Chapter 4
Elle
“Camp,” Kaelren said, the word sharp as broken glass. “Now.”
We’d been walking for what felt like hours but was probably less—time moved weird here, stretching and compressing like it had its own agenda.
The Thornwood, as they called it, around us had gradually thinned, opening into a clearing where several structures that might generously be called tents were already set up.
They glowed faintly in the eternal twilight, made of something that definitely wasn’t canvas—more like spider silk woven with moonlight.
“Inside,” Kaelren ordered, grabbing my arm and steering me toward the largest tent. Not gently—his fingers pressed hard enough to bruise. “You need to be examined.”
“I’m fine—”
“You’re carrying marks that shouldn’t exist, you’ve been conscious for less than six hours in this realm, and you just summoned things from the ground to attack someone. You’re not fine.”
He shoved me through the tent flap, and I stumbled inside, catching myself against something solid. The interior shimmered with its own faint luminescence, casting everything in a pale blue glow that made me feel like I was underwater.
Five members of his crew filed in behind us.
I’d been introduced to them hours ago, but everything had been a blur of exhaustion and terror.
Now, forced to be still in the tent’s close quarters, my brain actually registered what I was looking at.
They all moved with the predatory grace of things that knew exactly how dangerous they were.
The insect one—Bryx, I remembered—tilted his head, compound eyes reflecting my face in a thousand tiny mirrors. When he smiled, it was too wide, showing too many teeth.
“Human,” he said, antennae twitching. “You smell like Earth. Like… what is that? Carbonated sugar water?”
“Dr Pepper,” I said automatically, then wondered why the hell I was discussing soft drinks with a bug person.
He laughed, a chittering sound that raised every hair on my arms. “Dr Pepper! I knew someone who loved that stuff. Said it tasted like carbonated prune juice but somehow good.”
“That’s… actually not a bad description.”
“I have my moments. Usually followed by much worse moments, but still.”
“Stop scaring her,” said another figure, and I had to look twice to make sure I was seeing correctly.
This one seemed to be made partially of mist, his edges constantly shifting between solid and vapor.
Patterns moved across his skin like living tattoos, and his eyes were the color of fog at dawn.
His voice was quiet, barely above a whisper.
The third was easier to look at—pale as winter moonlight, tall and willowy, with softly glowing runes traced along his arms. He moved with a healer’s careful grace, already pulling supplies from a pack that shouldn’t have fit through the tent opening.
When he looked at me, his eyes were kind despite being an unsettling shade of silver.
“You’re wounded,” he said.
The fourth made me sneeze. She was surrounded by a cloud of golden pollen that sparkled in the tent’s strange light, her face hidden behind a veil that seemed to be made of flower petals.
When she moved, it was with a deliberate sensuality that felt calculated, like she was always performing for an audience.
The fifth leaned against the tent wall, and I recognized her voice before her face—the one who’d muttered about me getting them killed. Sarnyx. She had thorns growing from her arms like they belonged there, and her eyes were the color of dried blood.
I looked down at myself, taking inventory of the damage I’d accumulated in just a few hours in this nightmare realm.
My jeans were torn in three places, my t-shirt was more holes than fabric, and I was pretty sure I had moss in my hair.
There were cuts I didn’t remember getting, bruises already turning purple-green, and my collarbone where the mark spread was still burning with that radiant fire.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“You’re not,” Kaelren said flatly. “Eltrien, check her wounds. Vashael, find her appropriate clothing. Nimor, scout the perimeter. Bryx, watch for Crown scouts. Sarnyx, sharpen your thorns—we may need them before dawn.”
“With pleasure,” Sarnyx said, and the way she looked at me made it clear whose flesh she’d prefer to test them on.
They all moved with the efficiency of people who’d worked together for years. The healer—Eltrien—approached me slowly, hands visible, like I was a spooked animal.
“May I?” he asked, gesturing to a cut on my arm I hadn’t noticed was bleeding.
I nodded, not trusting my voice. His touch was cool, clinical, but gentle. The runes on his arms glowed brighter, and I felt a tingling sensation where his fingers traced the wound. The pain faded, replaced by a weird itch as the skin began knitting itself back together.
“Healer,” I said, not really a question.
“Among other things.” He moved to the next wound with the same careful efficiency. “The marks on your collarbone—may I examine them?”
“Why?”
“Because they’re spreading faster than they should. And that concerns me.”
I glanced at Kaelren, who was conferring with the mist one—Nimor—in low tones. He caught my look and something flickered across his face. Not concern. Never concern. More like… calculation.
“Fine,” I said to Eltrien. “But if you try anything weird—”
“Define weird in a realm where normalcy doesn’t exist,” the one with the pollen—Vashael—said, pulling clothing from a pack that definitely violated several laws of physics with how much it held. “These should fit.”
She held up what looked like armor made of leaves and leather, with accompanying pants that seemed to be woven from spider silk and boots that might have been carved from bark.
“I’m not wearing tree cosplay,” I said.
“Cos… play?” she said, the unfamiliar word awkward in her mouth. ‘It’s not play. Your human clothing won’t survive another day here. The realm itself will eat through it.”
“The realm eats clothing?”
“The realm eats everything, eventually,” Bryx said cheerfully. “But it starts with the foreign stuff. Like you!”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“Wasn’t meant to be. Honesty is more useful than comfort here.”
Eltrien’s fingers paused on my collarbone, right where the mark was spreading. “Interesting,” he murmured.
“What’s interesting?” Kaelren was suddenly there, looming over Eltrien’s shoulder. His carved marks were pulsing with that silver-black light, reaching toward my golden ones like magnets.
“The pattern. It’s not following the usual progression.” Eltrien traced the air above my skin, not quite touching. “Look—here, where it branches. That’s not Root pattern. That’s something older.”
“Older than Root?” Nimor asked, his voice barely audible. “That’s not possible.”
“Many impossible things are proving possible lately,” Eltrien said, stepping back. “She needs rest. Real rest, not the half-unconscious stumbling she’s been doing.”
“I’m right here,” I said. “And I’m fine.”
“You’ve said that several times,” Kaelren observed. “You’ve been wrong every time.”
“Well, excuse me for not having a perfect grasp on my wellbeing in bizarro world.”
“Bizarro world?” Bryx perked up. “Is that what you call it? I like it!”
“We need to move at dawn,” Kaelren said, ignoring the enthusiasm. “The Crown’s scouts will have found our trail by now. We head to Vyn Hollow.”
“How far is that?” I asked.
“Three days on foot through terrain where everything wants to kill you,” Bryx said cheerfully. “Or half a day if we fly.”
“Fly on what exactly?’ I couldn’t quite picture what he meant..
“You’ll see in the morning,” Kaelren said. “Better you don’t spend all night imagining the worst.”
“That’s ominous.”
“That’s practical. Fear exhausts, and you need rest.”
My head was spinning. Whatever they used for flying, marks that shouldn’t exist, a realm that literally consumed foreign objects. And through it all, Kaelren watched me with those silver eyes, calculating, measuring, waiting for me to break.
“The clothing,” he said abruptly. “Change. We leave before dawn.”
“I’m not changing in front of—”
“We’ll step out,” Eltrien said gently. “But you need to change. Your current clothing is already beginning to degrade.”
I looked down. He was right. The edges of my jeans were fraying in patterns that looked deliberate, like something was eating them in artistic spirals. My shirt was developing holes that definitely hadn’t been there an hour ago.
“This place is literally eating my clothes?”
“The realm doesn’t like foreign material,” Nimor said quietly. “It’s trying to make you match.”
“Match what?”
“It,” Kaelren said. “Change, or you’ll be naked by morning. Your choice.”
He turned and left the tent, the others following. Except Peeble, who materialized on my shoulder.
“You should know,” the beetle said, “they’re all terrified of you.”
“They’re terrified? I’m the one surrounded by bug people and mist men and whatever Vashael is under all that pollen.”
“Exactly. You’re human, wearing marks that shouldn’t exist, bonded to their broken leader, and you haven’t gone insane yet. That terrifies them.”
“Bonded? What do you mean bonded?”
“Oh, didn’t I mention that part? The marks recognize each other. His corruption reaches for your Root magic like—well, like magnets, as you might say. You’re connected now, whether either of you likes it or not.
“Yet?”
“Everyone goes insane here eventually. It’s just a matter of degree.”
“Even you?”
“Oh, I went insane centuries ago. It’s quite liberating once you get used to it.”
I picked up the clothes Vashael had left. The leather was soft as butter, worked with patterns that seemed to shift when I wasn’t looking directly at them. The leaf armor was surprisingly light, each piece overlapping like scales. The boots looked like they’d been grown rather than made.
“This is insane,” I muttered, starting to change.
“Yes,” Peeble agreed. “But it’s insanely beautiful. That has to count for something.”
The clothes fit perfectly, like they’d been made for me. Or grew for me. I didn’t want to think too hard about it. The leaf armor adjusted itself as I moved, tightening where it needed support, loosening where I needed flexibility. The boots molded to my feet like second skin.
“How do I look?” I asked Peeble.
“Like you belong here. Which is either wonderful or terrible, depending on your perspective.”
“What’s your perspective?”
“That you were always meant to be here. The realm’s been waiting for you since before you were born.”
Before I could respond, Kaelren re-entered the tent. His eyes swept over me, and something flickered in their depths. Not approval. More like… recognition.
“Better,” he said simply.
“I look like a walking bush.”
“You look like Wynmire. That’s what matters.” He moved closer, and I caught that scent of pine and leather and danger. “Get some rest. Tomorrow, we fly to the Hollow. Try not to fall off.”
“What if I can’t sleep?”
“Then you’ll be tired and terrified tomorrow instead of just terrified.”
“Your bedside manner is terrible.”
“I’m not a healer. I’m a killer who happens to be keeping you alive.”
The distinction mattered to him, I could tell. He needed me to understand that he wasn’t kind, wasn’t good, wasn’t anything but practical.
“Your marks,” he said suddenly. “They’re spreading.”
I looked down. He was right. The vines had crept past my collarbone, starting to trace down my arm in delicate spirals.
“Is that bad?”
“I don’t know.” The admission seemed to cost him something. “Nothing about you follows the rules.”
“Maybe the rules are wrong.”
He looked at me then, really looked at me, and for a moment his guard dropped. I saw exhaustion, pain, and something else. Something that might have been hope if hope hadn’t been beaten out of him years ago.
“Maybe,” he said quietly. Then his walls slammed back up. “Rest. Tomorrow will be worse.”
“You really need to work on your motivational speeches.”
“I’m not trying to motivate you. I’m trying to prepare you.”
“For what?”
“For Wynmire. For the Hollow. For the truth about what you are.” He paused at the tent entrance. “The marks chose you for a reason. Tomorrow, we start finding out why.”
“And if I don’t like the answer?”
“Then you’ll join a very long list of people disappointed by destiny.”
He left, and I was alone with Peeble and the sound of the realm eating what was left of my human clothes.
Outside, I could hear the crew setting up watches—Bryx’s chittering laugh, Vashael humming a melody that made my teeth ache, Nimor’s occasional whispered observations, Eltrien’s gentle corrections, Sarnyx’s thorns scraping against something metallic.
They were a family, I realized. Broken and strange and dangerous, but family nonetheless. And I was the outsider who’d disrupted their dynamic, wearing marks their leader had carved into his own flesh trying to claim.
“They’ll warm up to you,” Peeble said, reading my thoughts. “Or they’ll try to kill you. Seventy-thirty odds in favor of warming up, though those aren’t great odds when your life is on the line.”
I lay down on the bedroll someone had left, probably Eltrien, since it smelled faintly of those healing herbs he carried.
The material was soft, woven from something that felt like clouds and smelled like rain.
Above me, the tent’s luminescent fabric pulsed gently, creating patterns that almost looked like constellations if I squinted.
“Peeble?”
“Yes?”
“Is Kaelren going to die?”
The beetle was quiet for a long moment. “We’re all going to die eventually.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I’m allowed to give.”
“Allowed by who?”
But Peeble had vanished, leaving me alone with my spreading marks and the sound of the crew preparing for threats I couldn’t imagine.
Tomorrow, I’d apparently fly on something terrifying through a realm that wanted to eat me, heading toward a place called the Hollow to find answers I probably didn’t want.
But tonight, I was just a woman in borrowed clothes that grew to fit me, in a fantasy tent, in a realm where nothing made sense except the certainty that tomorrow would be worse.
“I miss normal,” I said to no one.
Outside, something that wasn’t quite wind but wasn’t quite not-wind rustled through the camp, carrying the scent of flowers that shouldn’t exist and the promise of dangers I couldn’t yet imagine.
I closed my eyes and tried not to think about how the marks on my skin pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat, or how I could sense Kaelren’s presence even through the tent walls—a cold fury wrapped around pain that never stopped.
Tomorrow would definitely be worse.
But at least I wouldn’t be naked when it happened.