Chapter 6The Branding

The brand burned deeper than flesh.

Cressida screamed as the blade carved another line across her sternum, the pain radiating outward like cracks in frozen glass. She could feel the Sundering working—not just on her body, but on something deeper. The echo-bond that connected her to Rafe. To the land. To the roots beneath the Heartwood.

It was unraveling.

Rafe hung motionless beside her, his head lolled forward, blood dripping from his nose. She couldn't feel him through the bond anymore. Just static. Like a signal dying.

The extremists chanted faster, their voices rising in a discordant harmony that made her teeth ache. Their leader—a gaunt man with hollow eyes—stood at the altar's head, his hands raised toward the moon. She recognized him. He'd been at Elara's side during the first meeting. One of her trusted advisors.

*Kael.*

The name surfaced from somewhere, and she didn't question it.

Elara was being dragged toward the altar, her wrists bound, her face bloodied. She wasn't fighting anymore. Her eyes met Cressida's, and there was no defiance left. Only exhaustion. And apology.

"I'm sorry," Elara whispered. "I didn't know he—"

A blow silenced her.

Cressida's chest heaved. The chains bit into her wrists, cold iron that hummed with enchantment. She couldn't shift. Couldn't summon the land's power. The Sundering was strangling everything she'd just learned to love.

*Rafe. Wake up. Please.*

Nothing.

The blade touched her again.

And then she felt it—a flicker. Not from Rafe. From deeper. The Heartbinding, straining against the ritual's corruption. It was wounded but not dead. Like a muscle remembering how to move.

She closed her eyes and reached for it.

The pain in her chest transformed. The brand still burned, but beneath it, something else stirred. Roots, she realized. Not of the forest, but of the bond itself. They were tangled, torn, bleeding. But they were still alive.

Cressida pulled.

Power surged through her—raw and wild, unshaped by ritual or intention. It slammed into the chains and shattered them. Iron fragments scattered across the altar. The extremists stumbled back, their chanting breaking.

She grabbed Rafe, dragging him off the stone slab. His weight nearly pulled her down, but she held. The brand on her chest flared, and she felt the Sundering trying to reassert itself, trying to finish what it had started.

Then the ritual backlash hit.

It came not as sound but as force—a shockwave that rippled outward from the altar, throwing the extremists across the clearing. Trees groaned. The ground split. And the stone beneath them cracked, then crumbled.

They fell.

Cressida wrapped herself around Rafe, bracing for impact. The darkness swallowed them, and when she opened her eyes again, she was lying on damp earth, surrounded by roots that pulsed with black veins.

The hidden chamber stretched above her, its ceiling lost in shadow. Roots hung like curtains, and in the center, four small bodies lay on a bed of moss.

Elara's children.

They were still. Too still.

Cressida crawled toward them, her body screaming. The brand on her chest had stopped burning, but it had left a scar—raised and angry, shaped like a broken circle. She touched it and felt nothing. No bond. No land.

Just silence.

"Rafe." She shook him. "Rafe, wake up."

He stirred but didn't open his eyes.

A whisper curled through the chamber. *You should not have come.*

Cressida spun, searching for the source. The roots around her began to move—slowly at first, then faster, writhing like serpents. The black veins pulsed with a sickly light.

A figure emerged from the shadows.

Not Kael. Something else. A shape made of darkness and root, its face a void. It pointed a skeletal hand toward the children, and the roots tightened around them.

"Stop," Cressida said, her voice cracking.

The figure tilted its head.

And then Thorn appeared.

He was barely visible—a ghost of light in the darkness, his form flickering like a candle in wind. He looked at the figure, and his expression was hollow.

"Kael," he said. "You've gone too far."

The figure laughed, and the sound was dry as dead leaves. "Kael is a name for the living. I am what comes after."

Thorn turned to Cressida. "He was Elara's lover. He loved her. But he loved the old ways more. The Sundering—it's just the beginning. He plans to use the children's life force to summon the ancient spirit. The one that poisoned the land in the first place."

"The weeping willow," Cressida breathed.

The dream surfaced. The dark forest. The tree with branches that hung like tears. She'd seen it every night since she'd arrived in the Thornwood.

Thorn nodded. "Your mother saw it too. She knew this day would come. That's why she hid you."

The roots lunged.

Cressida rolled, pulling Rafe with her. The roots struck the ground where she'd been, splintering stone. She scrambled toward the children, grabbing the closest one—a girl with dark hair and a face too pale.

"I can't carry all of them."

"You have to," Thorn said. "The tunnel—there." He pointed to a gap in the roots, barely visible in the gloom. "It leads out."

The girl in Cressida's arms stirred. Her eyes opened—black, pupil-less, filled with the same corruption that pulsed through the roots. She screamed.

The sound was not a child's.

Above them, the extremists stirred. Cressida heard shouting. Footsteps. Kael's voice, sharp with fury: "Find them. The land will be free."

Cressida pressed her hand against the roots and focused on the Heartbinding. It was still there—faint, but alive. She poured everything she had into it: love, fear, hope, the memory of Rafe's hand in hers.

The roots recoiled.

She grabbed the other children—three of them, limp and cold—and pulled them toward the tunnel. Rafe groaned, his eyes fluttering open.

"Cressida?"

"Move," she said. "Now."

They crawled through the tunnel, roots scraping at their backs. The darkness pressed in, and the children were heavy, and Cressida's chest burned with every breath.

When they emerged, the forest was silent.

They stumbled into a thicket, collapsing among the ferns. Cressida gasped, her lungs on fire. The children lay around her, still comatose. The girl who had screamed was unconscious again.

Rafe pressed a hand to his head. "What happened?"

"Later," Cressida said.

From somewhere behind them, Kael's voice echoed through the trees.

"The land will be free."

The roots at their feet began to move.