Semua Bab Wildwood: The veins of the earth : Bab 31 - Bab 40

Clara stood atop the Salt-Wake cliffs as the sun bled through the dark clouds, its light dim and viscous like oil smeared across a lantern. The sea below did not move like it should. It pulsed, swaying in slow, arrhythmic heartbeats, like something buried beneath it had begun to stir. She tightened her coat and turned away from the view. Ashani waited by the church ruins, eyes closed, listening to the wind like it was a language. “You feel it?” Clara asked. Ashani opened her eyes, voice low. “The veil’s thinner here. Whatever Emily brings with her—it’s waking up the things that were buried long before any of us.” They’d found salt lines broken along the thresholds of every house. Talismans, long dried with blood and ash, had cracked and fallen from the doorways. The wards were failing. All of them. And not from time or neglect—but from something inside the town itself turning against them. “We need to move fast,” Clara said. “Find the temple beneath the coast. Ireth said it would

The air felt heavy, thick with salt and the promise of things both old and new. The once familiar rhythm of the waves crashing against the cliffs now seemed distant, muffled, as though the world itself held its breath in anticipation. Clara stood at the edge of the rocky shoreline, her eyes fixed on Emily as the woman—the thing—approached. Her figure was different now, too ethereal, too tied to something beyond the natural world. Her steps were slow, deliberate, each one leaving faint imprints in the sand, like she was both of this earth and not. Vines of root and coral crawled up her limbs, twisting in strange patterns, the marks of the Seed claiming her slowly. Her eyes were no longer the bright, defiant windows to her soul. Instead, they shone with a pale, oceanic glow, clouded with the knowledge of things beyond human comprehension. Clara’s chest tightened. Emily wasn’t lost to the Seed yet—not fully—but the change was undeniable. The girl she had known, the friend she had tried

The moment Clara’s blade sank into the earth, a blinding light erupted from the point of contact, sending a shockwave through the very air. The ground beneath them trembled, the earth groaning as if awakening from an eternal slumber. The roots that had ensnared Clara flared and writhed like living serpents, recoiling from the force of the blade, and Emily staggered backward, her hands trembling as the light from the Salt-Blood blade cut through the darkness that had overtaken her. For a brief, fragile moment, Clara thought she saw something behind Emily’s eyes—something human. A flicker of recognition. A desperate plea for help. But then the light dimmed, and the roots seemed to pulse with a life of their own, as if trying to pull her back into the abyss from which they had risen. “No,” Emily gasped, her voice cracked with pain. “I… I don’t want to be this anymore. I don’t want to be… this thing.” Clara’s heart twisted. She could feel the struggle within Emily, the part of her that

The air was thick with the scent of pine and decay, as if the forest itself was holding its breath. The journey ahead was uncertain, yet Clara couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed—not just in Emily, but in the world around them. The battle had been fought, the Seed temporarily suppressed, but the land itself still carried the echoes of something ancient, something darker. The moonlight filtered through the canopy of twisted branches, casting long shadows that seemed to stretch unnaturally, as though they were reaching for something. Clara walked beside Emily, the weight of their shared burden heavier than ever. They were more than friends now; they were tied to each other in ways neither fully understood. The forces they had faced—and those they had yet to face—would test them both in ways they couldn’t even begin to imagine. Emily’s hand hovered near her chest, where the lingering presence of the Seed pulsed like a second heartbeat. Clara noticed the occasional tre

The Root chamber echoed long after Emily’s words faded. The idea of feeding the Seed truth, of healing it rather than destroying it, had sunk into the bones of the place like rain into soil. The pulsing walls slowed, almost contemplative, as if the Echo Root itself was considering their resolve. Clara was the first to break the silence. “We’ll need to go deeper.” Ashani glanced toward the tunnel that extended from the far side of the chamber. It sloped down in a gentle curve, blacker than night and humming faintly—like breath from the belly of the world. “That tunnel wasn’t there before,” she murmured. “It wasn’t meant to be,” Emily said. “The Root only opens the path when it’s ready to receive what we’ve hidden. It wants what we fear most.” Clara’s hand instinctively went to her coat pocket. Inside was a worn leather pouch. Within that—her father’s old pendant. The one he had left behind when he vanished into WildWood. She’d never opened it, never been able to bring herself to