Kael met the figure's gaze, his voice raw. I didn't run away to abandon you. I ran to save them.
The figure tilted its head. Prove it.
Then the roots yanked Kael underground and he was gone.
The moment Kael vanished into the earth, Tari screamed his name but the forest swallowed the sound. The shadowed figure loomed before her, its ember-like eyes boring into her soul.
You want to save him? it whispered, its voice like rustling leaves and cracking bark. Then know the truth of what he is.
The world around her blurred. The trees bent inward, their branches weaving into a vision a memory not her own.
---
**Kael's Past – Five Years Earlier**
A younger Kael, barely fourteen, stood in a moonlit grove, his hands trembling around a dagger. Before him knelt a wounded Hollow but unlike the mindless beasts Tari had seen, this one's eyes were human. Desperate. Pleading.
You don't have to do this, the Hollow gasped, its voice ragged but clear. The corruption can be stopped not with blades, but with the Heartwood!
Behind Kael, his mentor, Elder Varyn, snarled. Kael, strike now! The Order does not hesitate!
Kael's blade shook. The Hollow wasn't attacking. It was begging.
Then it spoke a name.
"Liora."
Kael's breath caught. His sister's name.
The Hollow's face twisted in sorrow. She was the first they took… but she's not lost. The forest remembers her. If you destroy every Hollow without mercy, you destroy any chance of saving them!
Elder Varyn's hand clamped on Kael's shoulder. Lies. The Hollows are beyond saving. Strike, or you are no son of the Dusk.
Kael looked at the Hollow's face and for a heartbeat, he recognized the man beneath the corruption. A former guardian. Someone who had fought beside the Order.
His dagger clattered to the ground.
No!.
The moment he refused, the Order turned on him. He barely escaped the grove that night, the screams of the Hollow, the man echoing behind him as the Order cut him down.
Kael ran. Not out of cowardice, but hope.
---
**The Present – The Forest's Judgment**
The vision shattered, and Tari stumbled forward, gasping. The shadowed figure watched her, waiting.
Kael left because he learned the truth, it murmured. The Hollows are not just monsters—they are the lost guardians, the corrupted protectors of the woods. The Order chose slaughter over salvation. And Kael… he still searches for a way to free them.
Tari's chest tightened. His sister… Liora… Is she—?
The figure's glow dimmed. Alive. Trapped. And if the Order had their way, she would have been cut down like the rest.
A roar echoed in the distance
unmistakably Kael's voice, furious and fighting.
The figure stepped aside, revealing a tunnel of thorns leading deeper into the earth.
Go, it said. Save him. Because if the Order finds him first, they will finish what they started five years ago.
Tari didn't hesitate. She plunged into the darkness.
---
To Be Continued.