The clearing swallowed their footsteps like a mouth.
No birdsong. No breeze. Only silence—so thick and choked it felt like something had died here and refused to be forgotten.
Vaelric Thornvein stood at the threshold, flanked by Nyshara and Draum, staring at the horror that grew where no thing should. The gate—if one dared call it that—loomed like a scar carved into the world's own skin. A towering tree split clean down the middle. On the left, obsidian bark shimmered like slick oil under a sky of bruised gray, each gnarled branch tapering into spear-like fingers. The right side was... wrong. Veins pulsed through fibrous bark that bled, the wood slick and ruddy, twitching with every breath. It didn't sway like trees do. It throbbed. It breathed.
It watched.
Between the halves, a seam gaped like a wound too fresh to close. Not sap, but a syrupy black-red fluid dripped from it, slow and thick. It splashed onto the roots below and hissed, as if the ground itself rejected what the tree bled.
"Well," Draum finally muttered, his voice hushed as though afraid to wake something. "I've officially hit my threshold for tree-based trauma. Lovely gate. Bit much on the meat, though. I say we head back. Heard the screaming moss is delightful this time of year."
Vaelric said nothing. He couldn't. The Codex strapped to his back pulsed again, hot and sudden—like a second heartbeat lodged beneath his spine.
It wanted something.
Nyshara's pale eyes were locked on the tree, her expression unreadable. Her lips parted, and when she spoke, her voice was small—distant.
"That's no tree," she whispered. "It's a hauntroot. Grown at the seams between realms... where the Veil thins and memory becomes flesh. They're not built. They're born—fed by grief, magic, and things left unsaid."
Vaelric stepped forward, breath misting in the cold, dead air. "Then how do we open it?"
Nyshara didn't answer at first. Her fingers lifted, brushing one of her silver rings—an old habit, he'd noticed. A tick when she was remembering pain.
"You don't open it," she said. "You offer to it."
Her hands rose. Her eyes glowed faintly—moonlight trapped in frost.
She whispered words the air didn't want to carry.
"Vaveleiroh bolriovsd vavemoor…"
The Codex flared again—its ink burned gold behind Vaelric's eyes. The syllables Nyshara spoke curled in the air like smoke made of thought, wrapping around the twisted trunk. For a moment, nothing changed.
Then, the hauntroot groaned.
The world lurched. The soil trembled as if something ancient had stirred in its sleep. Roots retracted. Bark peeled like old skin. The seam between wood and meat yawned wider, coughing out heat and rot.
And then: stairs.
A spiral staircase, jagged and uneven, unfolded from the tree's wound—carved of bone and obsidian, slick with something not water. It descended into shadow, vanishing into a dark so thick it seemed to consume light rather than merely lack it.
"Oh, good," Draum said. "We've got ourselves a haunted tree bleeding into a haunted basement. My ancestors would be so proud."
He adjusted his hammer, glanced at his companions… and then bolted forward without a second thought.
"Draum!" Nyshara called after him, alarm flaring in her voice. "Wait—!"
Too late. He was already down the steps and out of sight.
Below.
The spiral was steep. The air grew colder—not with the chill of death, but the oppressive weight of things buried. Draum's boots struck the stairs with solid clangs, echoing like hammerfalls.
He grumbled to himself. "Bloody elf woman and her creepy words… Bloody poetic princeling with his glowing book… And here I am. Walking into a demon's pantry. Brilliant."
The light dimmed as he descended, until he had to activate the old rune-stone tucked into his belt. A pulse of dull orange bloomed outward, casting his face in warm, flickering light.
The stairwell ended in a yawning archway. Beyond it: a chamber.
Draum stepped inside.
His breath caught.
The room was a cathedral hollowed from the bones of the earth. Colossal pillars of fossilized marrow spiraled up into nothingness. The floor was cracked obsidian, webbed with veins of molten gold that pulsed slowly—like the last embers of a dying god. And treasure… gods, the treasure.
Heaps of it. Gold coins melted into puddles. Broken relics—swords, crowns, goblets—twisted and melted as if someone had tried to punish them. Crystals jutted from the walls like jagged teeth. Bones were scattered through it all, dressed in the tatters of forgotten kings.
"Well," Draum muttered. "Either I'm about to be filthy rich or absolutely eaten. Place your bets, ghosts."
He whirled around and cupped his hands. "OI! POETIC FREAK! EVIL PRINCE! I FOUND YOUR LOOT CLOSET!"
Silence.
He waited.
No response.
He frowned. "Vaelric? Nyshara?"
Still nothing.
"…Great," he muttered. "They've gone and gotten possessed again. Or eaten. Or turned into fog."
Something shifted behind him.
Slither.
It was subtle. Too subtle.
Drip. Drip.
A warm droplet landed on his shoulder.
He wiped it. Crimson smeared across his glove.
"Oh gods," he whispered. "Could be wine. Could be sauce. Could be—OH HELL."
He turned.
And froze.
The thing that towered before him wasn't alive. And it wasn't quite dead.
Its body was stitched from corpses—limbs fused with bark, muscle bolted with gold wire, ribs exposed and pulsing with black flame. Its arms hung too long, each finger a claw that twitched with a butcher's patience. Its face… or what passed for one… was stretched into a smile made of stolen skin. No eyes—only pits leaking shadow.
It hissed.
Draum took a careful step back. "Listen. I'm sure this is all a big misunderstanding. Beautiful place, very tasteful bones. Didn't touch anything. Didn't even lick the diamonds. That's restraint, that is."
The creature tilted its head.
Then lunged.
Its claw snatched Draum by the collar and hoisted him into the air. He dangled like a sack of flour, kicking wildly.
"PUT ME DOWN, YOU ROTTEN FLESH-PUZZLE!"
The creature opened its mouth—not revealing teeth, but hands. Dozens of tiny, grasping hands, wriggling inside its throat like starving spiders.
"Oh gods. You're a hugger, aren't you?"
It inhaled, slow and hungry.
Then—
"Gannon… Vaveleiroh bolriovsd vavemoor… devour."
The words slammed into the chamber like a hammer to a bell.
The ground cracked. Obsidian split down the center. The veins of gold burned white-hot. And from the pit—shadow.
It rose in tendrils, fast as thought, wrapping around the beast's legs. The ghoul shrieked—a sound like glass melting—and thrashed. Draum was flung aside, landing with a grunt and a thud.
The ground drank the creature whole.
Then silence.
Smoke curled from the cracks. The pulsing veins dimmed.
Boots echoed on the stairs.
Draum blinked upward and saw a shadow looming over him.
Vaelric.
Nyshara at his side.
"I hate both of you," Draum wheezed.
"We tried to stop you," Nyshara said mildly. "You sprinted off like a drunk squirrel."
"I was scouting!"
"You screamed about gold."
"Strategic gold scouting."
Vaelric offered a hand. Draum swatted it away and stood on his own with a wince.
"Next time," he grumbled, "I'm sending you to check the flesh-basement full of corpse puzzles. See how you like it."
Vaelric arched an eyebrow. "Noted."
The three stood in silence. The chamber seemed to exhale around them, the tension finally—barely—broken.
Nyshara glanced down at the obsidian floor. "There's something else beneath this."
Vaelric felt it too. The Codex at his back pulsed harder now. A heartbeat. A whisper. A summons.
Draum sighed. "Oh, lovely. Another basement. I swear if it starts bleeding again, I'm turning around."
Vaelric knelt and ran his hand across the floor. Symbols flickered beneath his palm—glyphs in a language older than even the Codex. One name burned brightest of all.
"Thraelmar."
The floor shuddered.
And beneath their feet…
Another gate began to stir.
Another name…
Waiting to be remembered.