Page 36

ROLLO

T he moment Garrick stepped out of the shadows, the grove dimmed.

The moon still hung above them, silver and full, but its light dulled as if the trees themselves recoiled from the weight of the darkness clinging to his frame. Garrick moved like oil over stone—slick, slow, and so sure of his place in this poisoned world.

Rollo could feel Delilah tense beside him, her fingers woven through his, her breath catching as Garrick’s smirk curled.

“Still blooming, I see. Even after all that damage.”

Rollo stepped forward before Delilah could, placing himself between her and the threat.

“You’re not touching her,” he said, each word thick with promise.

Garrick’s eyes glinted. “You’re a fool, Rollo. Always were. You think love will save you from what’s coming?”

“No,” Rollo said, cracking his neck. “I think it already has.”

The ground pulsed beneath them. The roots groaned.

Rollo could feel the forest’s pain—the tension between old magic and new rot stretching too thin.

He didn’t need to look to know Delilah felt it too.

She moved beside him, hand slipping free only to reach into her satchel.

The whisper of spell-thread and dried leaves followed.

Garrick raised a hand. Shadows rose behind him—shifting like wolves at the edge of a flame.

“You can’t save her,” he said. “You bound her. You made her part of this dying thing. She’ll break long before the trees do.”

Delilah’s voice cut through the air. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

She stepped forward then, just a few paces, and laid the carved bowl Rollo had seen in her hands when he had found her moments ago. She set it on the moss. Her eyes never left Garrick’s.

“I chose this,” she said. “I chose the forest. And I chose him. You twisted your bond into a weapon. We made ours a sanctuary.”

Garrick snarled.

That did it.

The shadows lunged, and Rollo shifted without hesitation.

Bones cracked, fur tore through flesh, and in seconds, his bear stood where the man had been. Massive, gold-flecked, furious. Delilah didn’t flinch. She knelt behind him, pressing her palms to the soil. Her voice rose in chant—low, melodic, ancient.

Rollo charged.

The shadows met him with claws like razors, but he batted them aside. He focused on Garrick—his once-brother now veiled in malice. They collided with the force of history. Claw met claw. Blood hit bark.

Delilah’s voice wove through the clearing like music no one had heard in centuries—pulling power from the roots beneath their feet, drawing strength from the stars burning cold and watchful above.

The carved bowl in front of her pulsed brighter with each word, the green and gold light flickering like breath—alive, building, becoming.

It wasn’t just magic anymore.

It was theirs.

Bound through carved runes, sealed with ash, blood, and belief. A union of spirit, soil, and soul.

Rollo’s growls echoed behind her, animal and raw. She didn’t have to look to know he was locked in a brutal dance with Garrick—two beasts forged from the same earth, now tearing at each other with everything they had left.

But this magic wasn’t about tearing down.

It was about restoring.

Delilah laid the final ingredients into the bowl with reverence: a tangle of moonvine, a single phoenix feather glimmering like fire-caught dawn, and the sharp drop of her own blood.

It hissed as it hit the mixture, the light flaring—no longer green and gold, but something deeper. Older. Forest-dark and starborn.

She whispered the name that bound them.

“Rollo.”

The forest gasped.

A great wind surged, bending trees, rattling leaves like bones in a cup. The ground beneath her shivered as the grove itself awakened.

And Garrick?

He screamed .

A scream not of pain, but of rage.

“No!” he bellowed, tearing free of the roots that had tried to anchor him. His face twisted into something monstrous as he surged toward her, dark tendrils of magic licking the air behind him like flame.

“You don’t get to rewrite fate!”

But Rollo was faster.

He launched out of the shadows, mid-shift—half man, half bear, all fury—and slammed into Garrick just inches from Delilah. They crashed into a cluster of trees, and the impact cracked like thunder. Bark exploded. Air warped with power.

Delilah’s hands flew over the bowl, chanting faster now, anchoring every line, every word, with heart.

The grove ignited.

Light burst from the ground like an eruption of life itself—roots spiraling up, vines unfurling with purpose. They didn’t just wrap Garrick.

They recognized him.

And they wept.

The vines coiled tighter, not with rage—but with mourning. The spirits of the forest knew him once. Knew what he could’ve been. What he had chosen to throw away.

“You did this to yourself,” Delilah said, rising to her feet. Her voice rose over the wind, the light, the wailing song of the forest breaking its silence. “You chose destruction. We chose each other.”

Rollo, bruised and bloodied, still held Garrick down.

“You could’ve come home,” he rasped, sweat and magic dripping from his brow. “You could’ve been something.”

Garrick gave a bitter, broken laugh. “Home? Home died when they cast me out. And you? You’ll lose her. Just wait. Tie your soul to hers and when it shatters?—”

“It won’t,” Rollo growled. “Because this time, I protect it. Not from fear. But from faith. ”

Delilah stepped beside him, her palm pressing over Rollo’s heart.

“I chose this,” she said softly, but clearly. “I chose you. ”

The ritual surged.

The bowl cracked once. Then again. A jagged fissure split its side, and light poured out like molten dawn.

The grove howled.

The vines went taut.

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

“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. “ We did.”

The grove sighed again.

No longer heavy with corruption.

But full. Whole. Alive.

The forest had been healed.

And so had they.