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The voice below
Last Updated:
2025-08-06 10:14:55
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Wildwood: The veins of the earth Blood that remembers
The storm had passed, but the wind still carried the scent of salt and ozone as Clara stood on the cliff’s edge, overlooking the broken shoreline where the drowned city lay hidden beneath the waves. Ashani and Ezra stood behind her, both silent, both changed by what they’d witnessed in the heart of the Echo Temple. Emily knelt in the sand, her fingers digging into the wet earth like she was searching for something long forgotten. They weren’t the same people who had entered WildWood. They had been touched—branded—by something older than time, something that had marked them as vessels, keys, or perhaps warnings. Ezra broke the silence. “If the Seed is just one part of this… if Varethkaal is another fragment… what exactly are we hunting?” Clara turned, her face unreadable. “We’re not hunting a thing. We’re hunting a person.” Ashani stepped forward, frowning. “You think one of the Yanuwah survived the second diaspora?” “Not just survived,” Clara said. “Was hidden.” She reached int
Wildwood: The veins of the earth The voice below
The waters around the Echo Heart grew still—unnaturally still. No current. No sound. Only pressure, thick and heavy, coiled in the hollow of the temple like breath before a scream. Clara tightened her grip on Ezra’s wrist. “You said it was a who.” Ezra’s eyes had gone glassy. “It’s not a god. Not a demon. It’s memory that forgot itself. A hunger trapped too long.” Ashani stepped forward, her voice cold and even. “You mean Varethkaal.” Ezra’s gaze snapped to her. “Not Varethkaal. What came before it. What the forest feared. What the sea bound. Varethkaal is a fragment—this is the origin.” A silence fell over them all. Then the Echo Heart pulsed. Once. The bioluminescent veins across its surface glowed a pale violet. Symbols writhed across its face, shifting like fish beneath water, incomprehensible yet urgent. Ezra dropped to his knees, clutching his head. “It’s waking up. It sees us.” Emily reached for him—but the moment she touched his shoulder, the temple exploded with s
Wildwood: The veins of the earth What the sea remembers
The drowned city didn’t let go of Ezra easily. Even after the Echo Heart released its grip, even after the vision had torn through him like a rising tide, he felt tethered. To the sea. To the temple. To them. He wandered the streets of coral and bone in a trance, the world silent save for the rhythmic thrum of ancient currents pulsing through unseen channels. The figures that moved alongside him—neither alive nor dead—gave way as he passed. Not out of fear, but reverence. As though they had been waiting for him all along. The mark on his chest now spread across his left arm, glowing with faint bioluminescence. His blood had accepted something. Or something had accepted him. The oracle’s final words still echoed: “You are no longer only yourself. You are the Mouth. The one who remembers. The one who chooses.” Ezra stopped at the edge of the temple terrace. Beyond it, the sea opened into darkness. Not just depth, but void. The same void he’d seen in WildWood—in the pit that had sw
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
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