The Sundered Road

Rain-spattered lamplight guttered and died behind them. The Testor’s warnings smoldered in each mind as the ancient doors of the Astryn Library rolled closed with a sonorous clang. Out beyond the granite threshold, drizzles hung in the lightless dawn and wind pulled at their cloaks, insistently southeast. The city was waking but did not matter—the road north, to the forbidden places, was etched deeper than any city’s concerns could reach.

Talin took point, his silhouette already rain-silvered and indistinct. For all his haunted wariness, he wore the strangely tranquil bearing of a man returned to the only certainty left him: the motion of the hunt, the choice of the road. A battered green cloak snapped behind him; his fingers, stained with pitch and earth, tested the old paths almost by touch. When he halted, every eye was his. When he nodded on, every footfall followed, reluctant and determined in turn.

Narsa grumbled softly, hands never leaving her staff. Mira walked a half-step behind Eiran, gaze wary, scanning shadows. Eiran held the star stone close against his chest, unsure whether it was promise or burden tonight. Fear pressed at their steps, not the sharp horror of battle but a long, low ache—uncertainty layered over the wound of all they had failed to save. They carried with them fire and prophecy, and the knowledge that the world itself watched, impatient for their next misstep.

The road was called Sundered for good reason. Once, it had knitted the southern reach to the high valleys—now, its flagstones lurched up like teeth, heaved by roots and the patient iron of old seasons. The forest pressed close, wild and breathing: branches gnarled into cauterized claws, lichen strung with dead men’s beards. Where the old mile-markers stood, they were too worn to read, except for deep-carved sigils—warding runes of house and hermit, half effaced, some pulsing with baleful blue glow as the group passed.

Morning never quite arrived; the gloom was whole. Birds sang rarely and always out of sight. Every slope and hollow throbbed with a hush so intense that even the steady slap of Mira’s boots—confident, clear—felt like a trespass. All conversation became taut as bowstring.

Talin led them under a fallen cedar, through wet ferns, always avoiding the wider track. At one break in the thicket, he stopped, waited for each to step close. His eyes, normally unreadable, were wide now and pierced with memory.

“This road is not only broken by time,” he murmured, voice barely above the rain. “It was torn, in the old wars, by magic that preferred nothingness to surrender. Where we walk, the dead remember bitterness. The living are not always welcome.”

Narsa shivered, pushing a tangle of hair from her face. “I sense it—old power in the roots. Nothing natural.”

Mira frowned. “So you’ve walked this way before?”

Talin shook his head. “Yes—and no. Maps change here. Step careless, and you walk in circles or never leave.”

At noon, the sky remained bruised and low. Hunger gnawed at the edges; Mira handed out crusts and dried beef, swift and silent. Eiran tried to savor the salt and chew, but felt as if the food simply dissolved against the catch in his throat. The wind shifted; somewhere deep within the woods, a high, keening note peeled out—chill and unnatural, like string scraped across frozen glass.

Narsa stiffened. “Something… not man, not beast, follows.”

Talin’s hand hovered above his blade. “They are spirits,” he said, “of the old wood, bound to keep foreign blood from the heart. They test all who trespass.”

Clouds wreathed the sun, and the forest finally opened—revealing a ruined arch over the road, draped in choking ivy and spindrift banners. Here the air pulsed, thick with magic so wild it trembled in Eiran’s teeth. Figures flickered at the edge of vision: root-white limbs, silver eyeholes peering from bark, each motion the echo of a grief too primal to name. They advanced not directly, but as wind through grass—present everywhere, nowhere solid.

Mira drew her sword. “We stand or we’re swept away. Your road, Talin?”

Talin spread his hands, voice touched with raw humility. “No steel can turn them; nor will any plea. We must show purpose or offer something fit for the crossing.”

The shades moved nearer—faces half-carved, dripping with lightless tears. Eiran felt the star stone sear hot against his ribs. Narsa stepped forward, defiance and fear warring. “I can try—something to drive them back. Spirits heed only power; I can call fire—”

Talin’s eyes flashed warning. “Not all wards work as we hope.”

But Narsa was already chanting, strange syllables fuming from her tongue. Pale fire gathered in her open palm, sparking across the sodden leaves—flaring blue, then indigo, then fading into something hungry and cold. The spirits recoiled briefly—then, with a shudder, pressed closer. Their wails sharpened, a storm of loss and rage, lashing not just at Narsa but at all mortal trespassers.

Eiran lunged, grabbing Narsa’s wrist. “Stop! You’re making it worse!”

She jerked from his grasp, stubborn. “Do you want them to take us?”

Mira slid between them, voice calm but unforgiving. “Power here must answer for itself. We need to listen—not command.”

The air stiffened. The largest shade, taller than any tree, leaned down—the sockets in its bark-face burning with sea-dark light. Its voice split the wind: “Offer. Remember. Trade the light you carry or be lost with us.”

A silence as deep as burial. Even Talin looked stricken.

Eiran stepped forward. “What do you want?”

The spirit did not smile, but the feeling of ancient, watchful patience thickened. “A memory. Of love or loss—what is dear. Pass that gate, and bear the road’s weight.”

Mira hissed, but Eiran nodded. He pressed his fist to his heart. “Show me.”

The shade flowed forward, smokelike. In that moment Eiran saw, with absolute clarity, Tanelle’s flour-dusted smile at dawn, the voice of the Elder gentling a frightened boy, the way snow fell on Vael’s eaves the last night before it all was dust. Pain ripped through him, sudden and beautiful—then, in a blink, was gone. He staggered, new hollowness in its wake, but the tree-shades withdrew, mournful but appeased.

Narsa’s jaw was clenched. “You let them take—part of you. Was it worth—?”

Mira supported Eiran, her own eyes bright with unshed tears. “This is what the world will be, if the star is not mended: each of us giving pieces, just to see tomorrow.”

Talin alone met the forest with something like respect. “That is the price. Not all can pay, nor should one pay alone.”

They moved on. As afternoon ebbed, the air finally lightened. The woods, sentient and fatal as they were, allowed the party through a splintered fence of fallen oaks, and dusk found them beside a black stream. Here, exhaustion crashed through them like tide: Narsa slumped, cradling her staff; Mira busied herself tending old wounds with gentler hands.

When the fire was kindled, Talin spoke into the hush. “I lost my warband here, years ago. We fought—believed valor could outpace old curses. I survived only because I ran when I should have stayed. It is not magic that tears asunder, always, but pride and the will to refuse our own limits.”

Mira looked sidelong. “Redemption isn’t won by flagellation, Talin. We’re here—you, with us—because your path still turns.”

He nodded. In the small, flickering circle, truths became easier to share. Narsa admitted the thrill—and fear—of her wild power. Mira spoke quietly of her home, of all she had lost beneath banners and betrayal.

Eiran found no easy words. A new ache had replaced older ones, subtler but deeper. “I gave them my memory of warmth. But I remember why—because it matters what we do now. The rest we can rebuild, if the star is made whole.”

Night fell, stretched taut as a wound. They kept watch by turns, uncertain what more the wilds might demand. But the spirits did not return.

As pale frost dusted the world, Mira rested hand on Eiran’s shoulder. “Let’s not lose more than we must. Not to spirits, not to darkness, and not to one another.”

Talin’s eyes gleamed as he stood for the midnight watch. “On the morrow, we cross the true wild. Past the next rise, none but the desperate or the damned walk. But we will walk it.

And together, we may yet see the dawn.”