Far above the Spirit Wilds, at the heart of the Spirit Kingdom, The Yggdrasil did not scream. It shuddered.

  Not violently. Not enough to alarm the lesser spirits who drifted along its roots and branches, humming their quiet purpose. It was subtler than that, it was a tremor felt only by those bound deeply to the tree’s essence.

  A subtle, almost imperceptible tremor rippled through its vast trunk, spreading outward through root and branch, through the unseen arteries that connected the Spirit World to every living thing beneath its dominion. Leaves of light fluttered from its canopy, dissolving into motes before they touched the ground.

  Only one being felt the disturbance for what it truly was.

  She stood alone at the heart of the court, barefoot upon living bark. The Yggdrasil rose behind her like a pillar holding the world aloft, its surface etched with ancient sigils that pulsed softly in layered hues of gold, emerald, and pale blue.

  The rhythm faltered.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Her breath caught.

  A thin fissure of crimson light crawled across the bark behind her, seeping like blood from a wound that should not exist. Sap dripped down the tree’s surface, dark and heavy, hissing faintly as it struck the stone floor.

  The Queen pressed a hand to her chest.

  Pain bloomed not physical, not emotional but existential. A sensation like a cord snapping somewhere deep within the web of her awareness. She reached inward, extending her perception through the Yggdrasil’s vast network, following the flow of Vita through the Spirit Realm.

  There.

  An absence.

  Not death, she knew what death felt like. This was wrongness. A hollow place where a presence of immense density had once existed.

  “…Oscar,” she whispered.

  Her eyes hardened.

  Around her, the Spirit Court stirred uneasily. Lesser attendants paused mid motion. Guardians tightened their grips on spectral weapons. Even the ambient glow of the hall dimmed slightly, as if the realm itself was holding its breath.

  “A High Spirit has fallen,” the Queen said, her voice calm but edged with steel. “And I do not know how.”

  That, more than the loss itself, unsettled her.

  “Summon a detachment,” she commanded. “Three from my court. No more.”

  The chosen spirits knelt at once.

  “Do not destroy what you find,” she continued. “Bring them to me. Alive, if possible. Whole, if not.”

  Her gaze drifted back to the bleeding bark of the Yggdrasil.

  Something ancient had shifted.

  And shifts like this never came without consequence.

  The Spirit Wilds were wrong.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Ato felt it before he saw it, the silence pressing in on him like weight. The usual hum of life was muted, as though the forest itself was grieving or afraid to draw attention.

  He knelt at the edge of the grave he had dug with his bare hands.

  The soil here resisted him at first, alive and unwilling, roots tightening like fingers around his wrists. He had forced himself to stop using Vita, grinding through the resistance with raw strength until his hands bled and his arms shook.

  He wanted this to hurt.

  Oscar lay before him.

  Or what remained of him.

  The humanoid form was intact, unnervingly peaceful. The sharpness that had once defined every line of his body, the tension, the readiness was gone. His silver hair spilled across the ground like liquid moonlight, his expression empty of the cruelty and conviction that had shaped him.

  Ato stared.

  Minutes passed.

  Hours.

  “I told myself I wouldn’t hesitate,” Ato said at last, his voice barely above a whisper. “That I wouldn’t care.”

  His throat tightened.

  “But I did.”

  He lifted Oscar’s body with careful hands, every movement deliberate, reverent. The spiritwood coffin he had crafted waited beside the grave, its surface etched with crude symbols of rest and passage not a ritual, just instinct.

  As Oscar’s body touched the wood, the world changed.

  A low hum filled the air.

  Red light leaked from Oscar’s chest in thin strands, coiling upward like smoke pulled by an unseen current. His form began to loosen, his flesh softening into glow, edges blurring, bones dissolving into drifting embers of essence.

  “No,” Ato breathed, panic surging. “Don’t–”

  He reached out.

  The instant his fingers brushed the dissolving light, agony tore through him.

  The essence did not ask.

  It colided

  Vita slammed into him like a tidal wave, raw and uncontrolled. Ato screamed as the light surged into his chest, burning and freezing at once. His knees buckled, vision fracturing as his heart hammered violently.

  Images flooded him.

  Forests erupting from barren land. Roots piercing armor and bone. Blood soaking into soil only to bloom into violent life. Hands gripping weapons he had never held. Movements etched into muscle memory that was not his.

  He tried to push it away.

  Tried to reject it.

  But Vita sought continuity.

  When it ended, Ato collapsed beside the grave, body convulsing. The coffin lay empty. Oscar was gone utterly, irrevocably.

  Ato retched until his throat burned, then curled inward, shaking. His veins glowed faintly red beneath his skin before fading again, leaving only exhaustion and something heavier.

  Something lodged inside him.

  Not Oscar.

  Not truly.

  Fragments. Echoes. Residue.

  A presence that did not speak, did not guide, only waited.

  Time lost meaning.

  Days blurred into weeks, or perhaps the reverse. Ato trained because stopping meant thinking. Thinking meant remembering.

  His healing had changed.

  Cuts sealed before pain could register. Bruises faded overnight. It disturbed him more than comforted him. The forest responded to him now in ways it hadn’t before grass bending slightly when he passed, roots shifting beneath his feet.

  At night, he dreamed.

  Oscar stood at the edge of his vision, always turned away.

  Once and only once he spoke.

  Endure.

  Ato woke up screaming.

  Eventually, he returned to the cabin.

  The door creaked open to silence. Weapons still hung where Oscar had left them. The table bore old scars from years of brutal sparring. Dust had begun to settle.

  Ato sank to the floor.

  He pressed his forehead against the wood, breathing shallowly.

  “I won’t forgive you,” he whispered. “But… I won’t forget you.”

  Then the air shifted.

  Three presences stepped into the clearing.

  Ato rose slowly, senses flaring.

  They did not hide. They did not threaten. Court sigils glimmered within their forms restrained, authoritative.

  One spoke.

  “You are the one who ended Oscar.”

  Ato met their gaze without flinching.

  “So what if I did?”

  A pause.

  Then: “You will come with us.”

  Ato glanced once at the cabin behind him.

  Then back at them.

  “…Fine.”

  —