“Hey. I’m not coming in today…I’m not—I had a horrible night’s sleep. Yeah, it’s the dreams again. Yes, I’m on my way there now. Thanks for understanding.”

  The cave swallowed them the moment they crossed the threshold. The air turned cool and damp, beads of moisture clinging to the rough stone walls. Their footsteps echoed in uneven rhythm, the sound stretching out into blackness. The scent of earth grew sharper, threaded with something metallic that lingered faintly at the back of the throat.

  Fornaskr reached into his pack and drew forth a lantern, its frame of simple brass, its flame catching with a practiced strike of flint. The glow was small but steady, spilling in warm circles over jagged stone. It pushed the dark back just enough for them to see the path ahead: uneven rock, water seeping in thin rivulets down the walls, pools glimmering like glass where the lantern light caught them.

  Ariel drew close to the light, her eyes scanning every crevice. The outfit that still clung to her, a weave of living forest, made her keenly aware of the roots and veins in the stone around her, though here they felt muted, subdued beneath the weight of shadow. She exhaled, her breath misting faintly in the chill.

  “It’s like the whole place is… alive,” she murmured.

  Fornaskr nodded, his lantern casting sharp lines across his face. “It often feels that way,” he admitted. “These caves… they carry an old silence. My people tell stories of what once moved here, before the corruption came.”

  “What kind of stories?” Ariel asked, her voice low, mindful of the cavern’s weight.

  “Legends,” Fornaskr said, pausing as though to choose his words. “Of She Who Commands the Forest. How the land itself would answer her voice, how roots would rise and rivers would bend. Some thought it only a tale to comfort children, to remind us that we belonged to something larger than ourselves.” He glanced at her, lantern light catching in his eyes. “But I saw you. The statue, the vines, the Wisp calling you Minnidottir. I can no longer think of it as just a story.”

  Ariel’s throat tightened. She walked a little ahead, her boots striking damp stone. “I don’t even remember my own name,” she whispered. “And you’re telling me I’m supposed to be some… savior?”

  “The forest remembers you,” Fornaskr said softly. “Even if you cannot remember yourself.”

  They moved deeper. The lantern flame quivered in a draft, shadows slipping like phantoms along the walls. Ariel ran her fingers across the stone, feeling where moss had grown pale and slick. Her mind kept circling Fornaskr’s words, torn between disbelief and the quiet, insistent pull of recognition she couldn’t explain.

  The silence stretched, broken only by water dripping from the ceiling. Finally, Ariel spoke again, her tone more steady. “Tell me more about her. About me… about the one from the legends.”

  Fornaskr’s expression softened as he lifted the lantern higher. “They say her fire could wake what was buried. That her voice could bind sky and root, call life back where it had been stripped away. She was not only a warrior, but a healer. She held destruction at bay not just with strength, but with renewal.”

  Ariel’s hand drifted to the vine coiled around her arm, the makeshift weapon she had shaped. She flexed her wrist and imagined it weaving into a shield, or coaxing light from moss, or drawing poison from water. Possibilities spun in her mind like sparks. “Healing,” she repeated, almost to herself. “Not just fighting.”

  “Exactly,” Fornaskr said. “That is why you matter. You can mend what is breaking.”

  The words hung between them as they pressed deeper into the cave, the lantern’s glow flickering across the narrowing passage. The damp walls seemed to lean closer, and with every step, the weight of corruption pressed heavier in the air, thick as smoke though invisible.

  Ariel opened her mouth to ask another question but froze. A pulse, faint but insistent, throbbed against the stone beneath her fingertips, as though something living stirred ahead. Instinctively, she lifted the arm wrapped with the vine, bracing it before her as if the movement alone could ready her for what approached.

  Fornaskr stilled beside her, lantern trembling slightly in his grip. His voice dropped to a whisper. “If it is a Skryll, there will not be only one.”

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  The cave pressed silent again, stretching time taut. Ariel held her breath, straining to listen. Another pulse, this one further down the passage. Then a third, behind them, faint but there. Her stomach clenched.

  “There’s more than one,” she murmured, voice barely audible, confirming Fornaskr’s warning.

  Fornaskr set the lantern carefully on a flat rock, freeing his hands. From his pack he pulled a dagger, its edge jagged, stone chipped and worn by use. He readied it with grim resolve, eyes scanning the dark, every line of his body tensed for what might emerge.

  Ariel swallowed and leaned closer to him, her voice a bare thread. She told him what she had heard: the first pulse ahead of them, the second farther down, the third behind. Fornaskr’s eyes narrowed. Without a word, he turned, squaring his stance toward the rear tunnel. The lantern’s glow caught the edge of his dagger, throwing fractured light against the walls.

  The pulses came again, irregular, like a heartbeat gone wild. Ariel pressed her palm against the stone, trying to map them. Her thoughts raced, counting the intervals, sketching their positions in her mind. The air thickened with the rhythm, every throb of it making her skin prickle. Her vine coiled tighter around her arm as if sensing her focus, waiting for her command.

  She locked onto the nearest pulse just as a screech tore through the dark. A shadow leapt, claws outstretched. Ariel lashed her arm forward, the vine snapped outward, coiling around the creature mid?air. With a fierce swing she slammed it against the stone wall. The impact rang out in a sickening thud, and when the vine recoiled back to her wrist, the Skryll dropped lifeless to the ground.

  Ariel turned in time to see a second shape launch at Fornaskr. For a heartbeat she feared it would strike true, but his body moved with startling speed. He slipped aside and drove the jagged stone dagger into the Skryll’s abdomen. The lantern light caught its form, chitin glistening, mandibles clicking weakly. Ariel froze, struck by a strange, sinking recognition; a feeling as though she had seen its kind before.

  The thought clawed at her, but before she could grasp it, the third Skryll charged from the shadows. Distracted, she had no time to brace before its teeth sank into her lower leg. Pain ripped through her, and she cried out, stumbling back. Snarling, she straightened her vine into a spear and shoved it down through the creature’s body. It shrieked once before going limp, sliding free as the vine retracted.

  She tried to set her foot down, but the moment weight touched the bitten leg, it gave out entirely. Numbness flooded through it, dead and heavy. Ariel toppled back against the damp wall, sliding down until she sat hard on the stone floor. Her breaths came sharp, shallow, teeth gritted against the pain that still lingered as numbness spread outward from the wound.

  Fornaskr rushed to her, lantern swinging in one hand, the other reaching for her leg. The warm glow revealed the gaping bite mark where the Skryll’s mandibles had torn deep. His face tightened. Without hesitation he leaned over, rifling through the pack that still hung at her waist. From it he pulled a small bundle of medicinal herbs.

  He took a large pinch, shoved it into his mouth, and chewed quickly, the bitter scent rising between them. When the herbs were a wet mash, he pulled them free and pressed them gently onto the wound, covering the torn flesh.

  “You should be able to speed the healing,” he said, his tone urgent but steady.

  Ariel’s jaw clenched. She nodded once, then cupped her hand over the poultice. Closing her eyes, she drew a long breath. For a moment there was only the cold, the ache, and the numbing pull of venom in her veins. Then her eyes opened slowly, glowing with a dull green light.

  The herbs beneath her palm ignited in radiance, their glow spreading across the wound. Fornaskr watched, transfixed, as the venom seeped out of her flesh in dark threads, drawn into the poultice, which hissed faintly as if burning it away.

  Slowly, the torn flesh knit together, pink closing over into smooth skin. Within moments, the wound was sealed, leaving only the faint trace of a scar where the Skryll had bitten.

  Fornaskr stared at the closed wound in awe. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to her face. “How do you feel?”

  Ariel rubbed her leg, then set her foot against the ground and gave it a cautious stamp. Relief softened her features. “I can feel it again.”

  Fornaskr rose and offered his hand. She grasped it, and with a heave he pulled her back to her feet. She shifted her weight from side to side, testing the leg, then gave a firm nod. “It’s fine.”

  But instead of stepping back, Fornaskr sank to one knee before her, his voice low as he recited the words carved on the statue in the village. “She Who Commands the Forest: We kneel to the fire that burns inside.”

  Ariel blinked, flustered. “You don’t... you don’t have to do that,” she stammered, awkwardness prickling her tone.

  He stood again, meeting her eyes, expression solemn. “I know. But seeing you heal yourself… seeing the venom drawn out like that...it stirred something in me I have not felt in many years.”

  Her brows lifted. “What was that?”

  “Hope.”

  Ariel shook her head slightly, still catching her breath. “I don’t feel like hope,” she admitted, her voice quiet but firm.

  Fornaskr’s mouth curved into a faint smile. “You do not have to. The Sylari will hope for you.”

  Ariel gave a sheepish smile of her own, and for a moment their eyes held—an unspoken respect passing between them.

  Together they turned toward the darkness ahead. The cave seemed to draw tighter, the silence broken now by dozens of faint pulses and skittering scratches reverberating through the stone. Ariel raised her arm, the vine coiling taut, her eyes flashing green in the lantern light. Fornaskr steadied his blade, stance low and ready.