Chapter 8
Elora
The air near the base of Nyt’morah was heavy enough to taste—sap, moss, smoke from the torches fixed along the outer roots. The ground was a tangle of living wood, every surface slick with the humidity of the Wilds.
Elora stood behind a ring of raised roots that formed a near-perfect circle in the soil.
They weren’t large, but they pulsed faintly with gold light, each line leading back toward the massive trunk rising in front of her.
The bark glowed from within, veins of luminescence climbing into the darkness above where the nightgliders perched, watching.
High in the branches, their silhouettes shifted, wings flashing faint color in the torchlight. Farther up, villagers lined the rope bridges that connected the canopy dwellings, their faces barely visible but their presence unmistakable. Hundreds of eyes.
Elora’s stomach turned.
The ground under her feet was warm, alive, but it gave her no comfort. Her bare toes pressed into a thin layer of mud where the roots met the earth. She could feel the pulse beneath it, faint but constant. Or maybe it was only her pulse, too loud in her ears.
Kaela stood on one side of the circle, calm and straight-backed, the torchlight catching the faint metallic paint on her arms. Viliam was opposite her, unmoving except for the slow rise of his chest. Behind them, the Nightglider Elder waited, her golden eyes unreadable.
She told herself it didn’t matter. If this killed her, it killed her.
The thought should have meant something.
It didn’t.
The wind shifted, carrying the murmur of wings overhead. The villagers on the bridges fell silent. Even the insects seemed to still.
The root circle brightened, light running along the ridges in thin lines until the pattern beneath her feet glowed like a sigil. It looked wrong. Ancient. Beyond her understanding.
Viliam’s voice broke the silence, quiet but carrying. “Come, Elor’ah.”
Elora moved because not moving would draw more eyes. The living wood was slick under her soles, sticky where the sap rose to the surface. She stopped at the center of the circle and waited, staring at the ground, not the people, not the towering trunk that breathed in front of her.
The hum began, low, like thunder trapped inside the earth.
She didn’t know if it was the tree, the wind, or her own heartbeat trying to keep up. All she knew was that the sound left no space for thought.
Elora’s world twisted into a nightmare realm as the roots of Nyt’morah coiled around her like serpents, curling over her toes.
Elora jerked her foot back, but a loop of living wood caught her ankle.
Another root locked around her shin with a wet squelch.
She made a strangled noise, a single yelp, not even a word.
She tried to step sideways, lost her balance, and had to steady herself against the nearest root.
Its surface pulsed, the glow beneath her skin blooming in time with her heartbeat.
She could feel it, inside, now, not just around her.
The heat, the pressure of movement, like being digested.
She pulled her foot again, harder. The root tightened, the bite of pressure sharp enough to make her wince.
More roots slid across the ground, rising in slow spirals around her calves, sticky sap streaking her shins.
The heat in the circle intensified, pulsing in time with the hum.
The sound pressed harder the longer she stood there, vibrating through her bones until thinking became difficult.
Her mind crowded with instinctive protests—wrong, too tight, let go—but her lips refused to move. Her throat flexed, and no sound came out.
“Let the tree find you,” Kaela whispered. “Do not fight the joining.”
It was easy for her to say. Any other time Elora had been restrained, she received more scars on her body and mind.
Viliam crossed to stand behind her with a bowl in his hand.
The liquid inside it glowed faintly green-gold, thicker than water, and the smell of it filled the air, sweet, sharp, and cloying, like honey left too long in the heat.
He spoke softly, words she didn’t understand, but they didn’t feel meant for her. They were meant for the tree.
A slick pressure moved along her back, and she flinched. Viliam was smearing something on her, creating markings with the liquid. The first stroke was cold. Then it burned. Elora’s breath hitched. The pain was sharp enough to steal sound, but she refused to move.
Viliam’s fingers moved down her spine, across her shoulder blades, tracing the raised lines of scars Thorn carved into her. The sap sank into her skin as though it had been waiting for a way in. It stung deep, like the wounds were being reopened.
Elora focused on breathing. One breath, then another.
If she stopped, the air might not come back.
When Viliam was done with her back, he moved to stand in front of her.
She could see the tension in his jaw as he looked down at her.
She couldn’t help but remember that first time they shared an understanding of each other.
In Thorn’s lab, after he carved in her back, dress nearly falling off of her, and allowing Viliam to approach her.
She feared he would be like all the others, take what he wanted, but he hadn’t, he fixed her dress, restoring her modesty.
Now it was the opposite, but she didn’t fear his scrutiny or intentions.
He dipped his fingers in the bowl again, using his thumb to trace her ribs. The contact somehow burned more, despite her not having any scars there. Speaking in Al’teran, the words vibrated through her as he drew a final line, starting at her heart, traveling down between her breasts to her navel.
The roots around the circle brightened. Sap welled up through the cracks in the soil, glinting gold. The hum grew louder.
Elora didn’t understand what was happening. The sound was inside her bones now, vibrating through her jaw, behind her eyes. It felt like the earth was breathing under her.
Her scars began to glow. The light crept across her back, following Viliam’s markings. It was faint at first, then stronger, spreading up her neck, along her arms, curling around her sides. The air shifted, hot and cold all at once, the scent of sap and smoke thick enough to taste.
Elora’s knees shook. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from making a sound.
Viliam stepped away, his voice low again, uttering another string of words Elora couldn’t follow. The sound of them rolled out like a prayer, swallowed by the rustle of wings high in the branches.
Elora looked up.
The base of Nyt’morah towered before her, the glow of its veins stretching into darkness. The bark pulsed once—slow, heavy—and a crack of light ran down its center.
She didn’t understand what that meant.
She only knew that everything in the jungle had gone still.
Light burst from the wood beneath Elora’s feet, crawling up her legs in jagged lines. It felt like a thousand needles driving under her skin at once, slicing her open from the inside. She gasped. No air. The heat wasn’t warmth anymore; it was an invasion.
The sap burned through her veins, thick and molten, pulsing with each throb of her heart. It wanted her blood—wanted in.
Her spine arched backward. Every muscle locked. The light crawling through her body met the pattern carved by Thorn and flared white-hot, hissing as if metal met acid.
A sound tore from her throat, raw and feral.
The tendrils of Nyt’morah’s energy tightened around her arms and throat, pulling her upright. The pressure was unbearable; every nerve screamed. It felt like the tree was trying to strip the truth out of her flesh, tear away everything Thorn had made until only the lie was left to burn.
And then the light stuttered.
Her veins flickered from gold to black. The warmth turned cold, the fire collapsing inward. The sap that had glowed around her darkened, the color of bruised metal. She felt it withdraw, recoiling, as if the Tree itself had drawn a breath and found her taste foul.
Her body seized. Her heart skipped.
The light in her veins began to slip away—not snuffed out, but pulled.
It drained slowly at first, retreating from her fingertips, her throat, sliding down into the roots beneath her feet. The warmth followed it, leaving her hollow and trembling.
Elora tried to breathe. The air came thin, sharp. Something deep beneath her—Nyt’morah—was drawing harder now, a tide dragging everything living in her down into the soil.
Her body arched once, violent, as if her heart was being tugged from the inside out.
She dropped to her knees. The circle of roots shifted, rising with the movement, coiling around her thighs until the bark pressed deep into her skin.
The ground was hot where it touched her, sap seeping up like sweat.
The pull didn’t stop. It wasn’t just the false magic the tree was taking now—it was her.
The warmth that made her pulse, the spark that told her she was alive, was draining out of her veins and into the earth.
Elora’s hands hit the soil. Her palms sank into the sap-slick roots. They pulsed once and then caught her wrists.
She fell forward, half-conscious, her cheek pressing against the living wood. The roots climbed higher, curling around her back, her arms, pinning her in a slow embrace. It was not mercy. It was the grip of something claiming what it had decided did not belong.
Something unworthy.
The word came in Thorn’s voice.
Unworthy of choice.
Of names.
Of wanting.
Every lesson he’d carved into her echoed now, each one a confirmation of what the tree seemed to believe.
The world dissolved into smears of light and shadow, edges bleeding into nothingness. The glow in her veins thinned to threads, each pulse weaker than the last. The humming in her ears wasn’t the jungle anymore—it was her own blood losing its rhythm.