Emily had never felt the earth beneath her so alive.
It wasn’t the warm thrum of life she had once known—the steady pulse of a heart, the sound of breath, the flow of blood. No, this was something deeper. Something older. The roots that wrapped around her limbs were like cold fingers, pulling her downward, drawing her into a place that wasn’t just buried—it was forgotten. Her body, broken but still clinging to its last breath, hovered in a sea of darkness. The surface above her was distant, unreachable. She didn’t know how long she had been trapped beneath the roots of WildWood. Hours? Days? Time had stopped making sense the moment the ritual had gone wrong. The moment the seed had split, and the part of Marellen that she had thought to silence was unleashed. And now, it called to her. “Emily…” Her name wasn’t a voice. It was an echo. A presence. It surrounded her, threading through her thoughts, winding around her bones. She had thought the forest’s hunger was quenched. But the truth was, WildWood had never been satisfied. It had only been waiting for the right moment to break free. To grow. And she was its anchor. Her breath hitched. The roots constricted around her. They twisted tighter, not to hold her, but to mark her. Her blood had become part of the earth, and in doing so, she had allowed the seed to sprout. The entity now known as Marellen was not simply an ancient force of nature—it was the embodiment of something else, something that had taken root beneath WildWood long before the forest had begun to claim its victims. But the seed wasn’t just part of Marellen. It was tied to something darker, something not of this world, something that didn’t belong. The very thing that had torn through the binding Clara had tried so desperately to set in place. And it wanted her. ⸻ Above the surface, Clara couldn’t shake the feeling that they had done something irrevocable. It wasn’t guilt that gnawed at her. It was knowing. The pieces were scattered, like fragments of an ancient puzzle, and every day, more of the image became clear. They had taken action, yes. They had closed the rift, bound the worst of the corruption, but in doing so, they had unknowingly triggered something else. Something that wasn’t part of Marellen’s body at all. The creature that was still reaching out to Emily was not Marellen. It was something far older, older than the Yanuwah, older than the humans who had dared settle near WildWood. A force that predated even the forest itself. Clara paced the lighthouse, her mind racing. They needed to find Emily. But how could they reach her, when the earth itself had claimed her? Ashani entered quietly, her movements careful, as though she too sensed the weight of what had happened. “We need to get to her. Now,” Clara said, without looking up. “Before it takes her completely.” Ashani nodded. “I’ve been studying the map. There’s a passage beneath the cliffs—the one no one’s ever found, not even the Yanuwah. It leads deeper into the earth, into a place where the roots don’t stop growing.” Clara’s eyes lifted. “And you think it can take us to her?” Ashani looked uneasy. “I don’t know. But it’s the only place the earth hasn’t bent yet. The one part of WildWood that hasn’t twisted. Maybe we can use it to find Emily.” Clara grabbed her coat and turned toward the door. “Then we don’t have time to waste.” ⸻ The descent into the bowels of WildWood was a labyrinth. Unlike the cave system they had navigated before, this was not a place that had been made by hands. The tunnels were not carved—they had grown, winding into the earth like veins. Everywhere Clara stepped, the floor beneath her seemed to pulse, as though the ground itself was alive. “I should have seen this,” she muttered. “The roots—this is how it all began. The Yanuwah bound the forest to the earth, but they never finished it. They never sealed the seed.” Ashani was beside her, silent but focused, her blade now slung across her back. She wasn’t certain whether she could fight what was coming, but she was ready to try. Isla followed them, clutching the relic they had recovered, her eyes wide as she stared at the shifting walls. The deeper they went, the stronger the sense of wrongness became. The air was thick with salt and something else—something too ancient to be named. “We’re close,” Clara said. She could feel it. The subtle tremor in the earth that spoke of something primal, something that had never been meant to be disturbed. ⸻ Back in the darkness beneath WildWood, Emily screamed. Her body was a prisoner, held by the ever-growing roots that reached into her, tethering her to the creature that had slithered beneath the surface. Every time she tried to break free, the roots tightened, dragging her back into the abyss. It was no longer pain—no, this was something worse. It was a voice. Not in her ears. Not in her head. In the very marrow of her bones. “Emily…” It whispered again, low and slow. “You are mine.” The darkness around her began to shift, and suddenly, she wasn’t alone. Shadows formed, twisting into figures that resembled those lost to WildWood—the lost souls, the ones that had vanished, their lives stolen by the roots. They whispered, but their voices were hollow, indistinct. Just echoes of things long dead. And then she saw it. The seed. It pulsed within her. Not beneath her skin, not in her blood, but at the very core of her being. It had taken root in her soul, and the thing that lived inside of it was stretching, feeling its way out. Its hunger grew with every breath she took. “I’m… part of you,” it said, not with words, but with memory. “I was always meant for you. You are the bridge. The key.” The roots tightened around her chest. Her breath faltered. The seed was alive, and it was drawing the world into its nightmare. But even in the overwhelming darkness, she felt something. A tug. A light. It was Clara. Calling to her. Emily fought it, fought the dark thing that was rising inside her. She wouldn’t let it win. She couldn’t. She wasn’t just a prisoner of WildWood. She was its last chance. ⸻ Clara, Ashani, and Isla finally reached the heart of the labyrinth. The walls opened into a vast underground chamber. Above them, the sky was visible through cracks in the earth—twilight—and the roots above seemed to pulse in time with their heartbeat. The chamber was alive. The very air was thick with the stench of decay and salt. And there, at the center, Emily stood. Her hair tangled, her face pale, but her eyes— Her eyes were filled with the force of something other. Something that wasn’t hers. “Emily,” Clara whispered. Emily turned. But it wasn’t Emily. Not anymore. The seed was inside her. And it was awakening.The light behind them dimmed until it was nothing but a distant pulse—like a dying heartbeat echoing through ancient stone. The tunnel before them sloped downward into the earth, the walls carved with unfamiliar script—part Yanuwah, part something older. Each glyph shimmered faintly when passed, as if responding to Clara’s touch, or the key Elias held. The deeper they went, the more the air changed. It was no longer stale but humid, heavy with the scent of moss, wet stone, and something sweet and metallic—sap, maybe, or blood that remembered sunlight. The ground shifted beneath their feet—no longer stone but root. Interwoven tendrils stretched out like veins in a sleeping beast. None of them spoke much. The weight of what they’d seen—the visions of the past, the unraveling of the pact between human and forest, and the twisted legacy of the Yanuwah—lingered like a film on their skin. Clara led, one hand on the tunnel’s side, her mind caught between the present and something larger
The Coast of Choices – Temple of the Second Tide The waters had turned red again. High Priestess Maelira stood barefoot in the salt-ringed chamber, watching the waves pulse against the black stones outside. The elders knelt in concentric circles around her, heads bowed low, their voices locked in a chant older than the current moon’s cycle. But her attention was elsewhere—beneath. She could feel the stirring. A resonance from Hollow Ridge. A cracking beneath the old seals. The long-promised convergence of the Yanuwah bloodline had begun again—and someone, somewhere, had crossed the threshold. A young acolyte entered the chamber, her robes soaked with rain. She approached the dais and bent to whisper. “The Root gate has been breached.” A long pause. Maelira didn’t speak, but her grip tightened on the staff carved from driftbone and inlaid with bone-colored pearl. “Then we are out of time.” She turned to the elders. “Summon the Eel-Knights. Prepare the Eyes of Salt. If the C
The stairs groaned beneath their feet—worn, soft stone layered in moss and moisture. Water dripped from unseen cracks in the ceiling. It smelled not of the sea, but of something older: deep earth, blood, and bone long turned to dust. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the rhythmic sound of footsteps and the distant hiss of wind threading through hollow tunnels. Clara walked first, her blade drawn, its bone handle warm in her hand. She didn’t speak. Her senses were wide open, tuned to every shift in the darkness. She’d been in ruins before—WildWood had taught her that sacred places were never truly empty—but this was something else. Hollow Ridge was not dead. It was sleeping. And it was beginning to stir. Behind her, Elias carried the scroll pouch close to his chest. He muttered to himself in the Yanuwah tongue, tracing glyphs on the walls as they passed. The marks glowed faintly beneath his touch—brief flares of blue and silver that disappeared a moment later. Each one marke
The coastal winds had sharpened. Not like the storms of WildWood—thick with rot and madness—but cold, vast, and ancient. They cut through bone and memory both, bringing with them the whisper of salt-born secrets and voices long buried beneath tide and stone. Clara stood near the edge of the sea cliffs, her coat snapping behind her, eyes locked on the narrow trail that wound down into the yawning gullet of Hollow Ridge. Below, seafoam boiled between jagged rocks like breath escaping a leviathan’s lungs. Behind her, Elias checked the glyphs burned into the spine of the travel scroll, muttering Yanuwah incantations under his breath. He was younger than either of them but aged from within—marked by loss, burdened by the expectations of a bloodline he had only just begun to understand. Emily sat on a smooth boulder farther up the path, head tilted toward the ocean. Her hair was damp with mist, her fingers tracing the small woven charm she now wore around her neck. It was the last gift
Mahrun had always believed in the sea. Not as a force of nature, not just as water and tide, but as a presence—endless, cold, and watching. From his earliest memory, it had whispered to him in ways the elders called sacred. His mother, a salt-priestess of the inner circle, said he was “born during a rift,” when the tide had pulled so far out it revealed bones no one had seen in generations. He hadn’t cried when they cut his umbilical cord with a coral blade. He hadn’t blinked when they pressed the stingray sigil into his shoulder at age six. But he had dreamed—terrible dreams of things buried in silt, of forests drowned beneath black waves, of names that pulsed in his skull like heartbeat drums. Varethkaal. Yanuwah. Oth-Ka’al. Clara. Now, standing before the altar of driftbone and whale flesh, those same dreams twisted against his spine like blades. The girl lay trembling on the slab, her breath shallow, lips moving in a half-conscious chant. A ward of kelp-twine looped around he
The chapel was not built by hands meant for worship, but by those who sought dominion over fear. Beneath the cliffs of Dagger Shoals, where the sea crashed endlessly into black rock, the cult’s sanctum breathed like a wound. Salt-coated stone and rotted driftwood formed the altar’s base, and above it, suspended by iron hooks, hung the skin of a whale—a sacred veil etched with spirals that bled anew whenever moonlight struck its hide. High Priestess Imril stood barefoot before it, her throat slick with salt and blood, her hands raised in silent invocation. “The earth burns,” she said finally. “The Seed writhes in the ash-tree womb. The Yanuwah descend.” Around her, the inner circle knelt, heads bowed, masked in coral and bone. No one dared interrupt the communion. Behind them, in the darker ring of acolytes, Mahrun lingered just beyond the edge of light. His robe still bore the stains from his travels—the faded ochre dust of Hollow Hill, and more faintly, the bruised scent of Wild