"Run, little fire."
Easy for a thousand-year-old tree living underground to say—one that's never had to worry about trivial things like lactic acid or breathing.
I, on the other hand, had two legs, and both were screaming for mercy as I bolted through the cavern, trying to avoid becoming the next meal for a very angry ecosystem that definitely wasn't observing meatless Fridays.
The ground shook with each step of the Collector. BOOM. BOOM.
Each impact resonated in my ribcage like a cannon shot. The Collector was trying to fuse my flesh with its bark, erasing every boundary between me and the forest.
As I ran, the roots forming the floor tried to grab my ankles. Those appendages brushed against me with slimy, coiling caresses, trying to glue me to the ground with every step.
I could feel the forest's hunger. A desperate, feverish hunger. I sensed no anger—it simply wanted to use me, absorb me.
I was a lantern full of oil in a world going dark. The forest was sick, wounded by Lucien's corrupted magic and human violence, and it saw in my green, vital aura—enhanced by the graft that could save it—the perfect medicine.
It wanted to dissolve me, drink my essence, transform my soul into fresh sap for its dried-up veins. Become part of the whole. An eternal, silent nourishment for a dying wooden god.
Honestly? I preferred the guillotine. At least that was quick.
I threw myself into a slide behind a column of intertwined roots an instant before a fist of stone and bark, as big as a wine barrel, crashed where I'd been a second earlier. Wood splinters exploded everywhere, cutting my cheek.
"Missed!" I shouted, more to give myself courage than to mock it. "Aim a little to the left if you want to give me an affectionate pat!"
The Collector didn't appreciate the sarcasm. It stopped, towering above me. It opened its mouth—a hideous, jagged gash in the dark bark—and inhaled.
All the air in the cavern seemed to be sucked into its cavernous chest, leaving me in a momentary vacuum that made my ears whistle.
And then, it screamed.
What hit me was the roar of a compressed storm, a deafening shriek foreign to any human throat. The expelled air hissed through the thousands of hollow branches, knots and cracks in its body, exploding in a dissonant harmony of crazed flutes playing the world's funeral march.
That cold bit into my skin with terrifying familiarity. It reeked of stagnant water and fog, a damp smell that shouldn't exist down here. My body reacted before my mind: a liquid shiver ran down my spine, the exact same shiver I'd felt on the banks of the Ill River, facing Hans's blind eyes.
But if that night had been a whisper, this was a scream. A cannon of air aimed straight at me.
The shock wave hit me full force, lifting me off the ground like a dry leaf and hurling me violently against the back wall of the cavern.
The impact knocked the breath and the wisecracks out of me. I slid to the ground, dazed, while the wind continued to howl, trying to tear off my skin, my clothes, my very will to resist. My eyes watered, my throat burned.
The Golem advanced. Slow. Relentless. A mountain of branches and leaves walking through the storm it had created.
I was backed against a wall. Literally. The roots of the wall behind me began to move, weaving a web to welcome me, to absorb me now that I was stunned. I could feel the moss pressing against the back of my neck, damp and inviting, whispering promises of eternal, silent peace.
Let go, it seemed to say. Stop burning. Become earth.
I closed my eyes, panic giving way to cold resignation. I had no weapons that could hurt stone. My magic was useless against the very source of my power.
I searched for a handhold, something to cling to so I wouldn't be swept away physically and spiritually. My hand, trembling and numb, slipped into the inner pocket of my torn jacket.
And my fingers brushed silk.
Suddenly, the deafening roar of the storm seemed to move away.
It became muffled, though not vanishing, distant—like I was underwater. Or safe inside a stone house while a hurricane raged outside.
Touching that black plume, a sensation of absolute calm washed over me, rising from my arm to my heart. I didn't sense the warm, pulsing magic of my medallion. The feverish heat of the graft was swept away by sudden stability. I felt like I was standing on sturdy wooden planks in the middle of a rapid current. An immovable certainty: the water could rage all it wanted, but that boat would never capsize.
The River always flows. The River doesn't stop for rocks, it flows around them.
"When the wind changes..."
Hans's hoarse voice came back to me, clear in that chaos, overlapping with the Golem's scream.
That damned blind old man. He knew. Had he known exactly what I was about to face? But he hadn't given me a weapon—on the contrary, he'd given me an anchor.
I opened my eyes. The Collector was a few steps from me, its stone fist raised for the final blow, the wind coming from its body capable of flaying a man alive.
But I wasn't trembling anymore. The fear had been washed away by the invisible current now flowing through my veins.
I pulled my hand from my pocket. I held the plume gently between my fingers, high, visible in the green twilight of the cavern, letting the faint phosphorescent light of the moss illuminate it.
A small, fragile black feather against a storm of primordial rage.
"I am not your nourishment!" I shouted, my voice steady, amplified by that strange river-calm, rising above the whistle of the wind. "I am a passenger!"
The effect was immediate and terrifying.
The wind stopped abruptly. As if an iron door had been slammed in the storm's face.
The silence that followed was so deafening it made my ears ring.
The Collector's fist stopped mid-air, suspended like an interrupted avalanche.
The two luminous slits that served as eyes fixed on the black feather. The entire forest seemed to hold its breath. The roots that had been trying to grab me from behind recoiled with a hiss, retreating into the wall like worms that had touched salt.
There was no fear in the Golem, but recognition. An ancient, deep, almost religious respect.
The Forest was the Earth. But Hans... was the River. And the River flows through the Earth, nourishes it, cuts through it, but never belongs to it.
It wasn't a simple bureaucratic pass but an ancestral warning.
I understood in that instant that between Earth and Water there existed a pact older than the mountains themselves. The Forest could claim bodies and feed roots, but the River... the River was the ultimate boundary. It was what flowed beneath and beyond. Hans wasn't just an old ferryman; he was the guardian of that threshold. And that feather screamed in a silent language the Collector knew all too well: "This one belongs to the current. Touch it, and you'll have to deal with the Tide."
I was untouchable—it wasn't a written rule, but I had become as forbidden as a rival god's altar. Even the Ancient Forest knew there are wars not worth starting.
The Collector slowly lowered its arm. Its massive body emitted a deep sound, like logs settling after a storm.
It took a step back. Then another.
"The toll is accepted," the residual wind coming from its cracks seemed to murmur.
Then it happened—the monster stopped being a monster.
The two green lights in its eyes went out. The magic holding that impossible form together dissolved. With a sound reminiscent of a gravel avalanche, the Collector collapsed in on itself. The stones rolled away, the moss settled on the ground, the branches that formed the arms fell inert.
In a few seconds, before me was no longer a guardian, but a pile of natural debris, indistinguishable from the rest of the cavern. It had returned to the earth, its task finished, its hunt canceled by a single black feather.
I stood staring at the pile of earth for a long moment, my heart beginning to beat at an almost normal rhythm.
The wall of roots behind the pile slowly opened, revealing a narrow, steep tunnel rising upward. A smell of fresh air, of night and roses, drifted down to me.
The exit.
I looked at the feather in my hand. It vibrated slightly, like the needle of a crazed compass, pointing straight at that hole.
"Thanks, Hans," I whispered. "Next time, though, maybe warn me that the ticket also includes avoiding being eaten by a tree."
The moment I spoke those words, the feather crumbled between my fingers. It became a fine black powder, like ash, that didn't fall to the ground but flew away, rising up the air current toward the tunnel, tracing a trail in the darkness.
The safe-conduct was single-use, and I'd just spent it.
I squeezed into the tunnel, climbing up the earth and roots with what strength I had left. The ascent was brutal, every muscle protesting, but fear of what I was leaving behind was an excellent motivator.
The exit was just an irregular crack in the ground, hidden among the bushes. I hauled myself out, coughing, ready to face the darkness and cold of the wild forest.
Instead, the air that hit me smelled of roses and wax.
I had emerged in the Manor's garden.
And the music began to play.