Fractured
The corruption then had looked like this: not a roaring blaze, but mold in the invisible places—between roots, under bark, in the gaps no one paid attention to until whole trunks began to crack.
“It’s been nibbling at us since the binding,” I said. My voice stayed calm because panicking never helped plants, and it wouldn’t help people either. “At first, just enough to take the edge off our unity. Make it harder for us to hear each other clearly. Then more, once it realized how much we’d… opened.”
Ronan made a low sound. Not words, exactly. Just frustration crystallized into noise.
“Is that what hit the outer forest last week?” he asked. “The blight we thought
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