They came for the children just before dawn — shapes rising from the earth like nightmares made of tangled roots and leftover human scraps.
Rafi and the braid girl had trailed Mere's swarm into the forest's throat, deeper than they'd dared since burning the hush to ash. But here, in the hush's hidden veins, nothing had truly died.
They crouched behind a fallen oak, bark soft with rot and old hush runes. Beyond, the children danced in a ring around Mere. His crown pulsed with wet sap, dribbling down his cheeks like a promise.
"Tonight," he preached, voice cracked but fierce, "we shed our old skins. Tonight the hush wears us and we wear it. No hunger, no fear, no parents, no grave."
The children clapped their hands, scraping bark masks over their faces — crude shapes of fox, stag, wolf, all carved from dead trunks. Mere lifted his arms like a crooked prophet.
And the ground moved.
First, a ripple beneath the pine needles. Then the roots cracked the surface: thick, pale things, glistening with black sap. At their tips, not bark but skin. Human skin, wrapped tight as bandages. Fingers twitched. Eyes opened in bark hollows.
The braid girl grabbed Rafi's wrist, nails biting. "New guardians," she hissed. "Like the old ones we burned — only now they're part hush, part us."
Rafi's chest squeezed. He remembered the guardians before: tall, faceless things that dragged runaways back to the hush's maw. He'd cut one down once, and for days afterward, he dreamed it screaming through splintered teeth.
Mere stepped forward, planting his bare foot on the nearest root-flesh thing. It quivered, and more sprouted behind it — an army of bone and bark and skin.
"Follow," he commanded. The children obeyed, masks hiding wide eyes that glowed faintly green.
Rafi turned to the braid girl. Her breath shivered in the cold. "If they reach the core, it'll grow stronger than before."
She nodded. "It'll eat every village edge to edge. It'll remember who burned it and feed us to itself last."
He felt the old rage return — the kind the hush loved, the kind that made its voice clearer. He shoved it down. Not this time. Not its way.
"Then we cut its legs before it stands," he said. "We break the roots and drag those kids out before they forget they're still human."
The braid girl smirked, though tears clung to her lashes. "Always the hero, Rafi."
He ignored her and stepped out of hiding. His voice cracked the dawn like a blade:
"MERE! YOU WANT TO BE KING? FACE ME FIRST!"
Every mask turned. Every root twitched. The hush listened. It always did.
And under the hush's whisper, he heard the braid girl laugh, low and wild. Together they would tear this skin and bark down to dirt and memory.