The Roots Weep

The Roots Weep

Mirra knelt at the base of a gnarled elder oak, her knees pressing into damp soil. Her fingers traced the moss that clung stubbornly to the bark. Normally, the moss was lush and springy, cool with life. A comfort. A promise of the tree’s health, of the forest’s endless resilience.

But today, it crumbled beneath her touch.

Brittle. Dry.

As if some unseen blight had brushed through, scouring away vitality in its wake.

A tremor ran through the trunk, and not the ordinary tremble of a branch bending in wind. This was deeper. A disturbance in the marrow of the wood itself, resonating straight into her bones.

Mirra stilled, her hand pressed flat against bark rough with centuries.

The trees had always been eloquent to her, their murmurs as clear as human speech. She had learned their whispers before she had learned to braid her own hair. Usually, they spoke in calm cadences: a warning of a storm, a sigh of new growth, the patient song of roots burrowing deeper. But now they whispered in hushed tones of fear.

Leaves above her shivered, not in joy of wind, but in unease.

The air pressed thick against her lungs, heavy with a metallic tang that did not belong. The forest normally smelled of soil damp with rain, mushrooms rich with life, flowers sweet with pollen. But now—rot lurked beneath, mingled with iron and smoke. A scent of ruin.

Her vision blurred.

A wave of dizziness washed over her, but it was no trance, no sacred ascent into spirit. This was nausea, a sickening lurch that threatened to pull her into the dirt itself.

Images fractured behind her eyes. Jagged, wild, seared in green and black.

She saw not the silver calm of Lunaris, but a sun gone wrong—its rays twisted, burning, flaying the essence of everything it touched. She saw leaves shrivel into yellow husks, then blacken into bruised purple before disintegrating into ash. She saw roots writhe beneath the earth like serpents in agony, tearing free from their soil.

The lifeblood of her forest drained away, leaving behind not death but hollow husks, silence where song should be.

“No,” Mirra whispered, staggering against the oak.

Her connection to the woods—her essence, her soul—tightened, stretched taut like a vine on the verge of snapping. The ground beneath her boots betrayed her, shifting, unstable. Each step felt like temptation toward collapse.

She reached for a nearby fern, instinct demanding comfort in the brush of life against her skin. But the fronds curled back from her hand, recoiling like flesh from flame.

Her chest heaved.

Even the fungi were dimming. The luminous caps that normally dotted the forest floor with ghostly blue light flickered, then went dark, as though smothered. She had never seen them fade, not in drought, not in fire. They were resilient, eternal in their quiet glow. But now—darkness claimed them.

Her heart thundered in her ears.

Mirra pressed her palms hard against the oak’s bark as though to steady herself, to anchor her soul in something older than despair. Splinters bit into her skin, but she didn’t flinch. She needed the pain to feel real, to hold herself to the moment.

The tree groaned.

Its voice was low, terrible, aching. She had heard trees groan before—the sound of wood straining against wind, of branches splitting beneath lightning. But this was not weather. This was agony.

And the sap that oozed from the cracks in its bark was not amber, not the honey-gold resin she had always known. It was black. Thick. Viscous.

The oak wept.

Her breath caught.

The whispers of the woods rose into a cacophony. They no longer soothed—they clamored, voices of panic that clawed at her ears, her sanity. Their meaning struck her marrow: imbalance, wrongness, poison.

Roots torn from their homes. Life throttled by unseen hands.

Her own magic reacted, wild and vicious. What was normally a steady river of green through her veins lashed and twisted like a trapped wolf, teeth bared. Power spilled from her fingertips unbidden, snapping twigs, sparking with static, making the moss smoke beneath her palms.

“Steady,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “I will steady you.”

She tried to coax her magic into calm, to soothe the forest as she had a thousand times. But it was like pressing a single drop of water against a wildfire. Her power hissed uselessly, consumed by the enormity of the wound.

The vision flared again, slamming into her skull. The corrupted sunlight seared her mind, each ray carving her forest into ruin. She saw networks of mycelium—her beloved hidden web of fungi that carried messages between trees—snap like brittle thread. Once, she had laid her cheek against the soil to listen to their quiet songs. Now their voices screamed as they were torn apart.

The elder trees, the oldest and wisest, sagged and moaned, black sap bleeding down their bark like tears. Their roots writhed in desperation, cracking stone, ripping apart earth. Their cries echoed inside her skull, pounding until she thought her mind would split.

Her knees buckled. She nearly fell.

“This isn’t death,” she gasped, clutching the oak for support. “This is—”

She couldn’t finish. The word choked in her throat.

Because she knew.

This was not the slow decay of life into death, the natural cycle she had learned to honor. This was not the forest giving itself to rot so it could return anew. This was annihilation. Ripping. A violent destruction of the very forces that sustained her world.

Her chest burned. Tears stung her eyes but she refused to let them fall.

The forest needed her.

And yet—beneath the terror, beneath the raw panic pounding through her veins—something else stirred.

Faint. Cool.

Not of root, not of bark.

Silver.

The memory of a brush against her skin, soft as moonlight, stirred in the pit of her stomach. Not hers. Not of her world.

A whisper of Selene.

Her eyes snapped open, breath sharp.

She had felt it before, faint, fleeting. Now it pressed against her more firmly, threading through the chaos. Not a cure, not even comfort—but presence.

The moonlight intruded on her vision, weaving briefly through the corrupted sun. For a heartbeat, the light was not ruin, but balance. For a heartbeat, she was not alone.

Then it vanished, leaving her gasping, trembling.

Her hands slid from the oak, sticky with black sap. She stared down at her stained fingers, chest heaving.

Something vast was unraveling.

And she was bound to it—whether she chose to be or not.

Mirra sank to her knees, soil damp beneath her palms. The whispers still screamed, but she forced herself to breathe through them. Her grandmother’s words echoed: When the roots shake, the witch must stand still. When the forest fears, the witch must fight.

“I will fight,” she whispered hoarsely. “Even if I must bleed for it.”

The oak creaked, as though in answer.

Mirra lifted her gaze to the canopy. The branches shivered above, black sap dripping like tears into the soil. She clenched her jaw, wiping her hands against her thighs, smearing black into streaks.

Whatever poison crept through her woods, it would not take them without battle.

Her heart thudded. Her mind burned with visions. And somewhere—across leagues of land, beyond the forest—another witch had felt her trembling.

Mirra turned east, instinct guiding her.

The roots were weeping. And she would not weep with them.

She would strike.