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Blood in the tide
Last Updated:
2025-07-02 22:32:30
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Wildwood: The veins of the earth The mouth beneath the water
Ezra had followed the tide without realizing it. He hadn’t meant to travel so far south—hadn’t meant to leave the edge of the WildWood where his blood still echoed in its roots—but something deeper had begun pulling at him. A rhythm. A song. It spoke not in words, but in images burned into the mind: spires of coral bone, eyes like open wounds beneath the sea, a gate that bled light. Now he stood at the edge of the coast, where the rocks curved inward like a broken jaw, and the waves slammed relentlessly against the mouth of a half-submerged cave. The wind screamed here. Not just through the cliffs—but from inside them. Ezra clutched his shoulder, where the mark first appeared three days ago. It had begun as a simple warmth—like the tingling of pins and needles—but now it throbbed with every crashing wave. A spiral of ash-colored veins had grown out from his collarbone, wrapping down his chest. The forest had rejected him after the ritual. Or maybe this had claimed him first. The
Wildwood: The veins of the earth Blood in the tide
The forest had grown quieter since the ritual, but Clara knew better than to trust it. There was no peace in WildWood—only silence before another storm. She stood near the edge of the Hollow Hill, staring into the carved stone face of the Yanuwah shrine, fingers trailing the old glyphs that still glowed faintly beneath the moss. They had dimmed ever since Emily’s return and the attempted binding of the Seed. Something had shifted. Not in the forest, but in the world. Behind her, Emily approached, her movements careful, controlled—almost human again. But not entirely. “Still nothing from the southern node?” Clara asked. Emily shook her head. Her eyes were darker now, their irises ringed with faint ash-grey as if touched by smoke. “The trees say something has stirred beyond their reach. A tide. A calling.” Clara exhaled sharply. “It’s begun.” Emily didn’t ask what it was. She already knew. “You felt it too?” “Ezra,” Clara said softly. “I saw him. Just for a moment—in a dream. H
Wildwood: The veins of the earth The hollow shore
Ezra woke to the sound of gulls circling overhead, the taste of salt thick on his tongue. His hand still burned from the marking—thin, raised spirals carved into his palm where the stone altar had drunk his blood. He didn’t remember blacking out, only the eye in the water, the crushing pressure, and the voice that had sounded like it came from inside his bones. He sat up slowly. The beach was empty again, save for a few twisted crab shells and the kelp-tangled drift of the tide. But something had changed. The air felt heavier now, as if it carried more than moisture—something invisible and watching. His backpack lay half-buried in the sand, soaked but intact. He fished out the leather-bound notebook he’d carried everywhere since he was thirteen—the one with the stories, the nightmares, the dreams he could never fully explain. Inside were drawings of forests that bled, oceans that whispered, and a woman with hollow eyes and hands covered in roots. He had drawn her before he ever he
Wildwood: The veins of the earth Salt in the wound
The boy stood at the edge of the trench, the wound in his palm still bleeding into the sand. Ezra didn’t know why he had come to this place. Only that the dreams had brought him here—the salt-scoured whispers that coiled through his sleep like sea serpents. He had heard them first when he was six, a faint voice beneath the crashing waves, calling him by name in a tongue he did not understand. Now, standing above the ancient altar unearthed by the retreating tide, he knew the voice had never been a dream. It had waited. Patiently. For someone like him. For him. The stone beneath his feet was slick with algae and time. Etched into its surface were spirals—similar to those he’d seen in a book about Native American petroglyphs, but older, deeper. They hummed softly when he touched them, as though the symbols themselves were awake. Ezra’s blood pooled in the grooves, and the stone pulsed. Then the water rose—not in waves, but straight upward, like a wall, forming a circle aroun
Wildwood: The veins of the earth The story that must be told
The forest held its breath. In the clearing around the Seed, the light from the golden threads pulsing around it flickered, as if unsure whether to flare into brilliance or fade into shadow. The forms of Clara, Emily, and Ashani stood at the center, hands clasped not in ritual, but in raw defiance of what Varethkaal had become. He writhed in the dark corner of the circle, a silhouette that bent space around it, shrinking and expanding, echoing every failed truth and buried secret with whispers no one wanted to remember. But they had remembered. And that was what made him dangerous. Because now, he could take form. ⸻ The Boy from the Coast Far to the south, near the salt-bitten bluffs known only to fishermen and old wives’ tales, the boy wandered into a place no map marked. His name was Ezra, and he was barely seventeen, but the Drift had found him. The coastal cult—The Order of the Returning Seed—had whispered in his dreams since childhood. He had followed stories
Wildwood: The veins of the earth The blooming seed
The ground beneath WildWood trembled—not with fury, but with awakening. From the remains of the Flesh Garden, once a place of writhing madness and twisted bodies, now rose something new. Petals of wet, bark-like flesh unfurled toward the ceiling of the cavern. At its center, the Seed pulsed—no longer dormant, but alive in a way it had not been for centuries. It wasn’t just growing—it was becoming. Cracks spread across the cavern walls, revealing glowing veins of light beneath the stone, as though the very marrow of the world had turned to fire. Whispered voices echoed through the tunnels, not malevolent, but yearning. They sought to be known. The Seed, at its core, was not evil. It was history forgotten. Memory denied. It had tried for generations to express itself in dreams, in hauntings, in the twisted forms of those lost in the forest. But now, something had shifted. Clara, Emily, and Ashani had returned not to destroy—but to listen. Still, Varethkaal remained. ⸻ Clara: Gat
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