I pause at the edge of the grove, taking in the devastation. For decades, this place has been my burden and my battlefield. I’ve stood at this altar more times than I can count, feeling the King’s hunger pressing against my mind, fighting to maintain control. Now it feels... diminished. Empty. Like a predator that’s finally met something it can’t consume.
For now, at least, they are still.
“The crown.” Xela’s voice draws my attention to the altar.
The blackened briars lie shattered across the stone—the crown that sat atop the King’s mass since before I took my post, dripping sap that looked too much like blood. Now it’s scattered like ash, petals of dark wood strewn across the ancient channels carved into the altar’s surface.
“The oldest part of the King.” I release Xela’s hand—reluctantly—and step closer. “The seed from which the rest grew. If it’s destroyed...”
“Is it destroyed? Or just broken?”
I reach for the binding. Let my awareness sink into the roots beneath my feet, the sap flowing through the forest’s veins, the pulse of life that connects every corner of Briargrave. The King’s presence is there—diminished, yes, wounded, but not gone. It gathers at the edges of the grove, a cold malevolence that’s licking its wounds and plotting its next move.
“Broken. Not destroyed.” I turn back to her. “The Severance Engine severed something essential—cut off part of what was feeding it. But the core is still there. Still aware. Still...”
Wounded.
The King’s voice slides through my mind—thin now, reedy. A whisper where there used to be a roar. I feel Xela flinch beside me, and I know she heard it too. The bond has made her sensitive to the King’s presence, even if she can’t feel it as deeply as I do.
Dying.
“Good.” The word comes out harsh. Satisfying. I approach the altar, stepping over scattered bones, feeling the binding shift and pulse with each step. “You’ve been a parasite on this forest for centuries. You’ve fed on death until Briargrave became synonymous with horror. Maybe it’s time for that to end.”
You can’t destroy me.
The King’s presence flickers, desperate. It tries to rally—trying to gather the strength it’s lost, to reform the mass that once dominated this grove. But whatever the Severance Engine did, it cut deep. The King can barely maintain coherent thought, let alone physical form.
We’re bound, warden. You die, I die. That’s been true since the ritual was completed.
I stop at the altar’s edge. Look down at the shattered crown, the empty channels, the dark sap pooling in places it never touched before. And I feel something I haven’t felt in longer than I can remember.
Hope.
“No.” My hand finds the altar’s stone—cold, ancient, older than the forest itself. “I’m bound to Briargrave. I’m bound to the forest.” I close my eyes, let the binding fill me. “But you’re not the forest. You’re just what grew here when the forest was left to suffer. You’re a tumor. And tumors can be cut out.”
Silence. For the first time since I took my post, the Thorn King has nothing to say.
“Tharos?” Xela’s voice pulls me back. She’s moved to stand beside me, her shoulder brushing mine. The contact steadies me in ways I couldn’t have imagined before she walked into my forest. “What are you thinking?”
“The binding ritual.” I don’t open my eyes. Can’t—I need to stay connected to what I’m feeling, to the threads of power that connect me to every root and branch and stone. “I’ve spent decades believing I was bound to the King. That killing it would kill me, and freeing it would doom everyone within reach.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not so sure.” I trace the channels carved into the altar’s surface—the same channels that ran with my blood when I bound myself here, that drank my sacrifice and made me part of Briargrave. The stone is cold beneath my fingers, older than the forest itself. Its history flows through me—not through magic, but through the accumulated wear of centuries. “The ritual wasn’t about the King. It was about the forest itself. The land. The trees. The living system that existed before the King took root.”
“But the King was already here when you did the ritual.”
“Yes. It had attached itself to the forest—grown into it, fused with it. I thought I was binding myself to both.” I open my eyes, turn to face her. The light filtering through the damaged canopy catches her features, painting them in gold and shadow. She stands there in the dying light, blade ready, willing to face a god for me. “But what if I wasn’t? What if the King just... hitched a ride? Pretended to be part of what I was connecting to, when really it was something separate?”
Understanding dawns in her gray eyes. “You’re saying you might be able to separate them.”
“I’m saying I have to try.” I step away from the altar, cross to where she stands. Need to be closer to her. Need to feel her presence before I do something that might kill us both. “The ritual has layers. Depths I’ve never fully explored because the King was there, watching, waiting to exploit any weakness. But now it’s wounded. Distracted. If I reach deep enough, if I can find where the King ends and the forest begins...”
“You can cut it out.”
“Or I can lose myself trying.” I cup her face in my hands. Her skin is warm against my palms, her jaw strong beneath my fingers.
“What happens if you’re wrong?”
