The forest had grown quiet—not with death, but with waiting. After the breaking of the Thorn Queen's curse and the rebirth of the forest's heart, Thornwood had flourished like it hadn't in centuries. Petals now bloomed where thorns once pierced, and ancient trees whispered not of sorrow, but of something new.
And yet, peace is never still for long.
Kaelyn stood at the edge of the Hollow Tree, her bare feet pressing into the moss-covered roots. The blossom at its crown pulsed with a rhythm that matched her heartbeat. It had been six moons since she shattered the crystal heart of vengeance beneath the forest, six moons since the forest named her not as queen—but as something older:
Root born.
Neither ruler nor relic. She was rebirth.
Yet even rebirth cast long shadows.
"Something's stirring," said Eran, appearing beside her like mist from the morning fog. His silver eyes gleamed with unease. "The outer rings are changing. Vines wither without cause. The sky darkens too early. The rootkin grow restless."
Kaelyn's gaze turned north, where the green faded into gray. "It's not the Thorn returning," she said softly. "It's something else."
Something older than the Thorn Queen.
She could feel it now. A pulse beneath the surface. Not a curse—but a call.
"You've felt it too," she added.
Eran nodded grimly. "It doesn't call to me. It calls through me."
The Hollow Tree moaned, a low sound like a warning from the depths of the earth. Kaelyn turned to the tree, placing her palm upon its bark. The bloom at its peak flickered—and for the briefest moment, its petals turned black.
A vision surged through her: A burning glade. Children with hollow eyes. A sigil carved in bone and blood. And a voice—soft, serpentine—whispering her name as though it had always known her.
"Kaelyn, born of thorn and root, what you freed was not the forest. It was me."
Kaelyn staggered back.
Eran caught her before she fell. "What did you see?"
She blinked, the horror still coiling in her throat. "Something is coming up from the roots… something that was buried before the Thorn Queen ever ruled."
He didn't ask if she was certain. Eran had stopped doubting her the day she turned a curse into a kingdom.
Instead, he asked, "What do we do?"
"We find out what lies beneath," she said. "And we prepare the others."
The Rootborn Council—formed from freed spirits, forest kin, and seers—gathered that evening in the Moonlit Grove. Fires burned in carved bowls of living stone. The tree spirits watched from the branches, their eyes like dim stars.
"There is an echo moving through the forest," Kaelyn told them. "Not just death, not just decay—memory. Something ancient is waking. Not just watching—but remembering us."
An elder rootkin with a bark-carved mask stepped forward. "If it is what I think it is… we are not merely facing the past. We are facing what the past tried to bury."
"A god?" asked a younger seer.
"Worse," said the elder. "A Rootwalker."
The word rippled through the grove like a chill wind.
Kaelyn narrowed her eyes. "I've never heard of that."
"They existed before kingdoms. Before queens. Before bloodlines," the elder said. "Born from the first wound the earth ever suffered. They walk beneath, feeding on forgotten oaths. They are the root of revenge itself."
Eran stepped forward. "If it was sealed away, someone had to put it there."
The elder nodded. "Your Thorn Queen did not create the curse, child. She inherited it. From the First Root."
Kaelyn's mind reeled. The Thorn Queen was only the surface. Beneath her—this.
"So it wasn't just vengeance," she whispered. "It was a cycle."
The elder bowed his head. "And you have broken it—partially. But what you left behind has given the Rootwalker a crack to slip through."
Kaelyn stood. "Then we seal it completely."
"Or destroy it," Eran muttered.
"But how do you kill something made of memory?" the seer asked.
No one answered.
That night, Kaelyn walked alone to the mirror pool at the edge of the Veilgrove. Her reflection shimmered on its surface—older, sharper. Vines traced faint scars across her skin. But her eyes burned with resolve.
She touched the water, and it rippled—revealing not herself, but others.
Children born in her kingdom, marked by strange dreams and symbols that pulsed under their skin. Villagers waking in the night speaking languages long forgotten. Trees twisting into shapes no one had carved.
It wasn't just the Rootwalker awakening.
It was a reincarnation.
"What did I let loose?" Kaelyn whispered.
From the trees, a low voice answered:
"Not a monster. Not yet."
A child stepped forward—barefoot, eyes glowing faintly green, a small sprout blooming behind their ear.
"I dreamed of you," the child said. "You made me."
Kaelyn crouched. "Who are you?"
"I don't know. But I feel you in my blood. In my roots."
The child wasn't cursed. They were grown.
Rootborn—not in title, but in truth.
Kaelyn's breath caught.
The forest had not simply healed.
It had begun anew.
And now, whatever came for her would not face a cursed girl in the dark.
It would face a kingdom of rootborn souls.
To be continued in Chapter Two: "Beneath the First Wound"