silence that followed was worse than the closing vines.
Barny flattened his ears and took a deliberate step backward, his hooves clacking against the stone. Jag rose to her feet, a low rumble rolling through her chest as the rest of the pack pressed closer together, their eyes reflecting the dying torchlight.
Dara stared at the narrow passage, her grip tightening on her blade. "Is that it?"
The message was clear. The Brier recognized one master. Everyone else remained prey.
The walls around them creaked, the sound echoing heavy and hollow. The opening behind them narrowed another inch, the vines inching closer, their thorns glinting in the fading light.
Kaylah stepped beside Eris. "Can you make it understand?" she asked quietly. "The rest cannot follow you there."
Eris didn't answer immediately.
He closed his eyes. He could still feel the Brier—not just the vines around them, but all of it. An endless web of wood, thorns, roots, and hunger stretching through the mountain.
He reached toward that feeling.
Not with his hands.
With intent.
He forced his will deeper, driving it straight into the core of the timber. The black vines recoiled, peeling away from them on all sides.
He took a step. The vines opened a path. Another step. They withdrew again. He stopped. The walls froze.
The scar in his palm burned white-hot, a sharp spike of pure heat melting into his flesh.
The mountain groaned—a deep, tectonic shudder from the bedrock itself. The Brier surged.
This time, the black walls didn't simply withdraw. A wider path tore open before them, straight and pristine. Rows of thorns folded back into the darkness as roots sank deep beneath the stone, physically forcing the corridor apart.
Five paces. Ten. Twenty. Light fell from above and lit their path.
Barik broke first. His axe hit the stone with a dull clang. He hadn't meant to drop it; his hands were shaking with excitement.
"The Cold Sun..." he said, his voice too loud in the dead quiet. "Did you see—"
"Shut up," Dara cut in. She didn't look at Eris. She looked at the walls. At the way the shadows had stopped moving. "Don't name it. Don't talk to it."
Barny snorted. Yeah, right. Shut up. All you do is curse all the way, you useless thing, Barny thought. His lip curled, gave Barik a look of disdain. And dropping your axe like a clumsy foal... Brrh.
Eris stared at the open path. The scar in his palm had gone cold. "Let's move," he said.
Nobody argued. Even Barik didn't smile. Because the path didn't feel like mercy.
It felt like an invitation.
Deep within the maze of black wood, an anchor dropped into Eris's chest, pulling him forward. It wasn't the mountain or the Brier waiting in the dark. It was a presence far older—and it already knew his name.
---
A sudden noise tore through the dark from behind them.
A raw, fractured shout split the air, followed by the frantic stampede of boots on stone. Men screamed, their voices shredded by terror, but the Brier's hungry walls warped the echoes into a monstrous din.
Barik spun around, his boots skidding on the rugged floor as he scooped up his dropped axe. "That's coming from the clearing," he muttered, his eyes darting back toward the dark mouth of the black forest they had just escaped.
"The Legion," Dara said. Her voice was dead cold. She didn't drop her guard. "Ful's men must have moved into the Eye after we left it."
Barik hesitated, his chest heaving as he looked from the dark tunnel back to Eris. His face knotted. "Eris... can you see if they're not ours? What if it's the Haven? The Walkers?"
Eris nodded. He stood still, his hazel eyes flickering—mercury for an instant—as he activated the deep-seeing eye. His vision pierced through the black vines, unraveling the tangled darkness.
Ten paces in, the place lit. Hazy at first, the thorns formed a living wall, twisted and dense. At twenty, still vines everywhere. Fifty paces beyond, the shapes resolved: a place of chaos.
"Crescents," Eris said simply, his voice flat.
Barik's face paled. He bent lower, his fingers tightening white-knuckled around the haft of his axe until the wood creaked. "They're being torn apart."
Dara's jaw clenched, her gaze locked on the grinding walls. "They shouldn't have followed."
He could still feel the Brier's hunger. It had let them pass. It had even lit their way.
But the Legion? The Legion was food.
The screams grew louder, distorted by the narrow stone corridors. Metal clashed against wood, followed by the heavy, wet thud of collapsing structures. Human voices cried out orders that were immediately cut short. They weren't fighting an enemy army; they were running for their lives.
When Eris spoke again, his voice flat against the wall of noise. "Move the cart."
Wolves pressed tightly against the turning wheels of the wagon as the convoy began to roll. Though the path ahead remained open, the Brier was already closing the door at their back, sealing the threshold so no one could follow.
They crept forward into the dark. No one looked back. The group moved as one, but the path didn't feel like mercy.
It felt like an invitation.
Deep within the maze of black wood, an anchor dropped into Eris's chest, pulling him forward. This wasn't the mountain flexing its stone, nor the Brier waiting in the dark. A presence far older stirred in the deep—and it already knew his name.
---
The passage ran straight ahead, too clean and too quiet, before venting into a small, subterranean hollow.
Without warning, the forest shifted. Thorny bushes slowly pulled apart, the black wood groaning under its own weight as a new path tore open.
This was not the narrow corridor Eris had forced open with his will. The new track diverged completely, splitting off to the left in a wide, clear sweep and leaving their original route to dwindle into the dark.
Standing before them, blocking the entirety of the cavern's exit, was a massive, seamless archway.
Two black trunks grew inward from the stone floor, arching high overhead. Thorns braided the join at the apex, locking the timber together in a permanent, heavy knot.
The rough, jagged stone ended at the threshold. Beyond it lay a floor so flawlessly smooth it gleamed in the dark. Not a single pebble or grain of dirt marred the surface. Someone, or something, had swept it clean for a guest.
Nothing stood between the pillars, yet the archway framed a void of absolute black. It was impossible to tell where the open air ended and the darkness began—or if a heavy gate of dark stone blocked the path ahead.
The air on the other side was completely still. No draft came through the opening. No scent of the outer mountain passed into the hollow. A place holding its breath.
The convoy halted. The wolves whined. Barny stamped a hoof, his ears twitching in the dark.
As the group neared the threshold, a new sound drifted out from the darkness beyond the arch. Eris heard it first.
It vibrated directly in the marrow of his bones.
Barny snorted, his ears twitching. He felt the shift in the air, but couldn't tell what it was. He tossed his head, the leather harness rattling against his wooden collar.
He looked at Kaylah, then at Dara, his ears flicking forward and back in rapid succession. The two has no strange reaction. Nothing yet.
He took a single step, his iron shoes ringing out against the smooth floor, then stopped. His massive shoulders tense, he refused to move an inch closer to the black wood.
Nearby, Jag dropped her haunches onto the cold stone, tilting her head. There was no warning growl, no stiffening of the fur along her spine. Her yellow eyes simply tracked between the gate and the back of Eris's head—sensing a shift the humans were still blind to.
Barik, positioned at the rear, frowned. He looked around the quiet cavern, his eyes warily scanning the ceiling where the roots hung low. "Why'd we stop?"
Again, no one answered.
The silence fractured as the sound sharpened, clear enough now for everyone to hear. The Legion's dying screams had finally vanished from the rear. This new noise drifted out from the passage ahead, bleeding directly from the void beyond the archway.
To Eris, the sound was not a voice at all. It was a low, resonant hum—a rhythmic, heavy vibration that matched the burning pulse in his left palm. It felt familiar, a quiet, inevitable invitation that pulled at the cold still lingering deep within his veins.
The pain from his injuries seemed to dull, replaced by a strange, numbing weightlessness. Then a voice spoke, low and close to his ear, blending perfectly with the hum.
"Come."
***