Page 75 of Cycle Keeper’s Shadow

Her pulse jumped. She spun around, charms on her horns jingling. A tap on her opposite shoulder made her start, and when she turned, Orzen was grinning like a boy caught halfway between pride and mischief.

“These are genius,” he said, delighted. “Feels like walking on pillows. Silent ones. Would’ve made my job—” He stopped himself, realizing where that sentence was headed.

“Easier?” she finished, folding her arms. “So you could sneak around watching people unnoticed?”

His grin faltered into a sheepish grimace. He raised a hand in surrender. “I’ll only use them for good. Promise.” Then, he nodded at her stones. “And you got…rocks?”

She handed him the note and pressed the red-swirled stone into his palm. “Whisperstones. We’re supposed to share them. Think about this one,” she said, holding up her own.

He scanned the note, brow creasing, then humored her, gripping the stone and concentrating. A beat passed before the one in her hand thrummed in answer. A faint thread of red light flared between them, like a living tether, then faded.

“Huh,” he said. “I didn’t give Pell enough credit.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him you said that.” Wren tucked her stone into the pouch at her belt beside the carved squirrel.

He slipped his own stone into his belt pouch, watching her with quiet concern. “Let’s hope we never need them. If we do, it means I’ve failed you.”

She brushed her palms over the shimmering silver embroidery of her tunic. “Just in case,” she murmured, then added, “We’ll be fine.” The knot in her chest disagreed, but she ignored it. “Come on. Let’s do something fun. Jessa’s running the history booth.”

His brow arched. “And that’s fun?”

“It is if you want to understand our madness,” she teased. “You need to learn our traditions somehow.”

“Like burying bread?”

“Exactly.” She grinned and tugged him toward the far side of the square.

Crowds had gathered—some laughing at jugglers tossing apples, others browsing the wares spread across tables and blankets. Above it all, Jessa’s voice carried through the noise—rich, steady, sailing through the air like a dove in flight.

She wore a cream-colored gloamguise layered in decoupage, each panel a page from a book, script curling at the edges like pressed petals. Beside her, Calen played a low, mournful tune on his bone-reed flute. The sound wove through Jessa’s words, deepening their pull. He had the same rapt attention as the crowd—spellbound, caught in the rhythm of the tale.

They’d arrived mid-story: The Warden’s Tale.

Behind Jessa stood painted depictions of the legend—Elaren and her Dawnblade champion: the Warden. The Rotfather, god of decay, sending his Witherborn armies to devour and plague the land. At the center of one painting stood a great temple with a tree rising from its heart—massive and luminous, its golden-green canopy arched like a living sky.

The moment her gaze found it, the air thickened, as if the scene itself had been waiting for her. She recognized it instantly—the tree from her dream, whole and luminous, not blackened or weeping sap.

And in its trunk, as though grown from the bark itself, was a staff—a root twisting upward to cradle a green stone that gleamed like a captured star. She hadn’t noticed it before. Maybe it had been buried in shadow. But now, rendered in paint, it called to her. The air hummed against her skin.

This wasn’t only art. It was a memory. The mark on her forearm flared, hot and sudden, and she pressed a hand over it, breath quickening.

“Wren?” A hand brushed her shoulder. Orzen’s voice was low and careful. “Are you okay?”

The sound reached her through a haze.

“What?” She blinked hard and forced herself to look away from the mural. “I’m fine.” But her pulse wouldn’t settle.

“Elaren, Mother of Blossoms,” Jessa continued, “listened to the cries of her people. She sent visions. Guidance in petals and dreams—calling them to rise against the shadow.” The air shimmered with an aura as Jessa spoke, each word swirling around the rhythm of Calen’s flute. “A dozen heroes answered. Champions with blades as bright as daybreak. The first Dawnblades, sworn to restore the Cycle.”

Her hand swept toward the painted paladin. “Among them was the one we now call the Warden. His name is lost, but his title endures. He led the final charge into the Virewood—into the very heart of the forest—where the rot had sunk its deepest roots.”

Wren’s gaze caught on the tree once more. It still stood, somewhere in the Virewood, waiting—calling to her.

“The Dawnblades felled wave after wave of Witherborn, but still they came. The rot could not be killed. Not truly. It had to be bound.” Calen’s tune softened into a mournful thread drifting in the air.

“Here, in a fortress swallowed by time, he made his sacrifice. Some say he gave his life to power a glyph carved by Elaren herself. Others believe he faced the Rotfather alone and sealed him in a vessel beneath the roots.” Her voice dropped to a hush, and the crowd stilled with her.

“But of one thing we are certain: his story ended that day beneath the Binding Bough. And the forest remembers.” She lifted her hands, eyes bright.