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The vines went taut.

And then Garrick screamed—not with rage, but withfear.

“No. No—don’t?—”

Ash.

It started at his fingertips, crumbling to the wind like scorched leaves. Then his arms, his chest, his snarling face. The shadows he wielded flailed once, then shrank back, banished by the tide of ancient light.

One final breath—and he was gone.

Carried off on a wind thick with pine and the cleansing scent of rain that hadn’t fallen yet.

Silence.

Total, blessed silence.

Suddenly, birdsong.

One. Then two. Then the whole grove burst with life, as if the trees themselves exhaled relief.

Rollo collapsed to his knees, breath ragged, chest rising and falling like waves in a storm just broken.

Delilah dropped beside him, arms around his shoulders, forehead against his temple.

“You did it,” he whispered, voice shredded.

She shook her head gently. “Wedid.”

The grove sighed again.

No longer heavy with corruption.

But full. Whole. Alive.

The forest had been healed.

And so had they.

37

DELILAH

The wind kissed her cheeks like an old friend.

Delilah stood at the edge of the forest, fingers laced tightly with Rollo’s as they crossed the threshold back into Celestial Pines. The scent of pine and earth was cleaner now, sweeter, as though the land itself had taken a breath and finally let it go.

Behind them, the Whispering Woods shimmered—not with menace, but with a quiet magic. Life thrumming beneath moss and root. Peace hard-earned.

The town stood waiting.

Not with banners or streamers or song—but with eyes wide, breaths held, and hearts lifted by something they hadn’t felt in a long time.

Relief.

As Rollo and Delilah stepped from the edge of the Whispering Woods, hand in hand and smeared with dirt and magic and exhaustion, the breeze shifted. It swept through the green, soft and clean, and every head turned their way.

A single cheer rose up from somewhere near the bakery.