Chapter 10: Dead Tree
The forest opened up like a pathway.
Riven felt it the moment they crossed a low ridge and stepped into a valley beyond. The soil turned to ash-mud, softer beneath the foot, and the trees thinned into skeletal things, branches long and bare, swaying without the wind.
The sky overhead wasn't dark anymore, but it wasn't bright either—just a kind of a colorless stretch of nothing.
The air here tasted of old smoke. Veyla slowed beside him, her hand resting near the hilt of her blade, her eyes glancing around the forest, flicking to the trees like something was hiding in it.
"Something's not sitting right," she muttered, feeling uneasy.
Riven didn't need her to say it. The pressure in his chest was back again, the one that followed him constantly since the Site of Grace.
"I can feel it as well," he responded, his hand resting on his dagger.
Still, something pulled at him, like a tug beneath his ribs—the same as before. Not Grace, not even close to it. But it called out to him. He didn't question it.
"Be careful," she insisted, following him slowly from behind.
They walked until they reached the center of the grove, and there it was... another tree.
It stood alone in the hollow, half-sunken into the ash-choked earth. Its trunk was bone-pale, cracked, and coiled with dry, golden veins like lightning frozen mid-strike.