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THORN

I t begins in the roots.

Not with pain.

With absence .

The kind of stillness that doesn’t wait for silence—it is silence. The kind that fills a space where something sacred used to live.

The bond is unraveling.

The threads between me and the ward tree stretch thinner every hour. What once felt like a pulse beneath my ribs is now a flicker—dim, uneven, fading like the last coals in a forgotten hearth.

I press both hands into the base of the tree, kneeling in the hollow like I’m praying.

But nothing answers.

The light along the bark—those runes carved generations ago—barely glows anymore. The Grove’s once-thriving hum, its ancient breath, its soft-spoken knowing… it’s slipping.

And I can’t stop it.

Even now, surrounded by centuries of magic, I can feel the rot.

It isn’t in the wood.

It’s in me .

I failed them .

Because I let myself want.

Because I let myself pause .

I should have stood when the inspector first stepped near the boundary line. I should have revealed myself the moment the Grove first dimmed. But I waited—stuck between a man’s heart and a sentinel’s orders—and now the cost is coming due.

If the ward tree dies, the Grove dies.

And with it, me.

I whisper to the dirt, “You held longer than I deserved.”

There’s no reply. No ripple in the moss. No curl of vine reaching for my fingers.

I’m alone.

More alone than I’ve ever been.

And I can’t tell if the pain in my chest is grief, or the beginning of the end.

Night falls heavy.

The moon spills silver through the canopy, soft as breath. The Grove holds its silence like mourning cloth.

I stand in the glade where she used to sit, her sketches spread like offerings to something she barely understood but still loved. The earth remembers her footsteps. The moss still curves where her knees pressed into it. But the warmth she brought—it’s fading with every hour I keep myself hidden.

I breathe in the memory of her.

Then I speak.

“I know you came looking for me.”

My voice is low, rough, but steady. The Grove doesn’t stir—but it listens. It always has.

“I watched you kneel beside the ward stone. I felt you call me. But I couldn’t come.”

The words catch in my throat. I swallow hard.

“I wasn’t made for this, Clara. Not for wanting. Not for feeling. I was shaped to guard, to stay. To die when the tree dies.”

The moon catches the edges of the sacred tree, its failing glow flickering like a heartbeat too tired to continue.

“You were a light in the dark,” I whisper. “A bloom in old soil.”

I rest my hand against the bark one last time.

“But I can’t live in your light.”

A breath.

A silence.

Then I step back, deeper into shadow.

Because if the Grove must fall, let it be with me in it.

And not her.

I don’t know if she hears me.

But I feel her tears hit the soil moments later.

I watch from the shadows as she stumbles into the glade, clutching something small to her chest—leather-bound, frayed at the edges.

Her father’s seed journal.

She drops to her knees beside the dying rootline, sobbing, the sound quiet but endless.

Like something breaking that doesn’t know how to stop.

She doesn’t call out for me.

Not this time.

She just holds that journal like it’s the last piece of anything that ever made sense, pages fluttering in the moonlight. Her shoulders quake. Her breath catches and stutters, and I swear I feel it in the bark beneath my feet.

I want to go to her.

To hold her. To stay .

But I don’t.

Because staying would destroy her in ways she doesn’t see yet.

So I do the one thing I’ve ever been good at.

I disappear into the shadow.

And I leave her there, in moonlight and memory.

Alone.

I should’ve left the glade.

Faded into the roots. Let her mourn. Let her move on.

But I don’t.

Instead, I stay at the edge of the Grove, veiled in the oldest wards I know, watching her.

She’s back the next morning. Eyes red. Hands shaking. But there’s no hesitation in her steps.

She spreads the journal open across her lap, lips moving as she reads her father’s notes—cross-referencing old seed combinations, flipping between pages like she’s decoding the sacred tongue.

Then she pulls out a satchel. Herbs. Runestones. Charms.

She’s working .

For the Grove.

For me .

The vines nearest her still don’t respond—not fully. But they lean. They listen. And she speaks to them like they might still believe.

Like I might still hear.

And watching her there, mud on her knees, hair tangled, notebook pages pinned down by river stones—I realize something hard and sharp and aching:

She hasn’t given up.

I feel something move deep in the soil, something I haven’t felt in a long time.

A whisper.

A question .

Maybe… I haven’t lost her yet.