Lifeweaver: The Mage Without Flame

Eryndor stood in the quivering grove, vines twisting around him like a living crown. The corrupted forest seethed with purple flames and wailing screams, but he remained—heartstone ablaze, spirit unshaken.

Above, the canopy erupted asunder in response, great swords of root burning emerald and gold.

Sylrae and Fayra fell back, shields up. Sylven stood beside Eryndor, ready.

Ashwyn wavered between fire and shadow, features contorted in agony.

Then Caelen came back—trembling, white, gasp-stricken. He stumbled towards Eryndor, clenching his wrist-mark, as if remembering it.

Eryndor exhaled a sudden breath. "You're back."

Caelen nodded. "Your bond sustained me. The Spiral… re-shaped itself around me."

Sylrae reached for him. "Are you…?"

"Alive," he rasped, eye darting among the corrupted. "But at the cost of others so that I could come back."

Eryndor looked upon the corrupted ones: some trembling, some slumped, some withdrawing into shadowed limbs.

He placed his hand on a vineroot near Caelen. It glowed, then relaxed. A shiver of breath—life returning to charred earth.

He stood before Ashwyn once more, the other standing resolute but wounded. Fire flared across his wolven form, purple and silver.

"You still refer to it as choice," Ashwyn flung at him. "You regain what I broke. But I will not give in."

Eryndor drew breath. "Then I will keep pushing root, until your ruin is naught but memory."

Ashwyn's flame-surge intensified. A wave of cloak summoned acidic ember-vines that caught at Eryndor.

Sylrae deflected each strike. Fayra helped with flash bursts of root-light. Caelen had rigid, spastic arms.

Eryndor took a breath and stretched out his hand. Roots uncoiled underneath him into filaments that curled up like fingers of light.

They reached the poisoned vines, running along their surfaces and untangling poison.

Each touch soothed flame to dew-like glow in green births.

Ashwyn's fury splintered. "You touch my ruin and call it healing?"

Eryndor stood strong. "There is no ruin the Spiral will not mend—if we hold."

With a scream, Ashwyn hurled root-flame splinters downward. The earth convulsed.

Eryndor moved across the vines, placing each foot with power, not force, but with care.

He took Ashwyn's arm and placed his palm against the stained bark.

A wave of living fire propagated through the ruin, shockwave transmogrifying flame into petals.

Ashwyn froze, eyes wide.

Then breathed deeply. The embers of flame dropped to the ground in sparks. His aura eased to grey mist.

Eryndor took hold of Ashwyn in gentle pressure. "Yours to release—or to reclaim."

Flames dwindled. Memory returned. Fingers trembled. Then nothing.

Ashwyn stared at his hands, his eyes vacant.

You… healed me." His voice cracked from the weight of wonder.

"I held root," Eryndor said. **"You let it in."**

Silence, for a moment. Then Ashwyn dropped to his knees.

The corrupted forest still trembled—but so did the roots that had been reborn.

Sylrae knelt beside Ashwyn, checking his pulse. Fayra had her arms wrapped tightly about Caelen. Sylven growled guardedly in warning.

The forest breathed—tentative, trying to be whole again."

Far within the Seedgrove's shadows, a long-dormant thing was awakened. A whisper of essential root animated. And at the boundary of the grove, where mists thickened, one vine curved into life—its very tip afire with violet and gold flame.

Then it spoke, not in voice, but in precision:

"You have healed some… but forgotten many."

The voice trembled over each leaf, each root, and each trembling stem. It was not rage, but it seethed huge. Ancient. Heavy with patience, but laced with dismay.

Eryndor spun to the sound, pounding heart. The others felt it too. Sylven even whimpered, low and strained.

Far off on the edge of the clearing, mist took on form. Not an animal exactly—rather a huddle of roots curled up into human shape. It moved forward as if with each motion, the earth was growing beneath its feet. Flowers opened and fell behind it with each step.

Ashwyn breathed softly, barely audible. "The Verdant Echo…"

Sylrae tensed. "It's a myth."

But Eryndor recognized. Somewhere, deep within the bottom of his spine, deep within the root of his core, he recognized this creature. Life force throbbed with recognition. As though the very heart of the Spiral itself had been born to speak.

"Verdant Echo," Eryndor said quietly, "we were only attempting to heal."

The creature had no eyes, and yet it stared at him. It reached out with a finger made of braided vines.

"You have stirred what should have been dreaming."

Eryndor swallowed hard. "The Spiral chose me. I didn't seek this power."

The Echo leaned its head, as the wind bends an ancient oak. "And power is more than an answer to destiny, however."

Fayra stood by Eryndor. "So, explain it to us. Don't make more of this world our enemy."

The Echo looked at her with a spark. "Not the first to plead mercy from the heart of the Grove. Few listen. Few remember."

It stretched forth and drew something from the ground. A tiny sprig of silverroot flowered in its palm—then blackened, shattered to ash, and vanished.

Ashwyn staggered. "It is the guardian of balance. The memory of what was lost."

Sylrae's gaze narrowed. "Friend or enemy?"

Caelen looked at Eryndor. "That's his choice to make."

Eryndor stepped closer. "You told us that we've forgotten a lot. Forgotten what?"

The Verdant Echo opened its arms wide. Roots pulsed in sequence along its body. "Life energy is not simply to heal. It is to remember. You walked among devastation and resurrected them, but never asked why they were brought down."

There was an awkward silence in the grove.

Eryndor took a breath, "You mean… we revived what didn't wish revival?

"Others must scar," the Echo continued. "Or the cycle is broken."

Fayra frowned. "Then what is our path?"

The Echo's form trembled. "Not mastery, but balance. Not healing, but hearing. You must remember the Old Roots—the ones buried under flame and silence."

And then it began to dissolve. Not vanish, but retreat—its form unraveling into mist and leaf.

As it did, it left behind one tendril—a root-thread still smoldering violet and gold.

Eryndor extended and stroked it.

A surge of recollection swept through him—scorched wars, generations past, cities devouring forests, spirits screaming as their life was sucked out to fuel magefire.

And at the heart of it all, one charcoal-blackened, cracked tree, sap that wept silver tears.

He stepped back, gasping. "The Heartwood…"

Ashwyn turned aside. "I tried to access it once. And failed."

Eryndor steeled himself. "So we will not fail again."

Fog closed around them once more. And far beneath their feet, beneath root and ruin, something moved. Not alive—not dead quite yet.

A sigh rocked the ground, old and wincing.

The Heartwood stirred.

Dusk's radiance faded over the Seedgrove, dyeing shudders of gold and violet through the mist. The fog-wrapped healing energy of the chalice was gone to him now, displaced by question, memory, and weight. Eryndor breathed deep, chilled hands clasped about the root-thread the Verdant Echo had abandoned. Every pulse in his body thrummed with possibility—and terror.

Behind him, Sylrae and Fayra moved stealthily, recovering their balance. Sylven moved silently to the perimeter, sensing the change. Ashwyn stood back, shoulders folded—but no longer burned with flame. Caelen rested at Eryndor's feet, white but alive, his eyes flaring as if new life coursed beneath.

Eryndor looked at the lit tendril in his hand. Then he clicked his jaw, deliberating consciously. "We have to leave," he said. "The Heartwood is awakening."

Fayra nodded, blowing away fog from her head. "If we tarry, that grove will be the battlefield."

Sylrae whispered, too, "Or the nursery. But healing is not all that takes."

They stood before the mist-wrapped path into the deeper heart of the grove. Beyond it was the Heartwood—ancient root-core where Spiral's birth vibrated softly. Beyond it was the ruin they hoped to halt.

At the beginning of the path, the ridge's root-wolf moved forward, as if to guard their path. It scented the root-thread in Eryndor's hand and bowed before them. Eryndor bowed in gratitude and then moved inside.

Each step deeper felt like walking between time's pulses. Soil beneath them shimmered with faint glyphs, long forgotten, waiting to awaken. Vines dripped moisture like tears. The air thickened. The remnants of ruin hovered between branches.

Suddenly, Fayra's voice broke the silence. "Look there."

In front of them, in a clear patch demarcated by gnawed and splintered root-shards, lay a figure slumped against a curving root pillar. Wearing grey-brown robes, tattered, singed, and travel-stained. Head bowed.

They advanced—but the figure shifted, standing in agony.

Eryndor's heart skittered. "Valdris?"

The figure nodded slowly, a look of pain etched on his face. "I failed again."

Eryndor rushed to kneel beside him. Sylrae and Fayra supported him. Caelen stepped back, eyes wide in shock. Sylven sniffed the old mage once, heart pounding.

Valdris lifted a trembling hand. On his palm, the spiral glyph flickered faintly. His eyes burned green fire.

"I came to stop the Spiral's bleed," he gasped. "To rebind the root—but destruction followed."

Eryndor exhaled. "You tried to cure the Heartwood."

Valdris nodded. "I believed I could repair the fractures. But I was weak. The root-shard was Ashwyn's destruction. I. I couldn't keep it."

Sylrae shifted. "Valdris, you should have told us."

Valdris shut his eyes. "Because I was in the fracture. I thought I'd forgotten. But destruction left its signature in me anyway."

Fayra's voice trembled. "What now?"

Valdris stood—green-glow deepened. "Now. We go to the Heartwood. Together."

Eryndor rose, voice resolute. "Then we bring not only healing, but listening."

He held out his hand. Valdris took it tightly.

And they drew the firm on forward into darkest darkness. The air grew thin, revealing huge coiled roots beneath the branches—roots cracked with running seams of void and life. Between them stood a giant tree: cracked bark silvered with ancient blot and dried resin.

The Heartwood.

Eryndor's hand stung. The root-thread drifted up and slipped into the Heartwood's huge gash. It pulsed—then aligned.

From beneath the roots of the tree, a soft hum swelled to resonance. The Spiral responded.

Sylrae breathed: "It's alive once more."

The scar in the Heartwood began to glow green-gold. Violet patches dissolved at the edges. Life threads branched along its veins.

But something deeper stirred in the wound—shadows writhing amidst newly emerging rings.

A voice thundered—not echo, but memory in the air:

"He binds. He recalls. But who will recall us?"

Eryndor's chest tightened. He gazed down the splintered line of roots. Shadows crept at the edges of the Heartwood—assuming forms that were like usurpers of the past: forms of blaze and destruction.

One shape burst free. It stepped forward—a shape like vine-obsidian, face lost in shadows. Eyes of flame-shadow fixed upon Eryndor.

Sylrae gasped. Fayra cowered back. Even the root-wolf growled.

The stat raised a hand, and with it there poured an influx of violet flame-root that coalesced into the Chalice Light shards—warped this time with void.

The Heartwood shook.

Valdris exhaled softly: "A ruin you did not see. A claim you did not make."

Eryndor squared his shoulders. **"But I will hear it—and I will choose."

The shadow figure bowed—a twisted crown of flowered ruin.

With a wave of its arm, the figure obliterated the Tree's healing pulse. The radiance of the Heartwood shattered.

Roots splintered. Blotchy violet erupted at its center.

Sylven yelped. The root-wolf howled.

Roots clutched Eryndor, as if to hold him in place. The root-thread brand on his palm blazed with a scream.

The figure moved forward, roots snapping into thorned rigidity. The Heartwood still split, heart-like cracks growing wider.

The broken chalice shards swirled overhead—now shard-blades cutting violet void.

Eryndor extended his arms.

He set for a disbinding.

The grove trembled as the Claimant lifted a shard and uttered in a whisper:

"I call the ruin back home."