Rocher was already running when the forest tried to close its teeth around him.

  Branches leaned where they had not leaned a heartbeat before, snting inward like bars of a cage. Roots rose just high enough to snag his boots. Vines that had hung limp on his way in now coiled low to hook his ankles, twitching with the unsettling precision of something trying to pin him in pce.

  He ducked under a sweeping bough that had been perfectly still a blink ago, his broad frame folding with a speed that felt impossible for his size. Bark grazed his cheek. The air tasted like sap, old magic—and intent.

  The scrap of bark in his fist dug into his palm.

  Great Tree. Heart of Forest. Hurry.

  Cire's handwriting. Urgent, yet controlled and precise—the same steady intention she'd had even while her body shook on the riverbank.

  The memory hit him harder than the branches.

  Her knees nearly buckling.Her body battered and bruised.

  But most of all, her eyes when she looked at him.

  Hurt.Shock.A kind of quiet betrayal, but not of trust—of expectation.

  He had repyed that moment a hundred times since then, always circling the same unanswered question: what had she seen that he hadn't?

  That look had carved a wound in him and left it open. He knew he had missed something important—something she hadn't had the strength or time to expin. And the fact that he still couldn't parse it made his chest tighten like a fist.

  He didn't know what he'd gotten wrong. Only that he had.

  A thorned thicket slid across the path like a barricade dragged into pce. Rocher skidded to a stop, instincts tightening.

  "Move," he growled.

  The thicket refused, bristling its thorns.

  He tried left; the brush leaned inward. He tried right; branches dipped, corralling him. Every route curved back on itself like the forest was steering him toward its grip.

  A living snare.

  He lunged again, muscles coiled, ready to break through—

  —but the forest only nudged him sideways, redirecting him.

  Not attacking.Just interfering.

  He froze.

  Slowly, he straightened.And something in the air shifted, as if the forest were watching him finally pause long enough to see it.

  It wasn't trying to kill him.

  It was trying to guide him—not harm him—only closing around him when he fought it.

  He had misread its intent entirely.

  Just like Cire.

  The realization slotted into pce like an arrow finding its notch.

  He saw her as she had always been: moving quickly, quietly, keeping her cards close to her chest. Carrying burdens she never shared. Acting alone because she didn't dare assume anyone else understood the terrain she walked.

  Not because she wanted secrecy. But because trust was a risk she couldn't afford.

  Because she had looked at him—on the riverbank, in the shrine, by the campfire—with that same guarded caution.

  Waiting.Measuring.Trying to decide if he saw the same world she did.

  And he hadn't.Not then.

  His chest tightened with wanting—not to save her, but to understand her, the way she understood everything around her.

  He exhaled, long and low.

  "If you can talk," he said to the forest, "then talk. And if you can't... then listen."

  The branches stilled.

  "I'm not your enemy," he said. "I only need to reach her. That is my intent. If you can understand my words, then show me."

  The forest paused.

  Then the air froze cold and clear.

  Vines slid forward through the soil, curling into a single word:

  COME

  The branches peeled back. Brambles withdrew. A straight corridor of moonlight opened before him—clean, unobstructed, unmistakable.

  Not an invitation.A recognition.

  Rocher touched the scrap of bark in his palm, her handwriting burning against his skin.

  Cire didn't need someone who could stand in front of her.She needed someone who could understand the world she lived in—someone she could let inside every secret she’d buried just to survive.Someone who would walk beside her, not ahead or behind.

  Someone who would stay.

  "I'm coming, Cire," he said softly. "And I'll earn that trust. To know everything you know, and carry it with you—whatever it is."

  He ran, his shadow stretching wide across the newly opened path.

  The forest did not shift again. No mazes. No traps.Only the direct line toward the pulse in the air.

  Toward the Great Tree.

  When the clearing finally opened beneath his feet, he almost missed it. One step was forest, the next was a ring of moonlight so sudden and wide it felt like stepping through an invisible curtain.

  Rocher staggered once, then straightened.

  The Great Tree towered at the edge of the clearing, its roots a ribcage, its crown lost in darkness. Witches were already hovering it like orbiting moons.

  A familiar rash of red stood nearest the roots—upright, awake, and one breath from coming apart.

  "Cire!" Seraphine shouted, voice ragged. "Cire, you idiot, you can't just leave me here again!"

  Her hands shook as she grasped a body Rocher did not yet see.

  Her hair clung to her temples with sweat. The bck veins that had once traced her throat were gone, but her eyes held the shock of someone who had only just stopped drowning.

  Rocher did not remember crossing the clearing. One moment he was at its edge, the next he was dropping to one knee beside Seraphine, heart pounding in his throat, the ground dipping slightly under his weight.

  "Sera," he said. "Are you hurt?"

  She jolted so hard she almost struck him. Her hands flew up defensively on reflex. When she recognized him, some of the wildness bled from her eyes.

  "Rocher," she rasped. "About damn time."

  He swallowed the retort that came to mind. It would insult the truth of what she had just endured.

  Instead he followed her furious gnce down.

  Cire y on the moss like someone who had been left there after colpsing on the way to bed, her chestnut hair spilled over the roots. Her chest rose and fell in tiny, shallow movements. Easy to miss if he hadn't learned already from how often she'd nearly died.

  His hands cupped her wrist with startling tenderness. Her pulse beat, slow and distant. Her skin was damp with cold sweat.

  Rocher tore open the pouch at his belt and drew out a narrow strip of leather with a small silver bell tied to it—the Bell of Castle Greymane. As he had done once before, he looped it around her wrist with movements far gentler than the urgency in his chest. The bell pulsed faintly at his touch, a quick breath of light that vanished almost at once.

  "Expin," he said, not caring who answered, so long as someone did.

  A motherly-looking witch took her hand from the Great Tree at st. The bark retained the impression of her fingers for a moment before smoothing over. Her gaze traveled over him in frank assessment and her brows lifted.

  "For your size, you are quite slippery," she said breathlessly. "I did not expect you to outrun my forest."

  Her eyes held Rocher's with a weight that made it very clear she knew he was no simple provincial knight.

  "You should be gd to know your friend Seraphine has completed the Forest Guardian's trial. The corruption is contained. Her soul paid the price."

  "Not my soul, Ysel," Seraphine snapped. "Cire's. She twisted it. She turned the dream on itself and cut my chain instead of hers."

  He slid his fingers more firmly around Cire's wrist, as if he could anchor her physically by sheer force of will. Her hand felt smaller than it looked when she was tossing witty remarks across the campfire.

  Fragile, almost. He did not care for the word. It did not suit her. But here, now, it hovered at the edge of his thoughts all the same.

  "Where is she," he asked, "if not with us?"

  A second witch giggled, a soft, dreamy sound too close to a purr.

  "Mmm," she crooned, eyes half-lidded as she sniffed the air above Cire's head. "She went falling, falling, down and sideways... into the oldest room... the one she locked deep."

  Seraphine's jaw clenched. "Her own nightmare," she said hoarsely. "She took my pce."

  Rocher's fingers tightened.

  The riverbank returned in a single, brutal fsh—Cire stumbling forward, wrists torn, breath ragged, eyes pleading with him to move aside, not to pull her back.

  She hadn't been running from danger.She had been running toward this.

  Toward Seraphine.

  Cire, he thought—no longer with frustration, but with an aching recognition. She never waited to be saved. Even half-conscious on the riverbank, wrists torn raw, she'd dragged herself forward because no one else could move fast enough to help the people she loved.

  He had mistaken that for recklessness once. Now he understood: it was the only way she knew to survive in a world that kept trying to confine her.

  If she had chosen to take Seraphine's burden, then he would choose—without hesitation—to take his pce beside her. That was what he should have done from the start.

  Walk with her. Even here.

  "What do we need to reach her?" Rocher asked.

  Ysel's mouth curved, almost impressed.

  "Velka here can open a path," she said. "If she is willing."

  Velka's nails traced the root by Cire's hair in little circles.

  Rocher met her unfocused gaze without flinching.

  Cire had stepped into the darkness for someone she loved. He would follow her into any shape that darkness took.

  "Send me, good witch," he said. "To where she is."

  Her smile spread, slow and unsettling. "Mmm... you want to be swallowed."

  "If that is the route required." His jaw set. "I have walked worse."

  "Rocher." Seraphine's voice snapped like a whip.

  He turned toward her. She was on her feet now, swaying, fury and fear making her seem taller than she was.

  "You think I'll just sit here and wait," she demanded, "while you go in after her? She took my trial. She saved me. I will not be left behind on the ground again."

  He started to answer, then stopped.

  He recalled the way she'd looked. The way her hands shook even now. The fresh, pink skin where bck veins had once crawled.

  "You've just come out of it," he said gently. "Another plunge could destroy you."

  But even as he said it, he didn't try to bar her path. He had no right.

  "Then it destroys me," she shot back. "The Tower took my choices. I will not let you take this one."

  Rocher caught Ysel's eye over Seraphine's shoulder. She watched him with an appraising gaze, weighing not his words but the shape of his resolve.

  "The trial will not care for your chivalry," she said. "It will strip you down to what you are. Are you prepared to face that?"

  "I—," he hesitated and looked at Seraphine. "Cire chose on your behalf. You deserve a say in this one."

  Seraphine's throat worked. She nodded once, sharp.

  "Then take each other's hands," Ysel said. "And pray our Guardian grants you more mercy than it grants most."

  Velka straightened from her crouch in a slow, liquid motion, like a sleeper unfolding from a dream. She padded closer on bare feet, her night-robes dragging moss.

  The forest had opened when he stopped fighting it. Cire would open too—not to force, but to presence, to steadiness, to someone who chose to join her rather than drag her back.

  He finally understood the shape of the love she could accept.

  Rocher knelt again beside Cire. He took her left hand in his right, fingers wrapping around hers to form a bridge. With his other hand, he reached back, palm open.

  Seraphine hesitated for a heartbeat, then csped it like a lifeline.

  "Do not let go," Velka breathed, eyes shining. "No matter... what shape the fear takes."

  "I won't," he responded, unwavering.

  Velka's fingers brushed his temple, then Seraphine's forehead. Her touch was shockingly cold, like river water in snowmelt season.

  "Sleeeeep," she crooned.

  The world turned inside out.