The chamber still pulsed with faint veins of light as Aerin struggled to steady her breathing. The key remained embedded in the pedestal, glowing like a captured fragment of dawn. Her vision blurred at the edges—too many images still flickering through her mind, overlapping, breaking, reforming. But one truth rose above all the others:
She had been here before.
Not in dreams.Not in visions.In her childhood.In her earliest years—years she had been made to forget.
The whispers curled around her like vines, half comforting, half suffocating.
Aerin… remember.
She pressed both hands to the earth as the memories sharpened.
She was small—five, maybe six—her hand warm inside her mother's as they walked through the forest. She remembered humming. Her mother's voice. The lullaby. The same one the willow had sung.
"You must never tell anyone," her mother had whispered as they approached the willow. "Not even the elders. Not even your father. This is between you and the forest. You are chosen, Aerin."
Aerin remembered nodding, though she hadn't understood.
Then: the key being placed into her tiny hand.
Then: the first opening of the root-stair.
Then: the light.
And then—her mother's voice, trembling and broken:
"Forgive me. One day, you will understand why I had to protect you from your own memories."
Aerin gasped, clutching her head as the vision shattered. The chamber dimmed around her. Sweat chilled her skin.
Her mother hadn't stumbled into danger.She hadn't wandered into the forest and vanished.She had come here willingly—to hide something.Maybe to hide Aerin.
But from what?
Aerin lifted her gaze toward the pedestal. The key's glow rippled outward like waves touching the chamber walls. The earth began to shift—roots pulling aside, revealing another opening behind the pedestal. A narrow passage sloped downward, further into the earth.
She took a breath.
"I'm not a child anymore," she whispered. "If this is my past… I want to see all of it."
She stood, wiping dirt from her hands, and stepped toward the opening.
But something else stirred before she could enter.
A low rumble vibrated through the chamber. Dust fell from the ceiling. The roots tightened around the walls like constricting muscles.
Then—footsteps.
Not from Kael. Not human.
Aerin froze.
The sound came from the passage ahead. Slow. Heavy. Dragging.
The torchlights along the walls flickered. Something big moved in the dark—its presence sinking into the air like a weight.
The forest whispered urgently:
Run.
But Aerin stayed rooted in place.
She had come too far to flee now. Her heartbeat thundered painfully in her chest, but her feet did not obey fear's command. She stepped closer to the tunnel's mouth.
"Who's there?" she called, though her voice trembled.
A breath answered her—raspy, ancient, scraping like stone dragged over stone.
A shape emerged from the darkness.
At first, it looked like twisted branches bound together by shadows, but as it stepped closer, Aerin recognized the remnants of a form she had only seen in storybooks—stories meant to frighten, not to warn.
A guardian.A forest sentinel.One of the ancient beings said to protect the balance between the living and the forgotten.
But this one had decayed.
Its body was cracked, moss-covered, limbs splitting and reforming like broken wood desperate to stay alive. Its hollow eyes glowed with pale green fire.
Aerin stumbled backward. "I… I don't want to fight you."
The sentinel's jaw creaked open, and a voice—not a natural one, but one carved from bark and pain—echoed through the chamber:
"The forgotten… must not awaken."
The ground trembled. The roots recoiled as if fearing the creature.
Aerin swallowed. "I don't want to unlock anything dangerous. But I saw my mother here. She—"
"The key was not meant for this age."
"But it was given to me!" she protested.
The sentinel's head tilted sharply, the fire in its eyes flickering.
"Chosen… but not ready. The memories consume what is unprepared."
Aerin hesitated. "Is that why she took them from me? My mother? To protect me?"
The sentinel's form twitched violently, the bark around its ribs splitting to reveal soft, glowing sap beneath.
"Your mother defied the forest's decree. She bonded you to its rootline. Blood and memory intertwined. A pact forbidden. A pact punished."
Aerin's breath vanished.
"Punished? What do you mean? What happened to her?"
The sentinel shook, its entire form rejecting the question. Roots flailed wildly from its wrists like whips.
Aerin took a fearful step back—
—but the creature collapsed before it could strike.
Its body cracked down the center, glowing sap spilling across the floor. It struggled to rise but couldn't. It had been alive far too long. Too long in the dark.
Aerin approached slowly, cautiously.
The sentinel's voice fell to a whisper:
"Child of the Willow… you must not go deeper. What sleeps below… should never wake."
Aerin leaned closer.
"What is it?" she whispered. "What am I supposed to unlock?"
The creature's hollow eyes dimmed.
With its last breath, it choked out:
"Your true name."
Then the sentinel dissolved into dust, crumbling into the chamber floor.
Aerin stood very still as the last fleck of glowing sap faded.
Her true name?What could that mean?And why would the forest guard it so fiercely?
She turned toward the tunnel again. The roots had relaxed, though the air trembled faintly, as if bracing for what her next step would unleash.
Aerin touched the wall of the tunnel.
Images surged again—her mother's hand, the key, a lullaby, a face she almost recognized but could not place.
Her throat tightened.
"Whatever you're hiding from me… I'll find it," she whispered.
And with fear and determination weaving inside her like twin threads, she stepped deeper into the earth.
The passage sealed behind her.
And the forest above shivered—afraid and awake.