The grey stain was gone from his hand, but Kaelen could still feel its phantom presence, a cold tattoo on his soul. The ease of it haunted him. For weeks, every use of his power had been a struggle, a negotiation with an exhausted world and his own dwindling spirit. But that single act of unmaking had been… effortless. It had felt like finally taking a full breath after a long, slow suffocation.
He avoided Elara's eyes the next morning. The memory of her horrified stare was a brand. When she handed him a portion of their dwindling journey-bread, her fingers did not brush his.
"We need to find this lake soon," Roric grunted, leaning heavily on his crutch. His face was pale, and a feverish sweat gleamed on his brow. The journey and his injuries were taking their toll. "Another week of this, and there won't be much left of us to save."
"I know," Kaelen said, his voice tight. He could feel the collective weakness of the group like a physical weight. He was their strongest member, and he felt like a frayed rope about to snap.
"Do you?" Hemmet muttered, not quite under his breath. "Seemed you found a quicker way to do things yesterday. Maybe we'd be there already if you'd stop all the singing and just… clear the path."
Kaelen's head snapped up. "That 'quicker way' is a poison, Hemmet. It's what killed Oakhaven. It's what Finn gave his life to destroy."
"And yet it got us moving," Hemmet shot back, a strange, defiant glint in his eye. "Sometimes you need a sharp axe, not a gentle hand."
"An axe can't build a home," Elara said, her voice quiet but sharp as flint. She was looking directly at Kaelen now, challenging him. "It can only clear the land for one. The question is, what are you planning to build, Kaelen? A fortress with walls of dust?"
Her words struck a chord deeper than Hemmet's whining or Roric's pragmatism. They spoke to the very core of the conflict tearing him apart.
He stood up abruptly, the argument choking him. "I'm scouting the path ahead," he announced, needing to be away from their judging eyes, from the temptation of Hemmet's approval.
He didn't get far. A few hundred yards into the pine forest, he found a massive, ancient oak tree, its bark gnarled and thick. It should have been a pillar of life, but its song was a weak, faltering tremor. A creeping black fungus, shot through with faint green filaments, was consuming its trunk. It was the same dormant Blight from the meadow, slowly and patiently strangling the life from the giant tree.
The whisper stirred. See? This is the fate of all things that rely on slow, gentle strength. It is being consumed. You could end its suffering in a heartbeat. A single thought. It would be a mercy.
Kaelen's hand twitched. It would be so easy. A clean, quick end. Efficient.
"No," he said aloud, the word a vow to the empty forest. He would not be the one to deliver the final blow.
Instead, he walked to the tree and placed his forehead against its dying bark, ignoring the unsettling tingle of the fungus. He closed his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to the tree. It wasn't a spell, just words. "I can't heal you. I don't know how. I'm… I'm not like Finn." The admission was a painful release. "I'm just a mason. I only know how to work with what's already there."
He poured his awareness into the tree, not to fight the Blight, but to listen to the oak's own fading song. He felt its immense history, the centuries of sun and storm it had endured. He felt its deep, anchoring roots, still fighting to draw sustenance from the poisoned earth. He didn't try to mend the rot. He couldn't. But he could do the one thing he was trained for. He could offer support.
He sang the First Note, the note of acceptance. But this time, he sang it to the earth around the roots. He felt for the deep, untainted stone far below the fungus, and he asked it to remember its strength. To hold fast. To give the roots something solid to cling to.
It was a small thing. A desperate, hopeless gesture. He wasn't killing the disease; he was reinforcing the patient.
He felt a shift. A subtle strengthening in the deep bedrock. The tree's faltering song didn't grow stronger, but its descent into silence slowed. It was given not a cure, but a foundation. A reason to keep fighting for a little while longer.
When he pulled away, he was drained, the familiar, honest exhaustion a welcome penance after the false energy of unmaking. The tree was still dying. But it was still standing.
He returned to camp, his shoulders slumped but his head clearer. Elara was waiting for him. She took one look at his face—the peace that came only from hard, thankless work—and the tension in her own shoulders eased.
"The tree?" she asked softly.
"I couldn't save it," he admitted, his voice raw with fatigue. "But I gave it a better foundation. I reminded the stone beneath it how to be strong."
She nodded, understanding the profound difference. "That's who you are, Kaelen. You're not the fire that burns away the rot. You're the anvil that gives the metal its shape." She handed him his waterskin. "We need the anvil. The world has enough fire."
He met her gaze, the ghost of the whisper finally silenced, for now. He had chosen his path. He would be the foundation, even if it meant breaking under the weight. It was who Corbin had taught him to be. It was who he decided he would remain.