The sun had slipped beyond the trees, its last light catching the tops of the branches like flame on ancient spears. As the shadows deepened and the first stars pricked through the violet veil of dusk, the moon rose slow and silver, a pale eye gazing over the darkening forest. A cool breeze swept through the grove near the creek, and it stirred the sleeping girl’s hair, brushing it across her cheek like a whisper from the woods.

  Lysa blinked awake, the scent of woodsmoke pulling her the rest of the way. A fire crackled nearby, its orange tongues licking skyward, casting long, dancing shadows against the moss-covered trunks. Her father sat beside it, his weathered face lit by the flames, thoughtful and still. Brann knelt near him, sharpening a branch with an axe, the quiet scrape echoing like a rhythm of patience.

  Riven stirred beside her as she nudged him, the boy rubbed his eyes with a small fist, then blinked toward the firelight. Without a word, they both rose and padded barefoot to join the two men.

  Torvil glanced up as they approached, eyes soft, but alert. He said nothing at first, only motioned for them to sit. A few sparks drifted upward like fireflies drawn to the stars.

  “You’ve slept long,” he said finally, his voice low and steady. “That’s good, you’ll need your focus tonight.”

  He looked to each of them, letting the silence stretch, the kind that held meaning without needing to fill it.

  “This night,” he went on, “you’ll learn to extend yourselves beyond your skin…The forest speaks, if you know how to listen and it hides, if you do not know how to see. It wears a hundred scents, not all of them safe.”

  He reached behind him and pulled out a flat slate of bark, blackened at the edge with charcoal. With practiced ease, he sketched three symbols, each simple, flowing, precise.

  “These are the runes,” he said, tapping each in turn “Smell, Sight and Hearing. You will draw them again and again until you can do so from memory, blindfolded, with one hand, in mud or ash or blood if you must.”

  He looked to Brann, and the man nodded once, a shared understanding passed between them.

  “But drawing,” Torvil continued, “is not always an option in the thick of things, when the beasts are too near, when there is no time to etch the lines, there are other ways.”

  He reached to his belt and pulled free a small pouch. From it, he drew three smooth stones, oval-shaped and engraved with the same runes. One shimmered faintly with a dull oil, another carried a fleck of red moss in its grooves.

  “You can carry them carved in stone, etched in bone, pressed into wax or even burnt into leather,” Torvil said, handing them to Lysa and Riven. “So long as the form holds true, and your intent is clear, the magic will answer, they just have to be near your body.”

  He paused, his eyes flickering with the firelight.

  “But the safest way,” he added, his voice quieter now, “the surest way… is to carry them on your flesh.”

  He rolled up the sleeve of his left arm, revealing three faint marks inked just below the crook of the elbow, one a swirling eye, another a curving ear, and the last a set of scent lines like rising heat. “A tattoo,” he said, “is never lost, not in darkness, not in haste. When the moment comes, when you have no time to draw or dig in your pouch, you need only touch your skin and remember the shape.”

  He let the sleeve fall back, eyes moving between them again, steady as river stones. “The rune means nothing without will, but with will and flesh together, you will always be ready.”

  He turned his gaze toward the trees then, as though something stirred beyond the fire’s reach.

  “Now,” he said, voice low and steady again, “Let me show you how to use them.”

  “First,” Torvil said, his voice barely more than breath, “we begin with hearing, channel your soul into the rune… gently, your intent must be to improve your sense of hearing, that goes without saying”

  They did as instructed, a faint shimmer passed over Brann’s hand as he touched the etched symbol on the stone, and something shifted, like a door opening inside his skull, he had poured too much into the rune.

  The world exploded into sound.

  He could hear the wind threading through the upper branches of trees far above, each leaf catching the breeze with its own whisper. He heard the soft scuttling of beetles in the mulch underfoot, the creak of moss settling over old bark, somewhere deep in the woods, a fox yipped once and fled…Brann’s breath caught.

  His hearing was not the only thing that had changed…he felt his balance shift, become sharper. The way his limbs moved, the pressure of his feet on the mossy earth, the tension in his knees as he crouched, it was all clearer, all more alive.

  Lysa let out a small gasp and clutched Riven’s hand, the boy was wide-eyed, his mouth half open…they looked as if the stars themselves had begun to sing.

  Then Torvil spoke.

  “You must regulate the amount of soul you use,” he said softly, almost lazily.

  To the three of them however, it sounded as if he had shouted from the edge of a canyon, like a bell, massive and deafening.

  “If too much power floods the sense,” he continued, “you will lose clarity, and that which should guide you will only confuse.”

  Brann winced, nodding and together, they tried to still the flood, to temper the torrent of noise until it became a stream. After many slow breaths and gentle trials, they found a rhythm, the sound remained, but it no longer overwhelmed.

  Torvil gave a nod “Now let’s move to the next one…smell.”

  They let go of the first rune and picked up the next.

  Another shift, another stream of power channeled into the rune.

  At once, the world was a blur of scent, pollen, damp bark, the iron tang of mossy stones, and the musk of unseen creatures. It hit like a wave, Brann staggered and nearly fell, gagging on the thickness of it, Lysa turned away, covering her mouth…even Riven whimpered.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “You must sort them,” Torvil said with a smile, “separate plant from animal, decay from bloom. At first, it is a storm but with practice, it becomes a map.”

  It took longer, but with time, the sharper smells came into focus, a rabbit, somewhere to the left, a patch of wild garlic to the right, and something larger, something that had passed not long ago, musky and low to the ground.

  Torvil looked at them with pride “That’s enough for tonight,” he said. “One day, you will know the scent of every beast and every leaf but for now, knowing there is a difference is victory enough.”

  And then it was time for the last rune.

  “Sight,” Torvil said, his voice firm now. “This one, I leave for last for a reason.”

  The moment Brann touched the rune and poured energy into it, his world fractured.

  The fire cast a hundred shifting shadows, and each one moved like a creature poised to strike. The light slipped between branches and leaves, making everything seem alive, shapes danced in the distance, the flutter of moth wings, the bend of grass under an insect’s foot, all of it screamed for attention. The dark grew brighter, and a palette of colors and motion flooded his brain.

  His temples throbbed. He clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut, Lysa sat back, moaning softly, Riven fell to his knees, clutching his face.

  “Cut it off,” Torvil commanded. “Now before you faint.”

  And they did, one by one, like dimming a candle.

  “It is always the hardest,” Torvil said, folding his arms. “Your eyes lie to you more than any other sense, and when you see too much…they lie louder. Shapes will melt into one another, and your mind will have to adapt to interpret them correctly.”

  They repeated the exercise, cycling through each rune again and again, by the third round they could channel soul-flow with more precision. They could heighten a sense and dim it again, but never all three together…that was still far beyond them.

  “One day,” Torvil said, watching them from his place near the fire, “you will learn to juggle your power as easily as you breathe, but not today.”

  They pressed on until their soul-streams thinned to flickers. The runes grew faint in their hands, and their bodies sagged under the weight of use. They curled beneath their cloaks and let the night take them. When Torvil was certain they slept, breath deep and even beneath their blankets, he stirred from the shadows. A thought, sharp and deliberate, brought the runes along his skin to life, their faint glow pulsing like the heartbeat of some hidden thing. He slipped into the forest without a whisper of sound, the trees closing around him as if to swallow him whole...It was time for his training.

  The next morning, they began again with the flowers, learning to guide growth with intent. The days blurred…sunlight slipping between the branches, rain misting down through the canopy. Lessons on bark and root, on scent trails and plant memory mixed together. The forest seemed to grow quieter with them, more watchful, less a place they walked through, and more a thing that noticed them back.

  Three weeks passed before they even knew they were passing, time bent strangely among the trees, all days were the same except for their training.

  But Torvil knew, and he frowned more often now, his eyes turned north whenever the breeze stirred from that direction.

  No word from Kett…None at all, he was beginning to think he would need to go back alone and leave his students here to train.

  It was on the fourth week, a Wednesday by Torvil’s reckoning, though days in the forest passed like shifting smoke, that the crow came.

  It was near mid-morning, and the light broke in silver shafts through the canopy above, dancing along the forest floor in motes and beams. They were working near the grove, trying again to stretch sight and smell together without losing their balance, when the sharp caw cracked the stillness like a whip.

  The crow’s wings beat heavy as it wheeled once, then landed with startling grace atop the cage they had lashed to the highest branch of the sentinel tree. Its feathers were glossy, black as midnight on stone, and it wore a single crimson ring about its left leg.

  Torvil’s head snapped up before the others could even speak, he didn’t say a word, only moved, up the tree with the speed of a much younger man, boots silent on bark.

  When he came down, he held a small scroll, sealed with a faint gray wax…he broke it with a thumb.

  They waited in a circle of silence as he read.

  His eyes moved once, twice, then stilled. He crushed the letter in his hand, slow and deliberate, as if by doing so he could squeeze out more meaning.

  “It’s from Kett,” he said at last, his voice quiet “Short, not much comfort in it.”

  He dropped the paper into the fire. The flames licked it greedily.

  “The army’s sweeping things under the rug,” Torvil went on. “Kett doesn’t know why, could be they want to avoid panic, could be they’re hiding something worse.” He glanced toward the western sky, where the trees began to rise into thicker shadows.

  “The general had gone upstream to investigate, leaving one of his men behind to watch the town. His name is Nyro, according to Kett, he did little beyond sending periodic reports. Still, at night, he wandered into the forest, checking the wards the general had set, making certain nothing disturbed them… as if they were expecting something. The forest’s been quiet so far.”

  He said the last words without conviction.

  “And the townsfolk, they had just gone on with their lives…is this the quiet before the storm, or peace stubbornly clinging to its rhythm?”

  Torvil rubbed his brow. “Ah, I wish we had more news…I can’t tell if this is a good silence, or one that waits with teeth bared, either way we have been given some more time”

  He turned to Brann, and his voice changed, softer, touched by something warmer.

  “You’ve done well with your other power,” he said. “Better than I expected, so, how about it? You want to seal it… or work with it?”

  Brann didn’t answer right away, his mind focused on that name, Nyro, he didn’t remember the man, but something about the name made him feel fear. He looked at Torvil and his answer came like a blade drawn in the dark.

  “I’ll work with it…I think I’m getting the hang of it and it hasn’t bothered me much lately.”

  Torvil chuckled, but there was a gleam in his eye, like a man who knows a truth the boy hasn’t yet uncovered.

  “Maybe it hasn’t bothered you,” he said, smiling, “but if you want to work with it, we must do the bothering.”

  He stood, the wind stirring his cloak as he looked out across the forest, its green breath steady, its roots ancient and silent beneath them.

  “Tonight,” he said, “we put it all together, everything we learned so far”

  He turned, folding his arms.

  “We’ll have a competition, a start line and a finish line. The path will be set between them, and you’ll use everything you’ve learned, runes, channeling, wit, and will, first one through wins, no shortcuts.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Well? What do you say?”

  Lysa stepped forward, grinning like she had fire behind her teeth.

  “Bring it on, old man.”

  Torvil laughed, deep and genuine, and the sound startled a squirrel from the underbrush.

  “Then prepare yourselves. Tonight, we dance.”

  And just like that, the forest came alive with preparation.

  Brann collected stones and redrew runes into their surfaces. Riven bound scent markers to fallen limbs and carved his name into a practice staff. Lysa set her hair in a braid and whispered something to the wind. The fire crackled on, and Torvil watched them all with a face carved from pride and shadow.

  Night would come, the test would begin and the forest… the forest would be watching.