Eryshae

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Sam

The Grove

Pain hummed beneath his skin like a buried engine, constant, rhythmic, alive. His body wasn't broken, not exactly. But it was changing. Slowly. Uneasily. The bark along his chest no longer felt foreign, it pulsed with each breath, stretching and groaning as if growing by degrees. His limbs felt too long. His fingers were too rooted. Vines beneath the surface tugged like sinew learning a new shape. And deep in the hollow of his ribs, where his heart used to be, the Titan's Amber thrummed. A low, golden sound. Felt, not heard. A warmth that wasn't comforting, but undeniable.

Metamorphosis. It wasn't finished yet.

"Steady," came a low, grounding voice. Sam blinked through the haze, vision sharpening to find Druid Magnolia crouching nearby, hat tipped slightly back to reveal eyes like freshly-turned soil, dark, knowing, and quietly ancient. Magnolia looked to Myrtle, who was still tending to Sam's legs, brushing off the blood-matted moss and applying a bitter-smelling salve.

"Myrtle. If you'd give us some privacy." The herbalist paused, studying Magnolia, then Sam. She nodded once, stood, and turned toward the edge of the Grove. "I'll check the raccoons," she said gently, and disappeared toward the tree line.

Magnolia's eyes slid to Vael, who hadn't moved from Sam's side. Her hand still rested on his chest, fingers splayed protectively over the Amber as if she could shield it with touch alone. "And you?" Magnolia asked softly. "Will you give us a moment?"

Vael's jaw tensed. Her eyes flared, gold and furious. "No." Her voice was low but unshakable. "I'm not leaving him." She pressed her hand more firmly to Sam's chest. Protective. Present. Magnolia's mouth quirked faintly, almost a smile. "Figured you'd say that." He gave her a nod, then looked back at Sam.

"You're still between. Not fully here, not fully gone. The Amber knows. It's asking you something, lad." Sam's breath shuddered. The ache in his limbs sharpened, and he winced. Magnolia's tone softened, more command than request. "Close your eyes. Now breathe. In. Out. Listen." The world narrowed. Fell quiet.

Except for her. Vael's fingers threaded through his. Her warmth. Her steadiness. And under it all, the Amber's thrum. The Grove's breath. The old magic… waiting.

Then,

Darkness.

And then,

Light.

Not the gentle kind that filtered through morning leaves, but a birth-scorch of suns. Galaxies tore into existence like wounds in the veil. Stars exhaled. Worlds spun from ash and breath. Time unfurled like vines on an untouched wall.

Sam didn't float. He was. Boundless. Rooted in the fabric of becoming. He saw through Deus' eyes. Massive. Ancient. Endless. A force before names. Before language. Before even balance.

He felt the silence of the first seed floating in the eternal soil of nothing. Deus knelt, shaped not by form but by intention. Roots spread through time. Fingers curled through stone and shadow. Not to conquer, but to tether. To connect.

Sam watched suns dimmed by the will of balance. Mountains crumbled so forests might rise. Empires dissolved into dust that nourished rebirth. And in every motion, every sacrifice, there was not cruelty, but cost. A bargain struck long ago, when the first breath of the world whispered back into the lungs of a god-shaped idea.

He felt the wound when the first Guardian emerged, Eryshae, shaped of dusk and wild laughter, wrapped in shadow fur and fierce love. The first to challenge balance, not from rebellion, but compassion.

Deus wept sap and gold as he gave half his being into a tree. Into life. And Sam saw himself, not as a man, but as a thread, woven into a long braid of memory and promise. A promise the Amber had been forged to fulfill.

A heartbeat. The glowing core in his chest pulsed once, hard. And the vision began to collapse inward. Suns dimmed. Vines receded. The world spun faster and faster until,

Silence. And Magnolia's voice echoed into him: "You've seen the roots of it, haven't you?"

The silence wasn't empty. It thrummed with meaning. A thousand tendrils of time stretched around Sam, braiding and unbraiding. Memory wove into possibility. Future tangled with root. And there, beneath it all, Vael's hand. Warm. Fiercely real.

It rested on his wooden shoulder, fingers just above the place where bark met skin. Her thumb moved in slow, grounding circles. It was the only part of him that didn't spiral. She was his tether. "Don't drift too far, sapling," Magnolia's voice warned, gentle but sharp. "You're touching things older than death. Older than language. You let go too long, you might not come back."

But Sam was already falling deeper. He saw a young Deus, not yet a god, standing in a field of flame-scorched flowers, bargaining with a being of storm and teeth, giving up a piece of his heart in exchange for peace across a thousand miles.

He saw a forest turn inward, rot itself to death, just to birth a single golden seed, Titan's Amber. He saw Mira, younger, terrified, before Ruwan. Not yet a weapon. Not yet a traitor.

He saw Vael, newborn and screaming, wildflowers blooming in a perfect ring around the midwife's feet. The strands of fate glowed gold, some tangled, some severed, some newly woven by choices made only moments ago. "He's in the roots now," Magnolia murmured. "Deep down. Seeing what even gods can't look at for too long."

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Sam felt Vael's lips press to his temple. No words. Just love. Pure and searing. He clung to it. To her. To the memory of her laughter, the fire in her defiance, the way she had sworn to bleed the world dry if he died.

It became his center. The Amber glowed not with rage, but with purpose. The vision folded in gently. The suns retreated. The voices faded. Sam exhaled. And slowly, the Grove returned. He was lying on moss. Skin splitting in places where bark had begun to harden. Vael's hand steady. Magnolia watching. "You're back," Magnolia said simply.

But it was Vael's voice he answered to, first and always. "You were never gone," she whispered. Sam blinked. The trees above swayed gently, as if they too had held their breath. His body ached. Splintered. Rooted and raw, but not broken. Vael's touch remained. Her hand brushed his forehead. Gentle. Human. Sacred.

"I was… home," he rasped. Vael didn't speak. She waited. "Not this home. Earth. My apartment. My desk was there. The Orb was… open."

"I had a tattoo appointment. I'd wanted vines down my arm. I guess I'd called ahead. I blacked out during it. And when I woke up…" He touched his arm. The vines shimmered faintly, bioluminescent under the glow of the Amber.

"It was like none of this ever happened." She listened. "I remembered you. All of this. But everyone else, my mom, the artist, even… a version of you…"

Vael's breath hitched. "She was you. But not. Your laugh, your kindness… but not your scars. Not your fury. Not your soul." He paused. "We danced. At prom. I tried to pretend. But Mira was there too. Eating an amber-honey Danish."

His voice almost broke into a laugh. "That's when I remembered the sunflowers. The vines. Everything." He looked at her, voice quieter. "And then I saw you. You were trying to save me."

"You saved yourself," Vael whispered, resting her forehead to his. "We just helped." Sam touched the Amber in his chest. "I don't know what I am now." Vael's eyes brimmed. "You're mine. That's enough." Magnolia, still nearby, gave a nod of respect. Sam closed his eyes. And the Grove breathed around him.

Vael stayed close, her body angled protectively toward Sam, a hand still pressed firmly to the warm thrum of Amber in his chest. She could feel his heartbeat through it, new and ancient, steady and strange, and the feeling grounded her more than she could say. Her gold eyes never left his face, not even for a breath.

When Magnolia stepped forward again, Vael turned her head sharply, her gaze sharpening like a drawn blade. "Enough." The Druid paused.

Her voice was low, quiet, but iron-laced. "You've seen he's breathing. That he's alive. If you want to be useful, check on Myrtle. And the raccoons. They've been through enough."

Magnolia studied her for a long beat, his straw hat shadowing most of his face. Then he gave the smallest of nods. "As you wish." Without further comment, he turned and strode away, leaving the Grove quieter in his absence.

Vael exhaled slowly and looked back at Sam. And Sam, soft-eyed, stronger now, looked only at her. With a flicker of strength that hadn't been there just moments ago, Sam lifted his hands to her waist and pulled her up with ease. Vael let out a small sound of surprise as he set her in his lap, as if she belonged there. As if she'd always belonged there.

His arms encircled her, and the vines beneath his skin responded instinctively, tender and wild. They crept out from his forearms and shoulders, slow and graceful, wrapping gently around them both in a protective cradle. Soft green tendrils coiled along her thigh, her back, her wrists. Not binding, just holding.

Vael rested her head against his, her arms encircling his neck as the warmth of his presence sank into her bones. For a long, sacred breath, they didn't speak. Then Sam's golden gaze drifted beyond her shoulder, and landed on it.

The spear.

Still embedded partway into the moss nearby, glinting dully in the Grove's moonlight. The weapon that had ended him. One of the longer vines, thick and gnarled with thorns, slithered furtger from his arm and reached toward it. It wrapped around the shaft of the spear with a firm grip and dragged it across the ground, the metal whispering against the earth. The tip was stained dark, his dried blood still clinging to it.

As the spear reached them, Vael tensed slightly. Sam's expression, however, was calm. Controlled. He reached out, and his right hand began to shift. Bark spread from the Amber outward, rushing in waves down his arm, hardening his knuckles and palm into rough-hewn wood. The spear's haft creaked beneath his grip.

With deliberate, unflinching motion, he drove the weapon into his palm. The bark opened slightly, splitting with lines of glowing amber light. The spearhead sank in, not through skin, but into him.

The wood drank it in.

The Grove went still.

The shaft of the spear cracked once, then once more, until only the head remained, glowing faintly as it was fully absorbed into the bark of Sam's palm. A low pulse followed, the Amber in his chest responding. Sam flexed his fingers slowly. The bark smoothed back into skin, a faint ring of golden light glowing beneath his palm where the metal had vanished.

And then he spoke, voice rich and low: "Let Ruwan taste what it feels like… to be unmade by his own spear." Vael's breath caught, pride and fury both flashing through her eyes.

She held him closer, the vines tightening around them like armor spun from devotion itself. The Grove, watching, waiting, held its breath for what would come next.

The vines around them swayed gently in rhythm with Sam's breathing, warm and living. Vael rested her cheek against his, feeling the steady hum of the Titan's Amber deep beneath his skin. Not the erratic pulse of someone wounded, nor the cold stillness of death, but something new. Something whole.

She stayed like that for a long moment, cradled in bark-stitched arms and held steady by the man she had nearly lost. But reality was already creeping in. The safety of the Grove was only a breath. A borrowed moment in the eye of the storm.

Vael pulled back just slightly, not enough to leave his lap, but enough to meet his gaze. Her gold-flecked eyes shimmered, serious now. "Sam," she said softly, brushing her thumb along his jaw. "We don't have long."

His brow furrowed. "What do you mean?" She glanced toward the trees, where Magnolia had disappeared, then back to him. "Ruwan doesn't know you're alive." She said it gently, but her tone held the weight of a blade unsheathed.

"As far as he's concerned, you died. I saw it in his eyes when he dragged me to his room, he thought you were gone. And the only thing left for him to do was chain me at his feet and declare himself god."

Sam's jaw tensed. The vines along his back shivered, responding to the flicker of heat in his chest. Vael didn't flinch. She leaned in closer. "We have a narrow window. He'll be coming back. Soon. Likely to finish the job, or to claim me. Maybe both." Her eyes searched his face, memorizing every detail again, like he might vanish in a blink. "But he doesn't know what we have now."

Her hand moved over his chest, pressing softly where the Amber pulsed beneath the skin. "This? He doesn't expect this. You. Alive. Changed." A silence stretched between them. The leaves overhead rustled as if listening. Vael's voice dropped lower, near a whisper. "We can use that." Sam's eyes narrowed slightly in thought, still holding hers. "You want to draw him out."

"I want to end his reign of terror," she said simply. The way she said it, calm, unwavering, sent a chill down the back of Sam's spine. Not from fear, but from clarity. From how true it felt. Her words echoed with something old. An oath spoken from the marrow.

He nodded slowly, his hand rising to cup the back of her neck. "Then we'll do it together," he said. Vael's lips curled into a faint, fierce smile.

"But first," she murmured, "we need Mira. She stayed behind to fight off the guards so I could escape with the Amber. If she's alive, we find her. If she's not, " Her voice faltered only for a second. "Then we burn what he built."

Sam's hand squeezed hers. "We'll find her." Vael exhaled and leaned forward again, resting her forehead against his. "I missed you," she whispered. "So much."

"I wasn't going to leave you," Sam said, his voice like rough silk. "Even if it meant clawing my way back through every layer of hell." She laughed, a soft sound, frayed at the edges but full of relief.

Then, more quietly: "We have a mortal to kill." The vines around them tightened like a pact sealed in green. And somewhere in the Grove, the wind began to rise.