"The Void doesn’t ask. It takes."

  And the story continues…

  Eris blinked, but the world didn't return to normal. His Mercury Sight had shifted, no longer tracking heat or movement. Again, he saw the traces of Celestia, threads of divine energy woven into the earth itself.

  The Great Oak wasn't a tree anymore. It was a lattice of frozen light, its bark pulsing with an ancient, exhausted rhythm.

  The silver in his veins hummed in response, a magnetic pull dragging him forward.

  Barik and Dara had already started butchering the serpent. Barik’s voice was a whip-crack when he saw Eris kneeling beside the tree, lost in a trance. "Eris, get the Heartwood! Now!"

  Eris snapped back to attention, stepping into the hollow, sizing the living wood. To his Mercury Sight, the Heartwood wasn't just a piece of timber; it was a pillar of blinding, white-hot energy that made his eyes ache.

  The great oak’s wound gaped where the bark had split, its outer layers charred and peeled away, revealing the inner core. The ancient tree's interior gleamed with pale wood threaded by dull silver veins. The air inside smelled of ozone and sap, thick with the weight of something alive.

  Heartwood.

  Unlike the rough, blackened bark surrounding it, the Heartwood was a shimmering, translucent amber, shot through with hair-thin veins of silver that still pulsed with residual heat.

  It didn't look like wood; it looked like honey frozen in the middle of an explosion. As Eris reached in, the air grew hummed with a low-frequency vibration that made his teeth ache.

  "It's stuck," he gasped, bracing against the rot. He pulled, but the Heartwood felt fused to the world, the silver veins lashing out with a discharge of static that seared through his runes. "It won't let go!"

  "It's not a gift, it's a harvest, Eris," Kaylah dropped beside him, pressing her shoulder against the split of the trunk. She didn't use her axe; the shock might fracture the wood. Instead, she handed him a wedge of cold iron.

  "Careful. If it splits, it's useless." Ruvio's warning echoed in Eris's mind.

  But even as he jammed the wedge into the silver junction, he felt something deeper, a hum like tectonic plates grinding, dwarfing the Heartwood's energy. The Oak wasn't just wood. It was a dying titan, and he was the one killing it.

  He worked his blade with surgical precision, carving out a long, curved slab of the luminous grain. With a sickening crack, the first vein severed. Luminous sap hissed against the moss, mercury-bright and frantic.

  He pulled out a single, flawless beam nearly six feet long, enough for two recurve bows that would never snap and would sing when the string was drawn. It was remarkably dense, yet as he pried it loose, it felt lighter than it should have, as if the lightning had burned away the weight of the earth.

  Worth more than iron.

  Worth killing for.

  Behind him, the cart rattled as someone shifted weight, and Barik’s boots crunched closer.

  Following the grain, he harvested a secondary cluster of straight, needle-like splinters; a dozen shafts that, once fletched, would fly truer than any iron-tipped arrow, guided by the same sky-fire that had birthed them.

  "Got it," Eris panted, clutching the glowing timber to his chest. The wood felt alive, its silver veins flickering in a rhythmic cadence that seemed to sync, just for a second, with his own racing heart.

  “Take only the living core,” Barik said, low but urgent. “Leave the dead grain.”

  But beneath the roots, the tectonic hum grew louder.

  And the earth shuddered in response.

  The moment the Heartwood came free, the anchor was gone.

  The word echoed in his mind, but it wasn't just the wood he felt. Beneath the taproots, something vibrated, a frequency so pure it made his teeth ache.

  A Fragment of Celestia.

  The vibration didn't stop; it plunged deeper. Beneath the hollow where the Heartwood had rested, the earth boiled, the soil writhing like a living thing.

  "Wait…" Eris's voice was raw, his face twisting. "There's something else."

  He shoved the Heartwood into Kaylah's arms and dug, fingers tearing at roots fused into stone by centuries of silver-soak. His left wrist, etched with Celestial Runes, burned, the Obsidian Stain on his palm throbbing in response. Not hunger. Recognition. The same dread that had clawed at him in the cave is now a roar. (1)

  "Eris?" Barik's grip tightened on his axe, knuckles white. "Is it alive?"

  Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

  No answer. Eris's breath came in ragged bursts as his fingers closed around something smooth and unnatural, buried upright like a forgotten blade. The silver in his blood howled.

  The ground wasn't just moving. It was breathing.

  No larger than a dagger's hilt, its ghostly light swirling like a storm trapped in glass. It had been waiting.

  Understanding crashed over them like a wave: The serpent. The Wraiths. The Oak. None of them had been drawn to each other.

  They'd been drawn to this.

  A Shard.

  The shard slid free, too easily, as if the earth had only been holding its breath. His hands were blistered from the static, the Celestial runes on his arms flickering like dying embers. And then the Void on Eris's palm ignited.

  The Celestial Runes on his arms flared with a desperate desire, recognizing the shard's purity. But the Obsidian Stain hissed, black and ravenous. His left hand moved on its own, lunging not to claim the shard, but to devour it. The mark wanted to drown its light in rot.

  "NO!" Eris choked out.

  Eris!" Kaylah's scream was the last thing he heard before the silence of the Void took hold.

  His body arched, a bridge between two storms, the Celestial runes blazing on his right arm, the Obsidian Stain hissing on his left. The frost-lace on his neck exploded into jagged ice, racing down his shoulder like shattered glass, trying to lock his muscles before the darkness could claim him.

  But Eris couldn't listen. He watched in horror as his left fingers began to twitch, then curl, clawing at the air with a predatory, mindless hunger. The air between his palm and the shard began to distort, a low, thrumming vibration that threatened to shatter the very roots beneath him.

  Jag, the alpha wolf, snarled from the shadows, his mercury eyes locked on Eris’s left hand. A growl vibrated in her chest, not at the enemy, but at the darkness inside Eris. The sound seemed to say, "Fight."

  "His arm... it's turning to stone!" Dara shouted. She stood frozen, unsure of what to do.

  "Eris!" Dara’s voice cut through the chaos. She didn’t move closer; she knew better, but her fingers twitched toward her knife. "Eris, stop!"

  "I… I can’t!" His left arm jerked, fingers twisting like broken marionette strings. The shard’s ghostly light pulsed, calling to the Void, and the air screamed as the two forces collided.

  Kaylah dropped the Heartwood with a dull thud, her face pale. "Eris, break the link! Pull away!"

  Kaylah lunged.

  Barik roared, "Kaylah, the Shard!", but it was too late. The Void in Eris’s palm yawned, a black hole pulling his left arm toward the shard like iron to a magnet.

  As Eris’s fingers grazed the shard’s jagged edge, a shockwave of absolute silence rippled outward. The world turned grayscale. For a heartbeat, Eris didn't know which side had won, the light or the rot.

  But the cold suddenly vanished.

  He blinked, gasping for air as color bled back into the world. He hadn't touched it. Kaylah had moved with the speed of a desert hawk, her hand a blur as she snatched the shard from the dirt a millisecond before his void-marked palm could close over it.

  A shockwave of absolute stillness rippled outward. The roots groaned. The shard’s light flickered, trapped between Kaylah’s grip and the Void’s hunger.

  "I’ve got you." Kaylah slammed her palms over Eris’s left hand, her voice steady, her touch grounding. The Celestial runes on her own arms flared in response, a pale blue light seeping into his skin.

  Eris gasped, his left arm trembling… then still. The Void recoiled, hissing like steam on ice, and the shard dimmed in Kaylah’s grip.

  For a heartbeat, no one moved.

  Before the Obsidian Stain could lash out at her, she shoved the shard into her lead-lined pouch and threw her bare palms over Eris’s struggling left hand.

  "Look at me," she hissed, her face inches from his, forcing him to find her eyes. "Eris, let go. It’s gone. I have it."

  The violent tremors in his arm didn't stop immediately, but the moment her skin touched his, the "static" in his mind began to clear. The warmth of her hands acted like a poultice against the cold venom of the mark. Slowly, the rigid, stone-like tension drained out of his muscles. The Frost-Lace receded, leaving his skin red and raw.

  Barik exhaled a breath he seemed to have been holding for a lifetime. "Gods... Kaylah, you nearly lost a hand."

  Dara stepped forward; her eyes wide as she looked at Kaylah’s closed pouch. "You touched it. Why didn't it... why didn't it break you?"

  Kaylah didn't look back. She just kept her hands locked over Eris’s, grounding him to the earth. "Because I wasn't trying to take its power," she whispered. "I was just trying to save him."

  Dara exhaled, wiping sweat from her brow. "Next time, warn us before you try to eat a cursed rock."

  Barik hauled Eris to his feet, his voice gruff but relieved. "Next time? There’d better not be a next time."

  Eris felt shaky and breathless, but he managed to laugh at the joke. "I’ll try, can’t promise, though."

  Kaylah didn’t let go of his hand. "Then we’ll be ready."

  Barik didn’t give Eris time to breathe. "We don't have time to marvel at the scenery," Barik snapped, his protective instincts flaring

  “Heartwood secured?” he barked, already turning toward the fallen serpent. “Good. Then move. We butcher now.”

  "Wrap it!" Barik commanded, throwing a piece of oilcloth at him. "Before every Wraith and Crescent in the district smells the Celestia on it. We move!" (2)

  Eris leaned

  against the Great Oak, his arms still trembling from the shard’s aftermath. "We should move. Crescents won’t give up that easily."

  "Speaking of the Iron Order…" Dara grinned, mimicking a deep, dramatic voice:

  "‘I will break General Darn!’"

  Barik choked on his water. "What?"

  "Oh, didn’t I mention?"

  Dara batted her eyelashes

  "The scout you yelled at? Heard you call yourself General Darn. Apparently, it terrified him."

  "The scent of blood will draw the rest of the Order soon," Dara warned, her eyes scanning the treeline. "And if their General is as 'special' as the rumors say, he’s probably sent the Second Troop to hunt his 'great rival'."

  Barik looked at his soot-stained hands. "I just wanted to be a woodcutter, Eris. Now I’m the 'Legendary General Darn.' If I ever meet this General, I’m going to have words with him."

  "Just don't use the word 'Darn'," Kaylah teased, helping Eris to his feet. "He might think it's a battle cry."

  Barik groaned, burying his face in his hands. "I’m going to die of embarrassment before the darn Crescents kill me."

  Eris smirked. "At least you’ll die a legend."

  Jag, mouth full of serpent, let out a huff that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

  ***

  While Kaylah was grounding Eris in the dirt of the Ridge, the Iron Order’s

  forward command received the news.

  General Ful stood atop a gilded footstool so he could look down on his

  tactical map. He wore a cape of bright crimson that was far too long for his

  stature, and his armor was polished so brightly it was blinding.

  "Report!" Ful bellowed, striking a pose that highlighted his

  "heroic" profile.

  The Seer, a woman with deep dark circles under her eyes that suggested she

  hadn't slept since Ful took command, sighed. "The first reconnaissance

  team has been neutralized, Excellency. The last message spoke of a 'General'

  leading the counter-attack."

  "Good! It seems I will finally meet a fierce opponent," the General muttered.

  ***