God's Tree-Chapter 185: Echoes in the Stone

The forest opened slowly, like a wound revealing its deepest scar.

At first, it was subtle—less light filtering through the canopy, fewer living sounds. The root fragment at Argolaith's side glowed steadily, but the air around them grew cold. Not the cold of wind or season.

This was the chill of memory.

Ancient.

Buried.

Unwilling to be remembered.

As they stepped beyond the final veil of mist, the trees gave way to a clearing.

There, half-swallowed by earth and vine, lay a temple.

Its bones were of dark stone, veined with silver, carved with patterns that no longer held their shape. Obelisks surrounded it, toppled and cracked, and the stairs leading into its core were worn smooth by time and something heavier than footsteps.

"This is it," Argolaith said, voice barely more than a whisper.

Thae'Zirak hovered silently overhead.

Kaelred crossed his arms, eyeing the broken spires. "Looks more like a tomb than a temple."

Malakar knelt beside one of the pillars, running skeletal fingers over the runes etched in its surface.

"This was Yuneith's first sanctum. Before it was moved. Before someone broke the world's design."

Argolaith stepped forward. His rune pulsed. The root fragment flared like it had been waiting for this moment.

They entered.

The air shifted the moment they crossed the threshold.

The world dimmed.

The ceiling had long since collapsed in parts, allowing beams of pale light to spill across the floor. Moss crept along the stones, but there was no scent of rot—only age.

Too much age.

Time had not eroded this place.

Something older had worn it down.

The main hall was wide, with columns lining both sides, each carved in the shape of a tree trunk with spiraling branches stretching toward the center. Some had broken. Others still held firm, as if resisting the pull of centuries.

At the far end of the chamber, a raised platform stood beneath a shattered arch.

There, half buried in rubble, sat a throne of roots.

It wasn't just decoration—it was once part of the tree.

The roots twisted down into the stone, petrified by time, curling like skeletal fingers still gripping the world.

Argolaith moved toward it slowly.

Each step echoed, not through air—but through memory.

And the temple answered.

The moment he reached the center of the hall, the world shimmered.

Flickers of light—images—began to bloom like reflections on water.

Figures stood along the edges of the chamber. Hooded. Silent. Watching.

An older version of the temple appeared, translucent and glowing. The pillars whole, the arch unbroken, Yuneith's trunk rising directly through the roof in a column of silver flame.

And in the middle of the hall stood a young man.

Eyes bright. Hands trembling.

He looked a little like Argolaith, but not quite.

He approached the throne.

And spoke.

"Let me protect them. Let me become more than what they left behind."

The roots pulsed. The tree glowed.

But the vision didn't end in triumph.

Because in the next breath, the light consumed him.

He screamed.

And the vision shattered.

Argolaith gasped.

Kaelred's daggers were already out.

"What was that?"

Malakar stood slowly, eyes narrowed. "A memory. A failure."

Argolaith stepped toward the roots at the throne's base, now dark and brittle.

"He was chosen. But something went wrong."

"The tree judged him," Thae'Zirak said quietly. "And found him wanting."

Kaelred muttered, "Wonderful. We're walking through a monument to rejection."

"No," Argolaith said. "We're walking through a warning."

Behind the throne, hidden beneath a crumbling slab of stone, they found stairs leading downward.

The root fragment flared brighter now—like it had recognized the path forward.

The air below was colder still. Not deathly—but purposeful. The descent spiraled, deeper and deeper, until even the walls stopped showing signs of age. The stone here wasn't broken or eroded.

It was preserved.

Guarded.

They reached the base.

And before them stood a door.

Massive. Seamless. Covered in roots that were not part of the tree—but carved to look like them.

Argolaith reached out.

The roots split open, retracting like breath drawn inward.

The door creaked.

And the chamber beyond glowed with a pale green light.

It wasn't large.

But it pulsed.

A massive fragment of Yuneith's true root curled at the center of the room, suspended in midair, its bark inscribed with glowing runes in the shape of stars.

It beat like a heart.

Soft. Steady. Patient.

The air was thick with power.

Kaelred took a step back. "I don't like how alive it feels."

"It's a living memory," Malakar said. "The last true piece of the tree's original self."

Argolaith stepped forward.

The fragment recognized him.

The rune on his arm ignited, the same silver hue as the tree's light. The root fragment on his belt hummed in harmony.

Yuneith was near.

But this was not the final trial.

It was the threshold.

A final test would wait beyond this place.

And whatever lay ahead…

Argolaith now understood: it wasn't just power he would need.

It was understanding.

They made camp within the temple.

It wasn't warm, but it was dry. The air below ground carried no rot or stench, only the solemn chill of forgotten things. The chamber of the Rootheart offered a pale green glow that never dimmed, casting long shadows and painting their faces in light like moon-drenched mist.

Kaelred had fashioned a cooking pit near one of the still-standing support columns. He muttered often about the eerie silence, but his hands moved with habitual efficiency as he prepared meals with the herbs and preserved meat from Argolaith's storage ring.

Malakar sat near the entrance to the spiral stairs, his violet eyes half-lidded, meditating—or perhaps listening to whatever whispers haunted a lich's long memory.

Thae'Zirak remained in his smaller form, curled like a feline atop one of the cracked stone benches, eyes barely open but always watching.

Argolaith had not spoken much.

He couldn't.

Not with the Rootheart pulsing just beyond their camp like a quiet heartbeat, growing slightly stronger with every hour.

Something was drawing near.

And so was his trial.

But not yet.

On the third day, unable to sleep, Argolaith wandered deeper into the untouched corridors of the temple. He kept his hand near the root fragment hanging at his belt, which glowed faintly now even when he wasn't calling to it.

The stone beneath his feet shifted from cracked gray to smoother, darker slabs. As he passed beneath an arched ceiling, he noticed carvings long faded by time—scenes of trees with crowns of stars, beasts kneeling before their roots, and five lights arranged in a ring.

"Yuneith," he murmured, tracing one with his fingers.

But something else caught his eye.

A passage ahead sloped downward slightly, the floor littered with pieces of shattered stone and bone—old, ancient, brittle.

He turned a corner and saw it.

A dagger.

It was embedded deep in a black stone block, as if it had been hurled with such force it fused into the rock. The hilt was wrapped in faded leather, the guard flared like wings, and runes—faint and nearly erased—traced the blade.

But what made Argolaith freeze wasn't the weapon.

It was the bloodstain beneath it.

Still dark. Still clinging to the floor. As though time had been afraid to touch it.

He stepped forward slowly and reached out.

His fingers brushed the hilt.

And the world changed.

Flame.

Screams.

Stone shattering.

The roar of something vast.

Argolaith staggered as the memory seized him—not a vision like before, not illusion—but a real echo, preserved in the blade.

He was no longer himself.

He stood as someone else.

A warrior. Unknown. Cloaked in roots and wearing robes woven with leaves and stars. Around him, the temple was whole—glorious and glowing. And before him…

A battle.

Hooded figures flooded the chamber, magic lashing from their fingertips in violent waves. And at the center—

A great serpent, woven of shifting bark and silver flame, wrapped its body around the massive form of Yuneith, as if shielding it.

Someone was trying to take the tree.

Argolaith saw it clearly now—an artifact of black stone, shaped like a clawed hand, slamming into the base of Yuneith's roots.

Chains burst from the artifact, sinking into the tree's base.

The tree screamed—not in sound, but in light. Its glow flickered and warped.

The serpent roared and lunged at the invaders.

The warrior whose memory Argolaith now held sprinted forward and hurled the dagger—not at the enemy, but at the artifact.

The blade struck true.

But not before the artifact activated.

A brilliant surge of silver, black, and blue energy exploded outward.

The world fractured.

And the tree was gone.

Torn from the world. Uprooted not with violence—but with a technique older than magic.

The memory shattered.

Argolaith dropped to one knee, gasping.

The dagger still hummed faintly beneath his hand.

The bloodstain had not vanished.

And the air was colder now.

He stood slowly, eyes wide.

"They moved it… with a device," he whispered.

Kaelred's voice echoed faintly from the corridor behind. "Argolaith?"

Argolaith turned, clutching the dagger, heart still racing.

"They didn't carry it," he said aloud. "They ripped it through space. Through something deeper. They chained its essence and dragged it out of this world entirely."

Malakar appeared beside Kaelred, gaze sharp. "Impossible."

"No," Argolaith said, holding the dagger toward them. "They didn't break the world. They used a relic that predates it."

Malakar approached and touched the weapon.

He recoiled instantly.

"This… was crafted before the gods took names."

Argolaith looked back toward the chamber.

"They moved Yuneith once."

He turned, voice low.

"They may try to do it again."