Chapter 95: Seeds of the Wild
Mira's feet bled by the third dawn.
She had walked until her legs gave out and then crawled until the vines guided her. Her son—still unnamed—never cried. He simply watched. Even when the wolves circled their camp under the pale moon, teeth glinting like broken ivory, the child stared calmly as black tendrils burst from the earth.
The wolves snarled and lunged—but never reached them.
The tendrils rose like spears, coiling mid-air before lashing forward. One struck a wolf square in the eye. Another choked the breath from a second before it could even yelp. The remaining predators fled, whimpering into the forest's shadows. Mira had watched it all, paralyzed. The tendrils retracted once the threat was gone, vanishing into the earth as though nothing had happened.
She didn't sleep that night.
She simply stared into the dark, her son nestled against her chest, whispering soft coos as if amused. The vines were silent for hours—until just before dawn, when they re-emerged. This time, they did not attack. They rose gently around the cave entrance where she had collapsed, weaving into a living curtain. Mira's hand trembled as she reached toward one.
It touched her wrist.
Not to harm—but to anchor.
By the fifth week, she stopped flinching.
By the third month, she whispered thanks to them.
---
Years melted like mist in the sun.
He was walking by his first year. Speaking by the second.
He had no name still. Mira couldn't give him one—not when every time she tried, the wind silenced her. Not when she saw how the vines responded to him like a mother to her child. Sometimes he whispered to them. Sometimes they whispered back in a language Mira couldn't hear but always felt.
At night, the tendrils surrounded their cave entrance like silent sentinels. Whenever danger lurked—a prowling bear, a wandering spirit—the black roots would ripple outward in warning. No creature ever breached their boundary.
Each night, he giggled when the tendrils slithered across the cave ceiling, curling like decorations just to amuse him.
Thirteen years passed.
---
Far from the heart of the forest, Elara and Ariella had changed.
Time had carved maturity into their faces and battles into their eyes. They were no longer the young girls who once followed visions—they were now the leaders of vision itself, protectors of the balance between what remained of the village and the world's shifting magic.
The incident with Mira's child had never left them.
The village had tried to forget. The fields had regrown. The corrupted forest had been pushed back by barriers and runes etched by the Queens' command. But every so often, the wind carried a scent of spores. Every so often, someone would dream of tendrils.
And always, Elara and Ariella would glance at each other in silent dread.
They had hoped time would bury the prophecy.
But in the woods, beneath a twisted elder tree, that hope withered.
---
A boy stood alone.
His body was lean, his frame deceptively youthful, but his stance bore the gravity of something ancient. Smoke drifted around his head—not from fire, but from the roots of the tree, which exhaled a thick, slow mist.
The tendrils were everywhere.
They coiled around his feet, wound up tree trunks, hung like waiting claws from the branches above. Yet none of them moved unless he willed it.
He tilted his head slightly, as though listening.
Then spoke.
"Yes... I know."
His voice was soft, smooth. But wrong. Too controlled for a thirteen-year-old. Too calm. It held no trace of innocence, only resolve.
He reached out and touched the tree bark. The wood pulsed beneath his fingers, as if greeting him.
His gaze darkened.
"It's time."
The tendrils reacted instantly.
They shivered with anticipation, the trees groaning around them like an army awakening from long sleep. A pulse spread through the forest floor, quiet but deep, like a drumbeat beneath the earth.
The boy—smiled faintly.
Not with joy.
But with purpose.
A murderous aura rolled off him like smoke from smoldering embers. His eyes—those strange, too-aware eyes—were fixed on a direction beyond the forest, past the trees and rivers, toward the village that had once cast him out.
But then, a flicker of emotion crossed his face.
A memory.
---
It had been a fine evening.
He was only a year and a few months old. The forest had been silent, cool with the breath of dusk. He remembered sitting beside his mother, Mira, who was trembling—her skin pale, her breath shallow. She was cold. So very cold.
He didn't know what was wrong.
He had tried to touch her cheek, to curl close for warmth, but her arms never wrapped around him again.
That night, she died.
And he had been too young to understand.
"Mama?" he had called softly, his voice tiny and confused. "Mama...?"
There was no answer.
"Mama... wake up," he had whimpered.
But she didn't.
His hunger roared inside him, but she didn't move. He knelt beside her lifeless body, small fists pounding lightly on her arm. "Mama... I'm hungry... Mama!"
Still, no response.
He cried. And cried. Until his voice gave out. Until the forest darkened and his sobs weakened into hiccups. Until he fell asleep curled beside her, his tiny body shaking.
When he woke, something had changed.
He was no longer on the hard forest floor. The tendrils had formed a bed—soft, pulsing, alive—beneath him. Above, thick smoke coiled protectively in the air, forming a shroud of warmth. He never saw it, but he felt it watching him.
That was how they raised him.
The tendrils. And the smoke.
He would not understand the truth until he turned twelve. On the eve of his birthday, the smoke showed him everything. Every detail. Every cry. Every breath Mira had taken before the end. The bed. The cold. The stillness.
He spent the last year preparing.
For this day.
His thirteenth birthday.
By the time he returned to the present, his eyes stung. Tears had somehow flooded his face. He didn't wipe them away.
He simply turned back to the tree.
And whispered, "I'm ready."
---
By nightfall, the forest roared in silence.
Roots twisted beneath the soil. Vines whispered along ancient paths. The pulse that had lain dormant since the boy's birth now throbbed with urgency.
At the village edge, where magic once held the corrupted forest at bay, silver spores drifted in like ghostly snow.
The protective runes flickered.
Somewhere, in the distance, a horned beast stirred from its slumber and turned toward the village, its eyes pulsing with the same glow as the mark once seen on a newborn's shoulder.
The vessel had returned.
But now he walked on his own.