Eryshae

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Vael

Sam collapsed. It wasn't just a fall. It was the fall; as if the whole forest, the whole world, cracked inward around the weight of his knees hitting the earth.

One moment his hand was on her cheek, rough bark against soft skin, the golden glow in his chest flickering like a dying star. His eyes had found hers; no words, just that unbearable stillness.

Then the light vanished. And he went still. "Sam?" Vael whispered. No answer. She caught him as best she could, his form heavy, wooden, wrong. The man she had kissed in shadowed corridors, who had danced beside her at the Solstice, who'd made up ridiculous poems about fruit and honeyed bread, was gone. What remained was half-tree, half-man, a sacred husk bound in stasis by Myrtle's herbal touch.

But to Vael, it didn't feel like stasis. It felt like an ending. She dropped to her knees, arms wrapping around what she could of his too-large body. Vines still curled along his frame, sunflowers wilted but watching with hollow glowing eyes. Her face pressed to his shoulder, the smell of sap and scorched cedar thick in her lungs.

She didn't cry. There were no tears left. Only fire. Only fury. When she finally looked up, her voice was something else entirely. A blade. A vow. "Whoever did this," she said, low and broken, "will pay a thousandfold."

Myrtle said nothing, only tightened the wards drawn in a ring around Sam's body. Mira stood just behind her, motionless. Watching. Vael's eyes flicked to her once; just once; and Mira met the gaze without flinching.

But something passed between them. A tremor. A shadow. Vael didn't know what it meant, but she felt it. Felt everything. The still-burning echo of the Grove. The Guardian's shriek lingering like ash on the wind. Deus's booming words. The spear. The betrayal.

And Sam. Falling. It replayed again and again. She bowed her head against his chest, searching for a heartbeat she knew she wouldn't find. "Come back," she whispered. "I don't care how. I don't care what it takes. Just…"

Her voice cracked. Finally. Just a sliver. "Come back to me." She didn't move. Not when Myrtle offered to help her up. Not when the others began gathering the wounded. Not when the full weight of what had happened began to descend upon Emberhold like smoke.

She stayed beside him. One hand resting on his bark-covered chest. Waiting. Vael sat in silence beside Sam's broken body; no, not broken. Just… stilled. As if the world had pressed pause on a story that should have never reached this page.

Her fingers clenched into fists at her sides. This wasn't right. This wasn't the end. She rose slowly, the fabric of her ceremonial robes catching the wind. Her hands moved with purpose now; grief forged into ritual. She reached for the ceremonial dagger at her belt, the blade etched with sigils older than kings. It had once drawn blood in rites of binding, protection, and truth.

Now it would call vengeance. With a single motion, she slashed her palm. The pain was sharp and immediate, grounding. She stepped into the circle Myrtle had drawn, ignoring the gasps from those who still lingered nearby.

Blood dripped freely from her hand. "By root and branch," she whispered, voice shaking but rising. She flung the blood in an arc around Sam's form, staining the soil in a half-moon crescent. The wind shifted. "By balance and breach," she intoned, louder now, ancient syllables stirring from the corners of her throat.

The golden light from the sunflower eyes on Sam's chest dimmed, then flickered; responding. "By pact forged in blood and flame," she cried, her voice cracking the silence like thunder, "Guardian of Eryshae, I summon thee. Come forth. Witness my resolve."

The grove stilled. Then… A breath. Not wind; but something else. The air itself drawing inward. From between two ancient spiral-trunked trees, a figure began to step forth; not walking, but emerging, like shadow peeled from light.

She was tall, graceful, and terribly, inhumanly perfect. A woman wrapped in robes of swirling black and white, sheer as mist and shaped like silk dipped in starlight. Her skin gleamed like moonlit marble. Her eyes, vast and unreadable, shimmered with the silver of twilight and the gold of new suns. Her long hair flowed like a river of night and dawn woven together. Each step she took left no mark on the earth; but the moss leaned toward her, as if in worship.

The Guardian of Eryshae had arrived. Myrtle fell to one knee. Mira did not breathe. Even the trees tilted their branches toward her. The Guardian did not look at Vael at first. Her eyes went to Sam. To the fallen heir. The broken vessel. And then; slowly; she turned.

Her gaze landed on Vael like a kiss made of knives. And she spoke. "Balance must be maintained." The words did not echo. They resonated; not in the air, but in the bones, vibrating with old power, with law, with something so ancient it had no beginning.

Vael swallowed hard. Blood still dripped from her open palm, mingling with the roots at her feet. She met the Guardian's gaze, refusing to look away. "Then restore it," Vael whispered. "I offer my blood. My vow. My life."

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The Guardian did not smile. She did not blink. She only watched. As if weighing all the world in Vael's small, shaking form. The Guardian's eyes did not soften.

Her voice, when it came, was silk over stone; gentle and immovable: "His life is not yours to give back, Vael of Eryshae." The words cut deeper than any blade. Vael flinched. Her bloodied palm trembled at her side.

"No matter how willing you are. No matter how fiercely you beg. Balance is not mercy. It is law." The Guardian stepped closer to Sam's still body, her robes shifting like mist as she moved. She knelt beside him; not touching, not weeping. Observing. Like a judge before a sacred reckoning.

"He gave his life freely to fulfill the bargain. And so the bargain stands." Vael's throat burned. Her lips parted to protest; but no sound came.

Then, the Guardian turned her head. Slowly. Precisely. Toward Mira. For a moment, nothing moved. Not wind. Not breath. Mira met the gaze of the divine. And something inside her twisted.

The Guardian's voice dropped; lower than before, edged with a curiosity too vast to be human. "But you…" she murmured. "You have come in contact with something divine. Something powerful."

Mira's heart thundered. The pendant at her neck pulsed. The Guardian's eyes narrowed; not in anger, but recognition. Her next words curled through the air like smoke:

"He may be beyond your reach… but not beyond all reach." She stepped back from Sam. And now the gaze passed between Vael and Mira. "The root remembers. The wound remembers. And so does the flame."

She raised her hand; just once; and the blood Vael had flung into the dirt shimmered gold, then sank into the roots below. "One chance remains. But it cannot come from me."

The Guardian looked to Mira again. "Decide what you are." With that, she stepped backward into the shadows; her form unraveling like ash in the wind. The trees stilled. The moss dimmed. The Grove exhaled.

She was gone. And in her absence, the grove fell utterly silent; until Vael, voice rough with unshed fury, whispered: "Mira…"

Mira didn't answer right away. She couldn't. The weight of the Guardian's gaze still lingered on her skin; like embers pressed into flesh. The words rang in her skull, louder than Vael's voice, louder than the chaos that still smoldered somewhere beyond the Grove:

"Decide what you are." She couldn't breathe. The pendant at her neck was suddenly too heavy. She reached for it; fingertips grazing the pendant; but stopped short.

Vael was staring at her now. Raw. Shattered. "Mira…" she said again, but this time her voice cracked, grief edging into suspicion.

Mira looked at her then looked at Sam. Half-tree. Half-man. Heart pierced. Skin split with golden veins. Vines wilted where they'd once lashed like fury. Sunflowers bent like mourning heads.

A whisper from another life. A different fire. Ruwan's voice echoed up from her memory. "You'll help me pull the roots from under them while they still believe they're growing."

Her throat tightened. She wanted to lie. Gods, she wanted to lie. Say she didn't know. That she didn't carry the sliver. That she hadn't fed it into the chalice. That none of this blood was hers.

But Vael's eyes were too sharp. And Sam's silence was too loud. Her hand fell away from the amber. "I didn't know…" she whispered. Not a lie. Not quite.

"I didn't know it would do this. I thought it would reveal him, not; " Her voice faltered. "Not this." The truth, or the part she could live with.

Vael took one step forward. Mira didn't flinch. But she braced herself. "You were there." Vael's voice was ice and thunder now. "When he changed. When he screamed. When he fell. You were right there. And you did nothing."

The accusation lanced through Mira like frost through the marrow. Her mouth opened. Shut. The words curled and died before they left her. And then, quietly, almost like a confession: "I've done a lot of things I can live with."

She looked down at Sam. "But this…" She shook her head. Tears didn't fall. She'd forgotten how. But the guilt cracked through her mask, fissures blooming across the still face she had always worn too well.

"I didn't mean to kill him," she said. Vael stared at her. For a long time.

Mira wasn't sure if she'd lift a hand and strike her; or fall into her arms. Neither happened. Instead, Vael's voice was low and raw: "Then help me bring him back." And for the first time since the flames had started to fall, Mira didn't hesitate. She just nodded.

Mira's nod wasn't brave. It wasn't sure. It was broken. Like something torn from her bones. Vael waited, breath ragged, blood still crusting on the dagger in her hand. Mira's lips parted. The words caught behind her teeth like splinters.

"I was sent by the Eberflame family," she said at last, voice barely audible. The wind stirred the trees. The Guardian was gone. But her presence clung to the grove like a judgment that hadn't yet fallen.

"I worked for Ruwan." Mira didn't meet Vael's eyes. She stared at the ground between them. "Trained in the assassin's arts. I was his knife. His shadow. His… chess piece." Vael's hand twitched toward the dagger again. She didn't speak.

Mira went on, slowly. Every word sounded like a thorn being pulled out wrong. "I was supposed to observe you. Watch you both. Get close."

A pause. "I did. Closer than I should have."

Silence fell between them. Even Myrtle, still kneeling beside Sam's body with her hands pressed into his wooden ribs, said nothing. "I was the one who put the amber in the chalice." There. Said. Named. Carved in fire.

Vael inhaled sharply, but Mira lifted her head before the words could be thrown like weapons. "I didn't know what it would do to him. I thought it would unlock something… maybe force his nature into the open. Ruwan said the amber remembered the shape of the throne, of the power that once ruled the lattice of balance."

Her voice cracked. "I didn't know it would tear him apart." Vael's expression hadn't softened. Not yet. But something flickered behind her fury now; some tremor of recognition. Of possibility.

Mira hesitated. Then took the pendant from her neck. The place where the amber had rested still glowed faintly inside its spiral cage, pulsing like a second heart.

"That was just a sliver," she whispered. "But Ruwan… he has the rest. A full shard of the Titan's Amber. The one they carved from the remnants of the fallen Seat of Unity. He's obsessed with it. He says it remembers everything. That it wants to reshape the world."

She closed her fingers around the pendant. "I don't know what it can do," she added. "But if anything can pull Sam back…"

A beat. "It's that." Vael's eyes finally met hers. Pain. Fury. Hope. All braided into a single, fragile line. "Then we get it," Vael said, voice low and shaking. "We take it from him." Her eyes flicked to the stilled form of Sam; his wooden skin pale, vines slack, the sunflower eyes closed across his body like folded stars.

"We bring him back," she whispered. "Even if it means burning Ruwan's ambitions to ash." And for the first time, Mira didn't look away.