I knew something was wrong the moment the forest went quiet.

  Not the reverent hush it gave Seraphine when her breathing steadied. Not the dreamy lull that followed Velka's rasping ughter. This silence was deeper. Watchful. Waiting.

  Rocher's hand was still wrapped around mine. Seraphine leaned against my shoulder, pale and exhausted but breathing steady. We had only just cwed our way out of my nightmare. The roots beneath us still thrummed with the aftershock of it.

  For a moment, the three of us simply breathed together.

  Then Ysel stepped into the clearing.

  She emerged with no rustle, no warning at all—soft as a mother entering a nursery. But the moonlight bent around her in a way that made my stomach drop.

  She had been listening.

  Her gaze traveled from Rocher's hand in mine, to Seraphine's trembling fingers, to the three of us huddled like survivors of a storm. But when her eyes settled on me—truly settled—her breath caught.

  And the forest moved.

  Roots rose in a slow ripple. Branches dipped. Vines unfurled and wove themselves into a loose, living cage. Not crushing, not hostile—just an unmistakable command.

  "Do not run."

  Rocher tensed. Seraphine's fingers sparked with a reflex she did not have the mana to follow through.

  I touched both their hands, shaking my head. "Don't."

  Ysel didn't look triumphant. Or angry.

  She looked afraid.

  More afraid than she had been when Seraphine seized, or when Velka hungered. This was the fear of someone whose oldest wound had just been touched.

  Her voice came gentle.

  "Child," she said, "how long have you known?"

  The roots tightened between us.

  I forced myself to hold her gaze. "Known what, exactly?"

  Her eyes glistened—not with rage, but with grief so old it had thickened instead of fading.

  "Do not pretend," she whispered. "If you know as much as you profess, then the secrets of this world are an open book to you."

  Seraphine straightened as if struck. "Ysel, what are you talking about?"

  Ysel didn't answer her. Her entire focus was on me. The girl who knew things she shouldn't. The girl who had said too much, too pinly, in the wrong pce.

  Not loudly. Not arrogantly.

  Just truthfully enough to break the quiet she had built her life around.

  "All right," I murmured. "Then you tell me. What is it you think I know?"

  Ysel swallowed, throat working.

  Then, in a voice that cracked like brittle bark: "My greatest sin."

  The roots around us shuddered as if remembering it.

  Seraphine inhaled sharply. Rocher looked between us with growing unease.

  I steadied myself. "Ysel," I said, "I'm not here to expose you. And I have no intention of using anything against you."

  Her eyes closed—a long, pained sweep of shes. "And yet you speak the name of the Guardian's wound as though you witnessed it. You name rituals no mortal should know. You recount the Forest's past as if you were here."

  She opened her eyes again, reading mine like scripture. "You ply the knowledge to your advantage—that is who you are. Do not pretend otherwise."

  The cage tightened just enough to silence any denial.

  My heart clenched. She deserved gentleness, not evasion.

  So I gave her the truth.

  "I know," I said quietly, "that the corruption Velka swallowed forty years ago wasn't random."

  Ysel flinched.

  "I know that something—someone—was born in these woods who never should have been."

  Her breath trembled. "Please stop."

  "I know that you and the Pneswalker loved each other. That you broke the witches' pact and took a male vessel."

  Ysel covered her mouth with one shaking hand.

  "And that the child born of that taboo..."

  Her eyes shut.

  "...is the Demon Lord."

  The forest exhaled—a long, low sound like a wound tearing open.

  Ysel staggered, catching herself on the trunk beside her. For a moment she looked impossibly young—fragile to the point of translucence.

  Her voice when it came was thin as a thread.

  "I never told anyone." A shaky inhale. "Not even my fellow witches."

  Seraphine covered her mouth in shock. Rocher went still as stone.

  "We wove every safeguard," she whispered, shaking. "Circle after circle, wards yered until the Forest hummed with them. She said it would be safe. I wanted to believe her. I needed to believe her. I thought—"

  Her voice broke. "We thought we could contain it. That two witches who bent the Forest to their will could tame what we made."

  I nodded.

  "Velka—" Ysel choked. "The Forest Guardian saved us. She swallowed the rot as it burst from my child. She devoured it all. Every drop. And the madness left behind was her price."

  My heart twisted. "I know."

  Ysel looked at me then, truly looked.

  And the fear in her face softened into something worse—recognition. The terrible recognition of someone who sees themselves mirrored in another.

  "What are you?" she whispered. "How can you know the sins of my life?"

  I swallowed.

  "I'm not sure," I admitted. "There are things about me I'm struggling to expin myself. But Ysel—"

  I straightened now, surety entering my voice. "This is not your fault. The sin of the Demon Lord is not yours alone to bear."

  Ysel shook her head, tears spilling. "On the contrary. He is my ruin."

  Her voice was barely a sound. A confession shaped like a colpse.

  Then something inside her shifted.

  Resignation—a terrible, familiar kind of resolve.

  The kind someone reached only when they had run out of choices.

  "I am sorry," she whispered.

  Her hand lifted, small and trembling—like a mother brushing hair from a sleeping child's forehead.

  The forest reacted instantly.

  Roots pressed inward. Branches bent low. The air tightened like breath being held by a thousand unseen lungs.

  Rocher surged forward only for a ttice of thorns to snap up in front of him, holding him back.

  Seraphine's magic sparked, sputtered, colpsed under the lingering exhaustion of the trial.

  Ysel's voice broke.

  "If the Tower learned the truth—if the kingdom learned—they would burn this Forest to ash to reach me. I cannot let the world know what I have done."

  She wasn't threatening. She was grieving.

  The roots began to glow faintly, sap pulsing like veins drawing toward a heart. It wasn't a killing spell—it was older, quieter, a forest's way of silencing trespassing truths forever.

  Ysel's face crumpled.

  I felt the roots curl around my ankles. Felt the forest mourning us, preparing to fold us gently into the earth like we were nothing more than fallen leaves.

  So I said it.

  "You cannot kill us."

  Ysel froze—not defiant, but startled.

  I met her eyes. "You cannot kill us," I repeated, "because you are going to need our help."

  The air trembled.

  Ysel's grief flickered into bewilderment. "Help? What help could you offer me?"

  "The kind that keeps your forest—and your companions—alive."

  Something in the air trembled. With what I'd shared so far, Ysel could not afford to take my words lightly.

  "If you bury us here," I said gently, "you will have to face them alone."

  "Them?" she echoed faintly.

  "That end you fear is already in motion. And if you believe I speak prophecy, then believe this."

  The cage halted mid-twist.

  "The Crown Prince has ordered a holy crusade deep into the Forbidden Forest."

  Ysel flinched as if struck. "Why? Up until now, they were content to leave us well enough alone."

  "You have the Hero." I gestured at Rocher, hands were still braced against the cage. "His brother."

  Seraphine blinked. Once. Twice. Then whipped her head toward him so sharply her hair nearly hit his cheek.

  "Brother? As in... the Crown Prince's brother?"

  Rocher tipped his head back with a sigh so weary it seemed ripped from his bones.

  "I was wondering when that particur secret would catch up," he muttered.

  Seraphine stared at him. "You're royalty?"

  "Doesn't always feel like it, but yes," he said, "I'm... technically Prince Rocher."

  She put both hands over her face. "Oh, this complicates things..."

  Ysel swayed, one hand braced against a birch. The trees rustled in shared horror.

  "When they reach the heart of the Forest," I said softly, "a thousand men strong... do you think those zealots will spare a single witch they find?"

  The truth was simple, final.

  Ysel went still. Utterly still. Not in fear now. In crity.

  The roots loosened. The branches unknotted. The living cage unwound like a fist unclenching after decades of tension.

  She stared at me, tears slipping silently down her cheeks.

  "I thought," she whispered, "that my greatest mistake had already destroyed everything it could."

  I shook my head.

  "Not yet. You still have work to do. People who need you."

  Her voice trembled. "Then... what must I do?"

  "I can guide your next steps," I said, rising as the st vine slid away. "But only if you let us help you."

  Ysel took one fragile breath.

  Then bowed her head.

  "Then priestling," she murmured, "help me protect the Forest. And the witches who call it home."