Chapter 43
Amara
Iwake to a world that breathes with me.
The first thing I feel is everything.
The wind is no longer wind, it is breath, shared between leaf and sky, between beast and soil.
I feel it flow through me, a gentle inhale that fills my lungs and roots itself deep into the marrow of the earth.
The pulse of the land thrums beneath my skin, soft and unending.
The heartbeat of the trees. The slow hum of stone.
Even the smallest creature, a worm turning in the dark, sings its note into the symphony of life, and I hear it all.
No. I am it all.
The air is alive with threads of gold and green, shimmering like silk.
I can see them, the tiny fibres that bind everything together, the luminous veins of existence itself.
They weave through every blade of grass, every feather, every drop of dew, connecting all living things in a tapestry so intricate it takes my breath.
When I blink, I see the magic beneath the world’s skin. Raw, beautiful, endless.
Every root remembers the sun. Every stone remembers the rain.
And I remember them.
I am no longer what I was. Not princess, not priestess, not even Awakened. I am something more. The boundary between myself and the living world is gone.
Those who do not belong here scatter from the clearing, slipping into the trees.
In the tall grass, Mirael lifts her gaze to me, tears caught behind her lashes. She has her hands on Zyphoro, the healing rune around her neck glowing faintly, her magic working, but mine works faster.
I kneel beside them and brush my thumb across Zyphoro’s brow.
Sweat beads warm against my skin. The moment I touch her, emerald light blooms, soft at first, then surging.
My magic pours into her, mending what’s broken, sealing what has been torn.
Bones knit. Organs repair. Breath returns steady and sure.
Zyphoro exhales, color flooding her cheeks again. She pushes herself onto her elbows, wonder flickering across her face.
“Amara,” she breathes. “Thank the gods you are alive.”
“Not the gods,” I say quietly, rising to my feet as the wind stirs around us. “The earth.”
Mirael reaches for me, and our hands lock. “Welcome back, sister,” she says softly.
My gaze wanders over her scars, and she turns away slightly. I draw her chin back.
“Mirael,” I breathe. “Where are the others? Lira? Saren?”
Her silence falls heavy, and the cold rushes in, icy and cruel, as the truth seeps into my bones.
Mirael blinks rapidly, trying to hold back the tears.
“Shh,” I whisper, brushing her cheek. My veins flare with light, green threads pulsing beneath my skin. The glow spills from my palms and into her, washing over her scars like sunlight melting frost.
Mirael gasps, her eyes wide as the warmth spreads. Her skin softens, the harsh lines fading, vanishing until only smooth, unbroken flesh remains. She touches her face with trembling fingers, her voice breaking.
“Thank you, sister.”
I smile, nod, then take Daed’s hand and we walk toward the village, every blade of grass seeming to lean towards me, every flower bowing, every branch reaching, as it would for the sun.
Daed’s hand is warm in mine, and I trace the jagged scar on his palm, the one the Archdruid carved the night we were married.
His scar will never fade, but mine is gone.
Yet I remember its sting. I remember every pain I have ever known.
It is my curse now to carry them all. The ache of every wound, the echo of every death.
The tremor of every creature’s last breath lives somewhere inside me.
It should crush me, this weight, but it doesn’t.
It humbles me. It reminds me of the cost of what I am.
A small price for what I have become.
For what I can do.
For the lives I can mend and now, it seems, the ones I can return.
I felt the rabbit’s death while I was still beneath the earth.
I wasn’t dead. Not truly. But I wasn’t alive either.
I walked the narrow path between. A place of stillness and shadow and soft, endless light.
I don’t know if the Souls were testing me, weighing my worth or if the power to rise was always mine, sleeping quietly within, waiting for the moment I would finally listen.
But I remember that sound.
The soft thump of the rabbit’s feet on the soil.
The sharp whistle of the arrow slicing the air.
The crack of its tiny bones, the puncture through flesh and lung and heart.
Its final breath, a thread snapping in the fabric of life and in that instant, even while buried beneath the roots of the world, I knew.
I could hear the silence where life had stopped and I knew how to make it move again.
So I woke.
But not into my beloved Grove as I remembered it. Not into peace or light or song.
I woke into war.
The scent of blood filled the air before I even opened my eyes. I felt the pain of every fallen beast, every dying man, every fading Fae. Hatred, sharp as iron, cutting through the song of the world I had just begun to hear.
I rose into a symphony of suffering.
When I was beneath the earth, there had been quiet. A stillness so pure it filled me with peace. No hunger. No hate. No grief. Only light.
I wanted to rest. I needed to rest. But I could not.
Something always pulled me back. His voice, maybe. His tears. Or perhaps it was simply my nature, this curse of always returning when I should fade.
I should have been grateful to breathe again, to see the stars. But I wasn’t.
I wanted to close my eyes and sink back into that silence, where I could no longer feel the weight of a thousand living hearts beating inside me.
Here, everything hurts. The earth hums with pain.
The sky shudders with loss. Even the wind carries the sorrow of the dead, brushing cold fingers against my skin.
Daed walks beside me now, his thumb tracing circles over my hand as though grounding me, but even his touch feels distant, muffled beneath the roar of life.
I want to tell him how the world sounds to me now.
How it screams. How I can hear the roots mourning the trees cut from them, the rivers weeping for every drop of blood spilled in their waters.
I want to tell him that though I am alive, I do not feel living.
I was somewhere… better. Not home, but peace.
And now I am here again, among men and monsters, where the soil is slick with blood and the stars turn away their faces.
The balance is broken and I reborn, remade, unwilling, am the one who must fix it.
Even if I no longer know how to live in this world that I was never meant to return to.
When we reach the vine wall, the whispers of my people strike like thunder.
Every breath, every heartbeat, every tremor of emotion surges through me too loud.
I hear their joy, their disbelief, their fear.
I feel it, every heartbeat like a note in the song of the living, and it drowns me.
My gaze drifts over them, their faces a thousand stories etched in skin and in each I sense a lifetime of love and pain.
As we pass through, I lift my hand. A flick of my wrist, and the earth obeys.
Fresh vines burst from the soil, climbing high, twining thick and strong as they rebuild the shattered wall.
Leaves unfurl, blossoms bloom, life mending what death had torn apart.
The wall stands again, vibrant and alive, stronger than before.
Gasps ripple through the gathered crowd, half awe, half unease.
Among the Tenders, the Fae stand apart, not just in height, but in the aura that clings to them.
Their light is darker, more dangerous, flickering like smoke in sunlight.
Solena watches me, wide-eyed and trembling, her hands twisted together.
Behind her, Orios’s heavy hand steadies her shoulder, though his own eyes betray a flicker of uncertainty.
All of them watch me, searching.
And I wonder what they see.
Is it me they recognize? Or something reborn, remade? Am I better now… or something far worse?
“Amara. Jewel.”
Erania’s voice cuts through the quiet. She surges forward, tears streaking her cheeks, and throws her arms around me.
That single act breaks the spell. The dam bursts.
The Tenders rush forward as one, falling to their knees, hands grasping for me, for proof that I am real.
Fingers tangle in my hair, brush the hem of my robe, trembling as if afraid I might vanish again.
“Jewel,” they chant, voices trembling. “She has awoken!”
Awoken. Awakened. Two words, two meanings, yet in this moment, they are one.
Solena breaks through the crowd, her sobs shattering what little composure she has left. I reach for her, our fingers tangling as she presses herself close, clinging to me.
“Amara,” she whispers, her voice shaking. “You’re alive. You’re really alive.”
“Praise the Souls,” Erania cries. “Praise the Souls, for they have returned our Jewel!”
“Praise the Souls!”
The chant builds. Hands crowd closer, reverent but suffocating. I can barely breathe beneath their devotion. Barely feel anything but their suffering, even those who try to hide it.
“There is so much pain here.” The weight ripples through me.
Erania’s voice cuts through the murmurs. “You cannot heal it all, Amara.”
I lift my chin, ousting the weariness from my limbs. “Yes, I can.”
Time slips away. I do not count the minutes, only the pain I take.
I move from Tender to Tender, from child to elder, pressing my palms to wounds both seen and unseen.
Bones knit beneath my touch. Torn flesh seals.
Fever fades. Each soul I mend leaves a weight within me, a shard of their hurt lodged deep beneath my ribs.
All the while, the Fae work on the other side of the village.