The path turned narrow. Trees leaned in, old and gnarled, as if eavesdropping on footsteps that were not meant to disturb them. The air was thicker here, the sun filtering through branches in broken glimmers that danced like spirits over the underbrush.
Frido stepped cautiously, his worn sandals pressing into moss and damp soil. Beside him, Teren's hand never strayed far from the hilt of his blade. Behind them, Mirea moved like a shadow — quiet, distant-eyed, and clutching the locket she had begun to wear more often now. Inside it, a sliver of her own painted memory: a younger Frido, grinning foolishly beside a stream.
None of them spoke. Not here.
This was the Lethwood — the "Forest That Watches." Its name had been whispered to them by the old stonekeeper of Fenndor, who pointed eastward with a finger missing two joints.
"They say the trees remember," he had warned. "The bark listens. The roots speak only in silence."
At first, Frido hadn't understood. But now, walking among trunks that seemed to twist subtly when unobserved, he understood too well. This place had not forgotten the blood spilled here, nor the promises once broken under its canopy.
They were not the first to walk this path.
"Look," Teren muttered, stopping.
A carving. Low on a tree, so old the moss had grown around it but not dared to cover it. Frido leaned close. A sword. A broken one. Below it, etched in some soldier's last moment of lucidity:
> "To walk east is to bury your name."
Frido touched the bark. It was warm.
He straightened. "We're close."
Mirea's voice, softer than rustling leaves: "To what?"
He looked at her, surprised she had spoken. Her face was pale, but not afraid. There was a question in her that wasn't about direction, but destiny. He had no answer for it. So he nodded vaguely and kept walking.
She followed.
---
Night fell too quickly in Lethwood. The sun died above the canopy, and the forest seemed to breathe louder. They made camp near a fallen oak, its trunk split by some forgotten storm. Teren built the fire small, cautious of too much light. The flames barely fought back the cold.
Frido sat with his back to a stone, arms around his knees, watching the smoke. He felt tired, not from walking, but from carrying a burden he had not yet understood. Something was changing in him — the silence inside him was no longer just absence. It was beginning to feel… shaped. Like a sculpture being chiseled from grief, word by word.
"Frido," Mirea said, stepping beside him.
He blinked up.
She offered him a waterskin, then sat down without waiting for a reply. For a long time, neither of them said anything. The fire cracked. The wind sighed through leaves that never stopped whispering.
"When we reach the Eastern Marches," she said at last, "what will you do?"
He didn't answer immediately. His fingers played with a thread on his cloak.
"I'll stop the war," he said simply.
She looked at him. "How?"
"I don't know yet."
He looked up at the stars, barely visible through the branches.
"But I'll find a way. Even if I have to give everything."
She turned her gaze away quickly, blinking. "You always say that," she said. "Like giving yourself is the easiest answer."
He didn't know what to say to that.
"It's not the easy answer," he said finally. "It's just the only one I can offer."
She nodded slowly. Her hands tightened around the locket at her neck.
If he noticed, he didn't show it.
---
Teren didn't sleep. He paced quietly, alert, ever the soldier.
But Frido dreamt.
In his dream, the trees moved like men — tall, robed in leaves, their faces hollow and bark-worn. One stepped forward and touched his chest.
"You carry the silence," it said in a voice of wind. "But you do not yet understand it."
"I want peace," Frido said.
"Then you must be the voice that ends voices," the tree replied.
He did not know what that meant.
When he woke, Mirea was gone.
---
Panic struck him like a blade. He bolted upright. The camp was cold, the fire only embers. Teren noticed his movement and turned sharply.
"She's not here," Frido said.
Teren looked around, eyes narrowed. Then he pointed silently.
Tracks.
They followed them into the dark, moving swiftly between trunks that now loomed like watchful sentries. Frido's heart pounded, not with fear for his own life — but hers.
They found her in a glade of white blossoms, standing before a twisted stone altar covered in ivy. Her hand was on it, her lips moving in prayer.
"Mirea!" Frido cried.
She turned, startled, and for the first time, Frido saw tears.
"I had to," she said. "I had to see it with my own eyes."
He stepped forward, confused.
"What is this place?"
She looked down at the altar.
"My mother was born here," she said. "Before she left for the city. She told me... she told me this forest knew secrets the world had forgotten. I needed to remember what she meant."
Frido approached the altar. He saw now — the stone was carved with hundreds of tiny names. Some weathered. Some fresh. An old shrine, perhaps. A monument of sorts.
Mirea touched one name in particular. "She's here," she said softly. "Amiren. That was her name. She died in the same war we're walking toward."
Frido placed a hand on her shoulder.
"I'm sorry," he said.
Mirea wiped her eyes and looked at him. In her gaze was something more than sorrow. Something on the edge of speech. But it remained unspoken.
As always.
---
They returned to camp in silence.
Teren said nothing, only nodded when they passed. He understood something had shifted — not in the path, but in them.
Later that night, when Mirea thought Frido was asleep, she sat beside him and whispered something to the fire.
"If I lose you," she said, "there won't be anything left of me."
She kissed his shoulder lightly, the way the wind kisses a leaf.
Then she turned away.
He stirred but didn't speak.
He had heard.
And still, he did not know what to do with the weight of her love.
---
The next morning, they reached the edge of Lethwood.
Beyond the trees, the land opened into mist and marshes. In the distance, across the pale fields, the towers of the Eastern Marches loomed — their spires black against the dawn.
War waited there. And peace. And the grave.
Frido took one step forward, then another.
Behind him, Mirea hesitated.
But she followed.
She always would.
---
End of Chapter 39
---