Page 283 of Cursed Evermore

The Soul Weaver had beenweavingsouls—the ones at the camp. I wanted to find out for whom before I ended him.

“Guys, stop. We’re here,” Bastian said with the raise of his hand. He came closer and pointed ahead through the thicket of trees. “It’s through there.”

“Let’s go.”

We moved forward. Once we got through the trees, the sight that greeted us in the harsh moonlight stopped us cold.

Rising from the forest floor was a massive tree unlike anything in nature. Its trunk was easily twenty feet wide, twisted and gnarled into an almost humanoid shape. The bark was a sickly pale color, almost flesh-like, and the deep grooves carved across its surface resembled the lines of an ancient face frozen in eternal anguish.

Roots thick as a torso writhed above ground, creating natural archways and chambers, and at the base of the trunk, a dark opening yawned like a mouth, pulsing with an otherworldly green light.

"What in the fucking hells is this?" I muttered, taking in the grotesque sight.

“I think you answered your own question,” Alaric scoffed. “The hells.”

Bastian tucked the map away, his expression turning grim as he felt the air. "You're not going to like this, Wolfe."

"What now?" I couldn’t hide the frustration in my tone.

"The lair exists on a spatial realm that disconnects from magic. The tree is a gateway. Once we cross the threshold"—he gestured toward the pulsing entrance—"we can't use our magical powers inside.”

Shit. This was all we needed now. More problems.

I stared at him, hoping he was going to elaborate with a solution, but all Bastian did was shake his head.

“No magic and no powers, so no portaling, no phasing, no conjuring, no Deathwalker abilities. We'll be facing a trickster necromancer with nothing but our blades and wits.”

“Yes.” Bastian bit the inside of his lip. “And the disconnection from magic may cover a good amount of the area. I can’t tell where it ends.”

The revelation pissed me off, but it also stoked the fire burning inside my chest. I adjusted the grip on my sword and stepped toward the horrific tree.

"Then so be it. This is the kind of shit we train for." My voice was steel. "Let's get this motherfucker."

We approached the monstrous tree with our weapons drawn, ready for anything that attacked from the shadows.

The grass receded, falling away into the dark, then our footsteps became muffled by the thick carpet of bone-white fungi that sprouted from the rotting earth. It stank worse than anything I’d ever smelled.

The closer we got, the more unnatural details emerged.

"Do you see that?" Bastian whispered, pointing to the writhing roots.

I followed his gaze, and my stomach turned. Tangled within the massive root system were remnants of clothing. A torn cloak here, a leather boot there, all perfectly preserved as if their owners had simply vanished from within them. The roots seemed to pulse with a faint luminescence, like veins carrying corrupted blood through some vast, sleeping beast.

Gods, I already knew we were in for one hell of a mission.

We reached the tree’s entrance, and the twisted branches moved without wind, creaking and groaning like arthritic joints. Hanging from the gnarled limbs were what looked like cocoons made of spider silk, each one roughly human-sized and swaying gently in the still air.

The pulsing green light from the mouth-like entrance grew brighter as we neared, casting our faces in sickly hues that made us look like corpses. A different smell hit us then. That nightmarish sweet decay from the camp mixed with something metallic and wrong, like copper pennies left to rust in a grave.

"Ready?" I rasped, though my voice sounded hollow even to my own ears.

Bastian and Alaric nodded, and together, we stepped through the threshold of the Soul Weaver's domain.

The pulsing green light lit our way, turning into the amber glow of fire although there were no torches I could see. A few steps further, the tree bark turned into the stone walls of a cave, where strange runes were carved from top to bottom.

Then came rows of distorted skeletons, twisted and knotted into macabre patterns on either side of the walls. Some appeared fresh, as if they'd been pressed into the surface moments ago, while others were barely recognizable impressions of human features.

This cave was a tomb. A tomb hungry for more bodies.