The air was thick with silence after the thorns retreated.
Elara stood frozen in the clearing, her fingertips trembling, stained with the deep crimson sap that had dripped from the rose thorns Sorin had conjured. Her breath came in small, shallow pulls, as though the magic had sucked the air from the sky. Around them, the glade lay still—too still. Even the fireflies that often lit the dusk with their quiet glow had vanished, as if afraid to witness what had just happened.
Sorin's gaze stayed fixed on her, his hand still half-outstretched, the last flicker of red light fading from his palm.
"I didn't mean for it to hurt," he whispered, as if the words could soften what had already been done.
Elara blinked once, then twice, but the sting in her eyes refused to fall as tears. "You told me your magic was green," she said quietly. "You said it bloomed. That it healed."
"It does," he said, almost to himself. "It used to."
She took a step back. The grass crunched beneath her boot, wilted where the thorns had erupted. The red vines still pulsed faintly near her feet, like veins cut from the earth itself. "Then why did it turn red?"
Sorin finally looked away, shame coloring his face more deeply than the blood on her hands. "Because I lied."
The truth hung in the air like frost, spreading fast. Elara wrapped her arms around herself—not because of the cold, but to hold something inside that felt like it might splinter out.
She had trusted him. She had let him braid his voice into her dreams, walk beside her in forests where no one else dared. She had let his magic touch her.
And now it had burned.
"I shouldn't have followed you into the Hollow Tree," she murmured, recalling the moment just three days ago when he'd coaxed her into the depths of the forest. When the light had changed. When something had awakened.
"No," he said, stepping forward. "No, Elara—don't say that. You changed something in me. That's why everything is different now. That's why it—" He stopped himself, struggling to find the end of his own sentence. "That's why the magic turned red."
She looked at him, truly looked—and saw it now. A faint shimmer behind his eyes, not unlike the glow of the Hollow Stone. But where that had been warm, ancient, this shimmer was flickering, restless. As though the power inside him was no longer at peace.
"You're cursed," she said, not accusingly, but with the dawning horror of realization.
He closed his eyes. "Not cursed. Tethered. To something darker than I can explain."
Elara knelt beside the rose thorns, brushing her fingers along the fallen petals. Even those were stained. Red. Not the red of love, of sweet blooms, but the red of ruin, of something too far gone.
"You should've told me."
"I wanted to." Sorin's voice broke like a wave against stone. "But I knew what would happen if I did. You'd leave. You'd stop believing in me."
"Belief isn't something you can steal," she replied. "It's something you have to earn."
Sorin knelt beside her. The earth was warm where the thorns had struck, pulsing faintly with the magic that still lingered. "There was a time when my magic healed forests, grew fields. I was a Warden once, sworn to protect the Veilwood."
Elara looked at him sharply. "The Warden of the Eastern Vale died a century ago."
He gave her a haunted smile. "I didn't die. I changed."
And in that single breath, she understood.
He was older than he looked. Far older. His soul bound to the forest's oldest secrets—ones that no longer whispered, but screamed. The red magic was ancient. A betrayal wrapped in power. Something had gone wrong, long ago, and it had festered inside him ever since.
She touched the back of his hand. "Why now? Why me?"
Sorin looked at her as though she were the first sunrise he'd seen in a hundred years. "Because you sing when you're afraid. Because you see magic where others see fear. Because..."
He didn't finish.
The woods answered for him. A gust of wind blew through the trees, and with it, the sound of branches cracking in the distance. Not a creature's step. Not wind. Something deeper. Approaching.
Elara's heart skipped. "Did you hear that?"
Sorin stood immediately, eyes scanning the trees. "It's waking. The Thornmother."
Elara rose beside him. "The what?"
He turned to her, the red still glowing faintly beneath his skin. "She's the heart of the forest's pain. The reason I became this. The one who turned the Wardens into shadows. I thought I could keep her sleeping, as long as I didn't use the red magic again."
"But you did," Elara said, cold settling in her chest.
"To protect you."
Behind them, a tree cracked in half.
Elara didn't flinch. She looked into the woods, where the darkness swirled thicker now. A shape moved between trunks. Tall, thorn-wrapped, trailing crimson mist.
"We have to run," Sorin said.
But Elara didn't move. She stared into the dark, something inside her lighting.
"No," she said. "We have to finish what you started. If she's waking now, it's not because you failed. It's because you brought me here."
"Elara—"
"She wants you broken," she said. "But I'm still whole. And that's what scares her."
The air shimmered, and a long, low moan echoed from the trees. The Thornmother's voice. Magic hummed beneath their feet, painful and wild.
Sorin stepped closer to Elara, desperation softening his voice. "You can't face her alone."
"I won't be alone," she said, reaching for his hand.
And then, quietly, she began to sing.
It wasn't a melody he knew. It wasn't the song of the forest, or one passed from mother to daughter. It was hers—raw, soft, brave. Her voice stitched the air with something older than curses.
The magic in Sorin flickered.
The red began to fade.
The Thornmother screamed.
And in that moment, as the trees bent back and the light turned strange, Elara knew that pain could not be undone—but it could be rewritten.
Together, they stepped into the dark.