The heat from the bracelet flared, a searing circle against her skin that felt like a brand. For a moment, the weaver's milky eyes widened, reflecting the violent light. The air smelled of ozone and scorched earth.
"I won't give it to you," she gasped, pulling her arm back."My memories are not currency."
The weaver's clicking laugh died instantly. The living shadows at its feet surged upward, forming jagged, blade-like shapes that sliced through the biouminescent moss."Then you are but mulch for the roots, little spark. The Wood eats what it cannot own."
As the shadows linged, she didn't run. Instinct, cold and sharp, took hold. She thrust her glowing wrist forward, not as a shield, but as a weapon.
The bracelet didn't just pulse—it screamed.
A weave of lilac energy erupted from the metal, a physical force that slammed into the weaver and tore through the surrounding canopy. Leaves disintegrated into silver ash. The creature let out a high, melodic shriek as it's shadow-cloak was shredded into nothingness, revealing a spindly, trembling frame underneath.
The force of the blast threw her backward. She hit the damp earth hard, the breath knocked from her lungs. When she finally looked up, the Weaver was gone, leaving only a scroached circle on the trunk of the weeping willow.
But the silence that followed was different. It wasn't th heavy silence of the deep woods; it was the silence of something—or many somethings—waking up in the distance. The forest had stopped speaking. It was beginning to hunt.