The seed pulsed in her palm like a heartbeat.
Alive.
Familiar.
Terrifying.
Kaelen stared at it like it might explode. "You brought something out of the Mirror? Are you sure that's a good idea?"
The Druid didn't answer right away. Her mark glowed brighter now—no longer the soft, leaf-green it once was, but a swirl of gold veined with deep forest emerald.
"It's not just a seed," she said. "It's a tether. A piece of the Wild Without Chains… but controlled. Chosen."
Kaelen looked at her with hard eyes. "So what are you now?"
The Druid met her gaze calmly. "Still me. Just… more."
The grove around the Deeproot Mirror trembled.
Above them, root channels split open like lungs gasping for air. Magic leaked from the ground in long, glowing tendrils. From deeper tunnels came a sound—scuttling, scraping, growing.
The Wildlings had arrived.
Kaelen swore and turned to draw her blades. "We make our stand here?"
The Druid nodded. "They want the Mirror. If they touch it—if they enter it—there's no stopping the spread. The forest won't just awaken. It'll devour everything."
"Then we stop it."
The first Wildlings emerged—crawling from tunnels on misshapen limbs. Once-beasts. Once-men. Now neither. Their skin was overgrown with moss and cracked wood. Their eyes glowed green… but not with life.
With hunger.
Kaelen surged forward, fast and lethal, cutting into the first wave. Her blades sang in wide arcs, flashing with reflex and rage. "More than before!"
"They're not individuals anymore," the Druid shouted. "They're connected. Hive-rooted."
She planted the seed into the soil beside the Mirror.
Whispered a word:
"Grow."
The ground shook.
Roots burst upward in a spiral, forming a dome of intertwining branches and light. The seed pulsed at the center, and from it bloomed a tree unlike any seen before—its bark was silver, its leaves gold-veined, and its aura wrapped around the Mirror like a ward made of soul and soil.
The Wildlings screamed in response.
They hated it.
They feared it.
The Druid raised her hands, her voice becoming a chant—not Druidic alone, but symphonic, laced with the deeper rhythm of the Other Self. The new tree amplified her voice, her power.
And the forest answered.
Vines erupted from the earth like serpents. Thorns bloomed mid-air and rained down like arrows. The Druid's eyes shone bright—she wasn't just channeling nature.
She was commanding it.
Wildlings were ensnared, tangled, crushed under the weight of rebirth.
Kaelen fought at her side, breathing hard. "Remind me never to piss you off again."
The Druid gave a tight smile. "Hold that thought."
Because the ground split.
From the breach crawled something new.
Something ancient.
A Wildling… but larger. Regal. Crowned in antlers of bone. Eyes burning with recognition.
The others stepped back from it.
This one knew her.
And in a deep, broken voice, it spoke:
"Leafweaver."
Kaelen froze.
The Druid's breath caught.
This wasn't just any Wildling.
This had once been someone she knew.
A former druid.
Someone from her lost Circle.
Her fingers curled.
Magic surged at her back.
"I buried you once," she said softly. "I'll do it right this time."