Chapter 7
Elora
The wind clawed at her face.
It wasn’t the kind of wind she’d felt atop The Institute’s tallest towers; it was alive.
Roaring like Thorn’s shadow beast. Her fingers ached where they clung to the ridge of black fur beneath her.
She felt nothing toward the beast, or Thorn in this moment.
The only thing that mattered was how high up she was.
She might not care if she died, but imaging falling from this height—
She held on tighter.
Far to the south, pale mountains loomed in the haze, their jagged crowns dusted with white. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that they marked the border between Al’tera and the Empire. Just the thought sent memories hurdling at her: Thorn’s experiments, Fane, traveling to Kilfaire, the arena—
She focused on her surroundings. It was the only way to make her mind stop. The whole week she spent at Sol’morah—the giant tree with the Elders—memories tried to burn themselves behind her eyelids, so she kept her eyes open. There was a lot to see. She was thankful for that.
Below stretched a jungle, an ocean of green broken only by rivers.
Each beat of Tarrik’s wings carried a sound like a hundred fluttering ribbons; the feathers along his pinions gleamed faintly with the colors of an aurora—violet, blue, green, and the faintest thread of gold where the light caught them just so.
Viliam glided close beside them, his form sleek and dark against the light. Kaela flew ahead, leading the flight, while Ilyn brought up the rear. Kaela introduced her to Ilyn and Tarrik maybe four times before her mind agreed to file the information as ‘maybe important’.
Around and below them, other nightgliders moved through the air—smaller, unshifted creatures with emerald or sapphire eyes that caught flashes of light as they turned. True beasts of the jungle, not Thrask, but their wings shimmered with the same aurora hue.
When the air thickened with heat and scent—sap, rain, and something floral and sweet—they began to descend.
The jungle opened in slow spirals beneath them, revealing a clearing vast enough to hold a city.
And at its center rose a tree. It wasn’t as tall as Sol’morah, yet its canopy spread wide enough to swallow the sky.
The bark glowed faintly with threads of teal and gold, veins pulsing like the light that traveled through alchemical lanterns.
Nyt’morah.
Another piece of the world that had been a mystery to her until now. The Empire only ever spoke of Al’tera with fear. Savagery. Corruption.
Did the Empire know about these trees?
No.
If they did, they would have stripped this place bare.
Tarrik banked and landed on a platform of interwoven roots that encircled the great tree. The impact jolted through her legs. She slid from his back, gripping the root’s ridged surface until the world steadied.
Elora turned in a slow circle.
The village surrounded Nyt’morah. Homes were built into the lower trunks of the surrounding trees. Bridges of braided vines connected one dwelling to the next, glowing with the same teal luminescence that ran through the tree’s veins.
People moved across them with unhurried grace, some bare-footed, some adorned with painted feathers or jewelry carved from bone and crystal. Everywhere was sound: running water, the drone of insects, the laughter of children playing below.
But Nyt’morah was silent. She wasn’t sure what to expect. Kaela said their connection to the ancient trees hummed through them when near it, but for her, nothing. Just the same hollow nothingness that followed her across the mountains.
Kaela spoke with several villagers in Al’teran. The cadence was fast, clipped and melodic. A few words Elora recognized from the lessons Kaela insisted she partake in. She attended. But didn’t let the information settle. It was useless to her.
“Korynathakl,” Kaela said, gesturing around them. “Home of the Nightgliders.”
Elora didn’t try to say it.
Kaela led her down a winding bridge of braided roots, the soft glow beneath their feet pulsing in rhythm with their steps. Viliam followed closely behind, stepping between her and anyone who stared too long.
The people of Korynathakl paused as they passed—some mid-conversation, others mid-task—eyes drawn to the pale stranger walking on their land.
Children peeked from behind woven baskets, whispering.
A group of hunters, their bodies marked with black paint and glimmering oil, stood silently as she approached, their expressions carved from suspicion.
Elora kept her gaze low. It wasn’t necessary for her to grasp the language. Their looks told enough: Empire. Thief. Corruption.
And they were right.
But the hostility didn’t wound her. It felt deserved.
The bridge opened onto a vast platform overlooking the jungle floor.
From here she could see how the village spiraled around Nyt’morah, each level built into the great tree’s outer roots and limbs.
Smoke from cooking fires drifted upward, carrying the scent of sweet fruit and roasting meat.
Laughter echoed from a distant terrace where dancers moved in circles, bodies painted in iridescent pigments that caught the light like liquid metal.
Music followed, a rhythm played on hollowed gourds and bone flutes, simple yet hypnotic.
She had to admit she liked the chaos of it all. It was freedom in a way the Empire could never be. She saw no overseers, no patrols, no barked commands. The people worked, argued, celebrated—freely, as if the idea of oppression had never been born here.
Kaela’s voice broke through her thoughts. “They will look,” she said softly, switching to the common tongue. “Many lost family to your Empire’s hands. To them, you wear its mark.”
“Mhmm.”
Kaela studied her, perhaps expecting defensiveness, but Elora only looked toward the massive trunk of Nyt’morah, glowing faintly behind them. “They have every right to hate me,” she added.
Viliam’s voice rumbled behind her. “Hate blinds as much as devotion. Both must yield to truth.”
Kaela gave a small huff of agreement, though her eyes softened on Elora. “Truth will take time. For now, they will watch.”
They continued through the market tier where stalls of woven reed and polished wood displayed goods that shimmered with faint magic—baskets of glowing fruit, blades of vine-fiber, cloth dyed in hues she didn’t have names for.
A woman brushed pigment across another’s face in patterns that resembled constellations.
Elora found herself wondering what Tehvan would have thought of this place.
It was a dangerous thought.
He would have marveled at the sanctity of harmony or the beauty, of order within chaos.
He’d study the trees. Ask questions without clear answers.
He would have looked at her with that quiet pride of his.
A lump formed in her throat.
He wasn’t here to see any of it.
It all felt… irrelevant.
Kaela guided her to a structure built around a cluster of roots that arched like ribs. “Here,” she said. “Rest. The night will be loud, but you will grow used to it.”
Elora stepped inside. The dwelling was open to the air, the walls alive with the faint bioluminescent veins of the root itself.
A hammock of soft, silken fiber hung between supports.
Bowls of fruit and water sat waiting near the entrance.
Even the air smelled different—cleaner somehow, despite the density of life pressing against it.
Viliam lingered at the threshold. “Tomorrow, you go before her,” he said, meaning Nyt’morah. “If you show worth, balance may heal.” The words were harsh, having only recently started learning her language. He was picking it up faster than she was picking up Al’teran. Then again, he actually cared.
“And if she doesn’t?” Elora asked.
“Balance find another way.”
She nodded once. There was no fear in her chest, not really. The thought of being unmade or accepted felt the same—distant, inevitable. Either way, something would end.
When they were gone, she sank onto the edge of the hammock and looked out through the open wall.
The canopy shimmered with the glow of nightgliders sweeping between the branches, their wings casting ribbons of color against the dark.
Voices drifted up from below, soft songs, laughter, the rustle of leaves stirred by wind.
It was a world so different from everything she’d known that it might as well have belonged to another life entirely.
But her nightmares always reminded her exactly who she belonged to.
By the time Kaela came for her, the village was already awake.
Drums echoed faintly from somewhere in the canopy.
Kaela led her down through the spiraling walkways, where the air grew damp and heavy with the scent of earth and sap.
Viliam waited near the base of the great trunk, his gaze turned toward the roots that spread outward like veins through the soil.
That was when Elora saw it.
The rot.
It crept along the underside of Nyt’morah’s bark, a blackened fissure the size of a farmer’s wagon, that pulsed faintly like a wound still bleeding.
The glow of the surrounding roots dimmed as it spread, their veins of light paling to a sickly gray.
The air near it smelled wrong—sharp, metallic, faintly bitter, like the scent of Thorn’s laboratories. She nearly gagged.
Viliam knelt beside the wound, his hand hovering over the darkened bark. “It worse,” he said quietly. “Spreads each day. The land feels it.”
Kaela elaborated. “The power within you is not anchored to the Mother’s song. It draws through Viliam instead, as a vine takes water through another’s roots. You live, but she withers.”
Viliam’s voice broke the silence. “Come. We must prepare.”
They led her toward a small glade at the foot of the tree, ringed with pools of still water that reflected the canopy like green glass.
The air shimmered with pollen and light.
Several Thrask were gathered there—Nightgliders in human form, their golden eyes luminous in the half-shadow.
Their bodies were painted with markings of ash and dye, their clothing little more than woven leaves and strips of pelt adorned with teeth and feathers.
Elora froze at the sight of the woven mats laid out in the center of the glade. Bowls of sap and pigment stood waiting beside them. And nothing else.
Kaela turned to her. “Remove your garments.”
Elora blinked. “What?”
No… No, no, no. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
“For the ritual,” Kaela said, patient but firm. “You must stand before Nyt’morah as you are. No concealment. No barrier. The Mother’s daughter and her guardians must see every truth of your being.”
Elora’s throat constricted. “I can’t—”
Viliam’s gaze softened. “Elor’ah,” he said quietly, “Not punishment. Thrask’nur.” He paused thinking how to translate it. “Born again.”
Her hands trembled against the ties of her garment. “You want me to stand there… with nothing?”
Kaela approached, setting down a folded length of fabric woven from dark, silken fiber. “In the beginning,” she said, “even we must stand unmade. It is how the Mother judges what can be renewed. You cannot be clothed in the Empire’s touch when you ask to be claimed by this land.”
Elora looked down at the clothes she wore, they were the same clothes Rell gave her back in Ravenpoint.
Black leggings though now they were covered in dirt and holes.
A gray tunic that even she admitted was beyond salvaging and reeked of sweat and some questionable brews.
She looked around at the other Thrask, each adorned in a skirt or loincloth of leaves, the subtle bioluminescent glow glinting against their skin.
It dawned on her, if she was going to be able to shift into a full nightglider, did that mean she was going to have to strip every time she wanted to transform?
Exposed.
Every time.
Her heart raced.
Kaela must have seen the realization on her face. “The only material that lives between forms is what is born of the sacred,” she explained. “Leaves of Nyt’morah, or anything of Nightglider essence—feather, bone, pelt.”
“Why can’t I wear something like that then?”
Kaela smiled faintly, though there was sadness in it.
“Because you are not yet bound to her. You must not hide any part of what you are. Every scar, every mark—she must see them all. The ritual is not only a joining, but a birth. We enter the world bare, and so must you, if you wish to be made whole.”
Elora turned away from them. She could feel the weight of the others’ eyes, not cruel, not prying, but expectant. Here, modesty wasn’t shame; it was simply irrelevant. Yet her body still remembered the hands that had bound it, the eyes that had looked without seeing her as human.
Kaela rested a hand on her shoulder. Elora flinched. “No one here will dishonor you. You are not a thing to be looked at, Elora. You are a soul to be witnessed.”
With shaking hands, she began to untie the fabric at her waist. The air felt heavier as each layer fell away, warm and damp against her skin. When the last piece slipped free, she folded her arms across her chest, clutching her brown tattered cloak in her trembling hands.
Kaela stepped forward, placing a hand gently over her shoulder. “You are not wrong for fearing this,” she said softly. “But remember, the Mother does not ask for perfection. Only truth.”
Truth. Is that what Tehvan would think? Would he have pulled her away, feeling her fear through his ring? Would he even allow her to do this if she agreed?
The questions were irrelevant. Tehvan wasn’t here to protect her or guide her. She was alone in this.
“Come. It is time.”
Elora drew a deep breath, tasting sap and soil in the air. She hesitantly dropped the cloak and stepped forward, bare beneath the watching leaves, toward the roots of Nyt’morah—toward whatever she would become.