The wind had changed.
It no longer smelled of moss and memory, but of dust and old stone—of iron buried deep beneath the forest floor. Kaelyn stood at the edge of the Thornwood's northernmost border, where roots thinned and the trees grew still, as if holding their breath.
Before her stretched a field of withered bracken and ash-gray earth, where nothing green had dared grow for centuries. In the distance, half-swallowed by time, rose the remnants of a wall—ancient, fractured, and bleeding glyphs that glowed faintly beneath the setting sun.
"The Forgotten Kingdom," Eran murmured. "Before Thornwood, before the curse, before the crown."
Kaelyn's breath clouded in the cooling air. "And before the First Root."
Eran stepped closer, brushing aside a vine that had dared creep past the treeline. "You think this is where it began?"
"No," Kaelyn said, her voice taut. "I think this is where it ended. Whatever they sealed there… it's waking."
As they crossed the ashen threshold, the air shifted. Time faltered.
It was not decay that clung to this place—it was stillness. A silence so thick it pressed against the bones. No birds. No insects. Even their footsteps sounded wrong, like echoes walking beside them, not behind.
The ruins rose higher, shaped from black stone and wrapped in veins of petrified root. Towers that had once touched the sky now stooped like broken ribs. And at the heart, a dais of pale stone ringed with jagged statues—all of them headless.
Eran knelt, brushing dust from a fallen tablet. "These runes… they're kin to the Thorn Queen's tongue, but older. Wilder."
Kaelyn's eyes locked on a carving along the dais. It depicted a tree with no crown, only twisted branches cradling a sphere. Inside the sphere, a figure writhed—half root, half fire.
She touched the stone.
And the past breathed.
A vision bloomed.
Stone halls draped in silk. Voices chanting in a forgotten tongue. A queen—robed in shadow, face hidden—stood before a council robed in antlers and ash.
"We were wrong," the queen said. "It is not power we sealed. It is pain. And pain remembered… becomes god."
Kaelyn staggered as the vision snapped.
Eran caught her again, brow furrowed. "What did you see?"
"Not a kingdom. A prison." Her voice was hollow. "The Thorn Queen didn't begin the curse. She inherited it…
Kaelyn stood motionless as the child's hand remained pressed lightly to her chest. The warmth was unlike any she had felt—not fire, not blood, but something living. The shard within her tunic vibrated, resonating in harmony with the pulse beneath her ribs. For a heartbeat, she thought it might stop—then realized it wasn't hers alone anymore.
The child's eyes shimmered with impossible depth. "There's more buried here than bone and history."
Kaelyn's voice came out low. "What did they hide?"
The child looked past her, toward the broken statues. "Not what. Who."
Kaelyn turned.
The statues were not headless by time's hand.
They had been made that way. Deliberately faceless. Anonymous.
"What were they hiding from?" Eran asked, moving beside her, unease thick in his voice.
"Memory," the child answered. "Each statue was a priest of the Root. They gave their names, their faces, to the First Root to seal it. A bargain. Power for silence. But memory doesn't die. It grows in the cracks."
"And now?" Kaelyn asked.
"Now… you remember."
A gust of wind blew through the ruined hall, carrying not air, but ash.
Ash that twisted into shapes.
The air flickered with images—ghosts of the past reanimating in fractured light. Rituals. Sacrifices. Burials where stone met vine and children were named for trees that no longer grew.
Kaelyn felt her knees weaken.
These were not just stories.
They were lineage.
A history cut from the realm, pruned like a diseased branch. And now, it returned—not as vengeance, but as claim.
The child reached toward the throne, touching the broken armrest. The stone groaned and split down the middle, revealing a core of black crystal, veined with green and silver light. It pulsed.
"The Heartstone," Eran whispered, reverent. "That's—"
"Older than all of us," the child said. "Older than names, older than kings. Before there was court or curse, this was the First Womb."
Kaelyn stepped closer.
The crystal's light shifted when she neared, dulling then brightening, responding.
"She answers to you," the child murmured. "You carry the memory not of her torment—but of her promise. What she was meant to be."
Kaelyn reached out, hesitating only a breath before her palm met the Heartstone.
Pain lanced through her.
A thousand voices cried out—not in agony, but longing. Mothers mourning children. Lovers torn by time. Villagers whispering prayers in the dark to roots that would never bloom.
And then—
Silence.
A single voice.
"You must choose."
Kaelyn gasped and fell back. Eran caught her again, arms steady but tense.
"What did you hear?" he asked.
Kaelyn's eyes were wide, pupils blown wide like someone who had seen too much. "The First Root… it's offering me a throne."
Eran stiffened. "Another crown?"
She shook her head. "Not thorns. Not petals. Stone. A kingdom that remembers. A power that listens."
He looked at the Heartstone warily. "And if you refuse?"
Kaelyn glanced at the child.
The child said nothing.
Because they didn't need to.
If Kaelyn refused… someone else would answer.
And the forest—no, the realm—would follow that voice.
Later that night, Kaelyn stood again at the border of Thornwood, the ruins of the Forgotten Kingdom behind her, the trees ahead whispering secrets she could now partially understand.
Eran came to stand beside her, silent for a time. Then: "You always said you didn't want to rule."
"I still don't," she murmured.
"Then why does the world keep trying to crown you?"
She didn't answer.
Instead, she took the broken shard of bark from her pocket and placed it in the soil. The cracked piece pulsed once, and from its scar, a small sprout grew—silver-veined, green-tipped, and trembling in the night wind.
It was not thorn. It was not flame.
It was memory.
Planted.
Alive.
Kaelyn looked at it for a long time, then turned her eyes north again.
"We need to find the Second Root," she said.
Eran turned toward her, frowning. "We don't even know if it exists."
"It does," Kaelyn whispered. "I can feel it. The First Root was buried. The Second was banished."
"To where?"
Kaelyn's jaw tightened. "To us. To the people."
She looked at the glowing bloom behind her. "It lives in the forgotten. The unnamed. The ones the world erased. And it's coming back—not through gods or queens, but through every soul who remembers who they were."
Eran was silent a long while.
"And when it returns?" he asked.
Kaelyn looked to the stars above the Thornwood canopy, ancient and watching.
"Then we decide," she said. "Do we become gods… or gardeners?"