The cosmos sewed together and began to bleed; the silver melted into scarlet. The sky split open and from it came the rushing tide. He was swept up, pressed against the shore, where he stepped back into her spectral form once more. With her eyes, he watched the horizon and recognition stirred painfully within.
They were coming.
Her feet sank into the soil. Roots sprang from her veins. She twisted, stretched, and became radiant bark, her branches unfurling to embrace sky and storm alike. Fog flowed forth in thick waves, draping the land in an impenetrable veil. The creatures broke ashore and gazed out at a silent world hidden beneath the mist. Then, hungrily, they retreated to the sea, returning to the storm that had birthed them.
Yet, triumph stirred not his heart—only sorrow and sacrifice. The last thing he remembered was the white tree branded against the churning sky.
But his breath had grown ragged. His body trembled violently—each heartbeat a struggle against aching bone and tearing flesh. He felt himself unraveling as his earthen tethers bound him tighter. The Naém was fading. No, not it.
He.
The images splintered, spinning chaotically. Sensation dripped out of him as his blood fed the womb. And as the dark consumed him, he heard a final sound…
The cracking of stone and a gasp of desperation.
Chapter fifty-two
Earthbreaker
Skyre’s eyes were fixed on the ancient tree. Its haunting groans reminded him, with each passing moment, that he stood in the presence of something unfathomable. Beneath its willowy branches, he was no king. No being of might or majesty, but a feeble thing. If he were stronger, maybe he could have stopped the druid from going.
He should have.
The tree pulsed; its womb filled with tangling vines. They grew upwards, concealing the druid’s pale form. Skyre’s gut twisted. It was the same feeling he’d had watching Niall careen across the grove—the moment before something inevitable.
And irreversible.
Every second the druid remained within deepened his dread. Minutes. Hours. Days. He might have lived a month within an instant—each one dragging, like a broken limb across a battlefield.
The druids seemed unmoved, and that only bothered him more.
“How much longer must we wait?” he asked.
“Have patience, Maister Vaich.”
But it was all wrong. His body braced against an unseen storm, as if his flesh knew what his mind had not yet accepted.
Until he heard it.
Soft. Distant. Torturous.
A small, but undeniable wail.
The knotted branches tightened like nooses and there came another cry all too achingly familiar.
He rushed forwards.
“You must leave it be,” said the Fíor.
“You expect me to do nothing?” Skyre hissed.
“That is the way.”
“It’s crushing him!”
“If he is to be consumed, it is the land’s right to take of him.”
“Fuck its rights,” Skyre growled, looking for an opening. With a snarl, he gripped the branches. The wood was rough and strong, but he yanked, refusing to let up. All his days of training, all the spars lost and won, every ounce of power that had been beaten into him since birth—he let it out.
