He stopped near the edge of his usual space, still separated from me by several yards of mossy ground. He lifted one enormous, gnarled, yet strangely precise hand, and gestured outward, encompassing the entire cavern. The luminous plants, the waterfall, the high, unseen ceiling. Then, he touched his ownchest, a slow, deliberate tap over the area where a heart might be.
A sound rumbled deep within him, low and resonant, not quite words, but shaped sounds that vibrated in my bones. “Guardian.”
The single word echoed, imbued with a weight that seemed to settle on my shoulders. He held my gaze, then his hand moved again, fingers pressing firmly against his chest before pointing down to the living earth at his feet. The gesture was clear.This bond. This charge.
Another rumble, deeper this time, laced with the grinding of stone. “The Vow.”
The words were different from the others. Not a role, but a name. A force. It hung in the air, ancient and absolute, and I felt a shiver trace its path down my spine. My breath caught.The Vow?Before I could even fully form the question, he repeated his first gesture, his hand sweeping across the sanctuary. “Protect.”
Guardian. The Vow. Protect. The concepts linked together, an unbreakable chain of purpose. He gestured again, this time tracing slow circles in the air with one finger, wider and wider, as if indicating the passage of immense time. He made a long, low hum that seemed to carry the resonance of ages, of countless cycles of light and dark within these walls. He looked directly at me, and though his face was alien, unreadable in any human sense, I felt a profound weariness. An isolation so vast it was almost incomprehensible. He was bound here. Tied to this place not just by duty, but by a power that had a name. The Vow.
He didn’t saywhyhe protected it or from what. He didn’t explain the flashes of power I’d glimpsed or the nature of the unseen threat outside. And crucially, he offered nothing aboutme, about why I was here, tangled in his ancient duty. The core mystery remained locked behind his silence.
Still, it was something. More than I’d had before. Guardian. Protector. Bound by time. The concepts swirled in my mind, overwhelming and yet strangely clarifying. The contradictions I’d sketched onto the bark—the monstrous form, the protective actions—began to resolve into a different kind of picture. Not a monster, perhaps, but a sentinel. My rational mind screamed denial, but the evidence was all around me and standing right before me.
As I wrestled with this staggering new reality, my gaze drifted past Kauri toward a cluster of broad-leafed, fan-like plants near the cavern wall. Their leaves usually glowed with a soft, internal emerald light. But now, something was wrong. A patch on the nearest plant looked dull, listless. The vibrant green was fading to a sickly yellow-brown, the edges curling inward as if starved for water, though moisture beaded everywhere. It wasn’t a natural decay but looked unnervingly rapid, diseased.
Before I could fully process the wrongness of it, Kauri reacted. A low growl, sharper than the sounds he’d made earlier, vibrated from his chest. He moved toward the wilting patch with a speed that belied his bulk, kneeling beside the afflicted plant. His concern was palpable, radiating outward like heat. He reached out, his gnarled hand hovering just above the dying leaves. A faint shimmer, like heat haze, emanated from his palm, bathing the plant in a subtle energy. I saw the strain in his posture, the tension in the set of his shoulders. He was trying to heal it by pouring his energy into the fading life.
The sight sent a different kind of chill through me. This place, this sanctuary that was my prison, wasn’t immutable. It was vulnerable. Something was actively harming it, even here in its depths. The external threat wasn’t just outside, it was creeping in. And Kauri, the ancient guardian, was fighting it.
Watching him hunched over the sickly plant, pouring his essence into its fading form, a strange feeling stirred within me,pushing past the fear and resentment. Empathy. For this ancient being, locked in an endless duty, now facing a decay he seemed barely able to hold at bay. The sheer weight of his existence pressed down on me.
After a long moment, he withdrew his hand, the shimmer fading. The leaves remained dull, perhaps marginally less curled, but clearly not restored. He rose slowly, the movement lacking its usual fluid power. For an instant, he rested a hand against the cavern wall, his massive shoulders slumping almost imperceptibly. A deep sound escaped him, not a growl or a word, but something akin to a sigh, a sound freighted with the weariness of millennia. Then, just as quickly, he straightened, the impassive guardian locking back into place. But I had seen it. A flicker of vulnerability, a glimpse of the immense burden he carried alone. He was more than my captor, more than a guardian. He was a prisoner, too, bound to this place and its fate. And its fate, I realized with dawning horror, was now inextricably linked with my own.
THE UNSEEN WALLS
Sienna
My ankle was finally solid beneath me. Days of careful movement, of favoring it, had paid off. The dull ache was gone, replaced by restless energy that thrummed under my skin. The sanctuary, once a terrifying unknown, now felt like a cage whose bars were becoming intolerably visible. Kauri’s revelation—Guardian, Protector, Bound—hadn’t lessened my desire to leave, it had only sharpened the questions he’d left unanswered. Whyme?
The sickly patches on the glowing flora were spreading. I watched Kauri tend to them daily, his massive form hunched in concentration, a low hum vibrating from him as he poured energy into the dying leaves. He seemed more distracted, his attention divided between his vigil over me and the creeping blight weakening his domain. It was a calculated risk, a desperate gamble, but the sight of his absorption gave me the sliver of opportunity I craved.
While he kneeled by a wilting cluster near the waterfall, his back partially turned, I moved. Not toward the entrance I vaguely remembered from my arrival, that felt too obvious, too guarded. Instead, I slipped into the deeper shadows along thefar wall, following a path dimly lit by clusters of violet fungi clinging to the rock. My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat echoing the soft crunch of my boots on the mossy floor. I used the rock formations, the towering ferns, the thick roots snaking across the ground as cover, glancing back constantly. Kauri remained focused on the blight, unaware.
Adrenaline surged, sharpening my senses. The air felt cool and damp against my skin. The trickle of water, the faint chittering of unseen insects, the soft pulse of the ambient light, sounds and sights that had become the backdrop of my existence now seemed like markers on a path to freedom. I pushed deeper, moving with a determined speed I hadn’t dared use before. This part of the sanctuary felt older, the air heavier, the shadows thicker. Surely, there had to be another way out, a fissure, a tunnel Kauri didn’t watch as closely.
I walked for what felt like a long time, the terrain subtly sloping upward. Ahead, the blue and violet glow seemed less concentrated, the shadows deeper. There was a different quality to the air, a faint, almost imperceptible draft, smelling of damp earth and something else, something like open space. Hope surged, raw and fierce. I scrambled over a ridge of rock, pushing aside heavy, wet fronds.
And stopped dead.
There was just solid rock, glistening with moisture, curving back toward the main cavern area I’d just left. But that wasn’t what halted me. Directly in front of me, the air shimmered. Like heat rising from pavement, but vertical, silent, and cool to the eye. It formed an invisible, wavering line stretching from floor to ceiling, conforming to the curve of the rock. An edge.
Hesitantly, driven by a desperate need to confirm, I reached out. My fingers met resistance, firm and unyielding, yet smooth and without substance. It felt like pressing against perfectly solid glass, but there was nothing there. Panic clawed at my throat. Ipushed harder, leaning my weight into it. The barrier held fast, repelling me with an absolute, indifferent force. It wasn’t rock, it waspower. A wall I couldn’t see or break.
A deep rumble echoed from behind me.
I spun around, my heart leaping into my throat. Kauri stood at the top of the rocky ridge I’d just scrambled over, his massive silhouette blocking the faint light. He wasn’t winded, wasn’t even breathing hard. He had simply appeared. His stillness was terrifying, radiating an intensity that dwarfed the barrier’s passive resistance.
I saw the familiar frustration tighten the lines around his unreadable eyes, but underneath it, there was a flicker of something raw, something possessive in the way his gaze swept over me, trapped at the edge of his domain. And beneath even that, a tremor of fear. Notofme, but perhapsforme, or for what my attempt signified.
“Why?” The word tore from my throat, ragged with desperation and anger. I slammed my fist against the invisible wall, the impact jarring my arm but doing nothing to the barrier. “Why can’t I leave? Whatisthis?”
He took deliberate strides toward me, stopping barely an arm’s length away, the invisible wall the only thing separating us. He looked from my fist on the barrier to my face, his expression tight with conflict.
He raised a hand, gesturing back toward the heart of the sanctuary, then toward the shimmering air where my hand rested. “Place… holds you now.” The words were rough, guttural, forced out.
“Holds me? What are you talking about?” I cried, frustration boiling over. “You brought me here! You’re the one holding me!”
