Page 106 of Cycle Keeper’s Shadow

It was the voice threaded through her worst nightmares. The whisper that had slipped through the Binding Bough’s wound.

“The Rotfather,” she breathed.

“A name given to me by the Betrayer herself.” The voice carried through the mist, cracked and weary as the trees.

“Elaren?” Wren shook her head. “She bound you to save us. You commanded the Witherborn—destroyed my home, killed Tavrin! She had to imprison you.”

“Little Weaver.” His tone softened until it almost caressed. “Telling lies taught by others. The victor defines the villain. But you will see. You will understand.”

“No!” Wren shouted. Slick roots curled like eels over her ankles but never grabbed. “You have no right! You’d break the Cycle itself—destroy everything!”

His answer cracked, not with rage, but with grief—a cold, splintered kind of anguish that made the skeletal trees shudder. A wind rose from nowhere, spores drifting in silver spirals.

“You pretend ignorance,” he murmured. “But you know. I will remind you.”

His hand extended—a wrinkled thing, pale as an earthworm with blackened nails sharpened like claws.

Wren’s mark flared—searing white. A thread slid into her mind, gentle as her own weaving, but impossibly vast. Older. Deeper. Infinitely more powerful.

Images struck like lightning.

Auren and Wren racing up a leather oak.

A slip. A cry. The boy on the ground, breath shallow.

Bones wrong beneath his skin.

Her hands glowing. Threads dragged past their limits.

All her fear poured into him.

Weaving holding him when his body wanted rest.

Mended, but not whole. Alive, but screaming.

Eyes empty of the boy she’d once known.

The memory broke. Wren staggered away from him. It was unfair to bring up Auren now. Her mistake wasn’t the same as the Rotfather’s. He’d tried to break the Cycle for power. She’d simply wanted to save her friend.

“That wasn’t the same—I only—” Wren staggered back, shaking her head hard enough to blur the world.

“Without me,” the Rotfather whispered, “life stretches thin. Forced to persist beyond its time. Mercy turned to cruelty. You know this pain. You wrought it.”

The Rotfather wanted destruction. Ruin.

She only ever wanted to help.

“You’re twisting it—stop!”

Light burst from her, a shockwave of Spirit so bright it cleared the shadows, illuminating the stagnant puddles and torn roots around them. When it dimmed, the Rotfather still stood. Unmoved. Unshaken. Noting her fear with a gentle nod of his head, like he’d mark a scent on the wind.

“You aren’t ready,” he murmured. “But you will be.”

He lifted his skull-crowned head toward the gray sky. “The Betrayer will not come. So I will go to her. I will be free—to seek her, to breathe, to love, to rage as I please.”

The skull tilted, hollow eyes burning into her. “If you do not break the chains, I will burn the world until they melt. And from the ashes, the Cycle will bloom anew.”

The ground split beneath her hooves.