Page 134 of Cycle Keeper’s Shadow

You still see only decay. The words slid from the wound, deeper now, resonating in her chest. But you mistake me. I am not only rot and death. I am release.

It wasn’t real. She should get up, but the black sap eased the trembling in her hands.

Let go, Little Weaver. Sap crept higher along her arms, cool as river water and heavy as sleep. I have no quarrel with you. I simply ask you to listen.

She should’ve pulled away, but the trembling inside her calmed—a peace she hadn’t experienced in days. Weeks. Since Tavrin. Since long before. The bark groaned, splitting further. A glow seeped through the cracks—pale green swallowed in black.

Renewal wrapped in decay. Life within death.

A Cycle broken—not by cruelty, but by necessity.

You could mend what was torn. You could restore balance if you simply stop fighting me. The voice was so kind. So calm. Like an endless breath. You carry so much. Pain. Guilt. Questions with no answers. Set them down. Let them sink into me. You were never meant to carry them alone.

She drew a shallow breath, body growing heavy with the promise of it. The ache of holding it all—Tavrin’s death, Orzen’s wounds, Thistlehold on fire, her father’s hand growing cold beneath her own. The Cycle, fraying at its edges—slipping away as easily as sand from an open palm.

It was safe, leaving it all in someone else’s hands.

But then she remembered Garin falling. Jessa screaming. Orzen pinned in thorns—bleeding, fighting, burning to get to her. What the Rotfather offered was an escape for her, but not for them. She couldn’t rest alone while the world broke around her.

The world tightened around her. The roots pressed into her palms and the air thickened with the sweet stench of rotting flora.

It’s not only rest, Little Faun. It is power. Power against those who threaten you. Against those who hurt the ones you love. You will never fail them again. And they will never leave you. You can make them stay. No more loss. No more abandonment. No more choice.

For one terrible moment, she longed for it. Never having to fear men like Theordrin, like the Tower’s Fist—men who used power to harm and steal. Never hurting the ones she loved. Never experiencing the pain of loss ever again. But it was too much like Auren. Survival without life, without choice, was not living.

And then, faint as wind through brittle leaves, she heard gentle voices call her name. Voices she loved. Ones she’d missed.

Tavrin’s. Her father’s. Two threads braided together, cutting clean across the rot’s pull.

“There’s always another way.” Her father’s words steadied her like a hand pressed between her shoulders.

“They need you, simply as you are now.” Tavrin’s voice filled the hollow places she thought had been carved out permanently.

“Father is waiting.” Silas’s voice ripped through the vision, jagged as a knife’s edge. “You belong to him. Soon, you will see.”

Even here, she had her belt. The carved squirrel. She wrapped her fingers around the little wooden shape—sturdy and grounding. Home.

“No.” Her voice broke the silence. “I don’t belong here.”

She pushed herself to her hooves, and the filth sloughed off her like shedding a second skin. The world shattered around her—fracturing into pieces of glass.

Her eyes fluttered open. The clearing in the dark. Silas, chest carved open, bark beneath where bone should be. Her knees buckled, and arms caught her. She sagged into them, felt their strength for a single breath.

Orzen’s voice, sincere, desperate, and terrified.

Then the darkness swallowed her whole, like death itself. Even there she could not rest. Time stretched. Warped. Curled in on itself like something alive and reshaped into something worse.

Tavrin stood before her. But not the bright, grinning man who’d been her brother. The nightmare one. The one that haunted the back of her eyes every time she blinked. His skin split like bark peeling itself open. Mushrooms pushed through the cracks—pale stalks blooming from his arms, his chest. His mouth opened.

It wasn’t Tavrin’s voice that came out. It was the hiss from the Bough—ancient and endless. The Rotfather calling her still.

I am inevitable. I will be free.

She tried to run. To fight. To wake.

If you do not join me, this is what you choose.

Her body wouldn’t answer. She screamed. Shouted until her voice was raw. But the vision wouldn’t end.