Ihit the ground face-first.
Not the graceful emergence centuries of fae training should have afforded me. No, I eat dirt, then skid forward on my chest for a solid two feet before stopping against the exposed root of an ancient tree.
Peeble bounces off my back and rolls into a patch of moss, legs flailing skyward.
For a moment, neither of us moves. The stillness of wherever we've landed presses in, threaded with birdsong, wind through leaves, the distant hum of something living and old. My ribs achewhere I connected with the root. My jaw throbs. The locket is still clutched in my fist, warm and pulsing, though the frantic energy from the Elm Gate has faded to a slow, steady beat.
I push myself up onto my knees and spit out dirt.
"What," I say very carefully, "did you do?"
Peeble rights themselves with the dignity of a beetle who did not just slam into a prince at full speed and send them both hurtling through a dimensional rift. They clean one antenna with a front leg, then the other. Taking their time about it.
"Me?" They blink those compound eyes at me. "I didn't do anything."
"You flew directly into me while I was channeling the bond through an unstable gate."
"I was avoiding a vine! A murderous, hallucinogenic vine that was trying to crawl into my shell and make me see my dead relatives! Forgive me for having survival instincts!"
I stand. My armor is covered in soil and leaf litter. There's a scratch across my forearm that's already closing. Corruption has its benefits, even if the healing feels like cold needles under the skin.
"I was pulling her through, Peeble. She was right there. I could feel her. And you—" I point at the beetle with more venom than the gesture probably warrants. "You knocked me off the gate. Into it. We were not supposed to go anywhere."
"Well, technically we went somewhere." Peeble gestures grandly at the surrounding forest. "Somewhere with lovely trees and excellent soil composition. Very earthy. I'd give it a seven out of ten."
"I'm going to crush you."
"You always say that. You never do. It's becoming a hollow threat, honestly, and it's undermining your credibility."
I close my eyes and breathe. In. Out. Count to three. It doesn't help, but the exercise is more for Peeble's continued survivalthan my actual composure. I open my eyes and look around, setting aside the rage to take in our surroundings.
We're in an old, dense forest with a canopy so thick that the light filtering down has that green-gold quality to it. The trees are massive. Trunks wider than I am tall, their bark covered in moss and lichen. The air tastes the way it always does in the deep woods of Wynmire: rich, layered, alive. Roots crisscross the ground in gnarled networks, some of them pulsing faintly with bioluminescence even in the dim daylight.
The Wyrmwood.
I know this place. Not this exact clearing, but this forest. I've spent years of my life hiding in it, fighting in it, bleeding in it. The trees here are older than the Crown itself, predating the realm's political structures by millennia. They don't care about kings or rebels or the petty wars of the fae. They just grow.
"We're in the Wyrmwood," I say.
"Oh good, you figured it out. I was going to give you another minute before I said something, but you got there on your own. Gold star."
I ignore the beetle and press my palm to the nearest trunk. The corruption in my marks flares faintly at the contact. The trees have never liked what I carry, and they make that known through a subtle vibration that feels like disapproval. But the Root magic underneath is strong here. Anchored. Which means we're in a functioning iteration, not some collapsed pocket of time.
"If we're in the Wyrmwood," I say slowly, "then Elle could be here too."
"Ooh, optimism! From you? Mark the calendar. Actually, don't. It'll just make the disappointment worse when it doesn't pan out."
They pat their face with one of their mandibles like they are contemplating something.
"Or… she's scattered across twelve more timelines because of what happened. Or she's back in the void. Or she ended up somewhere lovely, like the desert. Point is, we don't know."
I hate that the beetle is right. I check the locket. The portrait inside still shimmers, Elle's face overlapping with her mother's, the edges distorted. But the pulse is there. Faint. Distant. She's alive somewhere, scattered or whole, and that has to be enough for now.
I close the locket and tuck it back under my armor. "Then we figure out which iteration this is and how to move to the next."
"Wonderful plan. Very detailed. Really thought that one through."
"Peeble."
