“I won’t,” Dar said, low and fierce. “I gave my word.”
The forest closed tighter around them, branches knitting together, undergrowth rising thick and wild. Somewhere ahead, the land dipped, dark and unseen, drawing them deeper.
Beyond paths.
Beyond tracking.
Dar rode straight into it, and then the forest changed.
Dar felt it before he saw it, his instincts misfiring, the familiar rhythm of hunt and flight slipping out of alignment. This was no chase that he understood. No trail to read. No wind to test. The forest was in command of the hunt.
That unsettled him more than the thought of pursuit.
A pressure rolled through the air behind them, subtle but wrong, like heat before flame. His horse snorted, ears flattening as it surged forward again, hooves pounding earth that no longer felt solid, but alive, shifting, resisting, guiding.
Amelia streaked back to him, her glow dimming, flaring again. “They cut through what should not be cut,” she warned. “They bend the land instead of listening to it.”
Dar’s mouth tightened. “That won’t help them.”
Yet even as he said it, his chest tightened, not with fear, but with something deeper. A memory. A pull.
This land was not resisting him.
It was awakening him.
The thought struck hard enough to steal his breath. As the old tales whispered, Hunters once belonged to the land. Not trackers. Not killers. But keepers. Listeners. Guardians. Something his blood remembered even if his mind had been trained to forget.
His horse veered sharply again, choosing a path no Hunter would ever take, through tangled briar and low-hanging branches that tore at cloak and skin. Dar ducked instinctively, curling tighter around Elara, shielding her from every strike.
“Elara,” he murmured, not knowing if she could hear. “Stay with me.”
As if in answer, her fingers twitched against his chest.
Dar froze for half a heartbeat.
“Elara?” he whispered again, hope and terror colliding in his voice.
Her breath hitched just once. Barely there but real.
At the same moment, the forest screamed.
Not aloud and not in sound, but with force.
A shockwave rippled through the trees behind them, branches snapping, leaves tearing free, the air itself shuddering as something tore a path where none should exist.
“They are close,” Amelia cried, panic sharpening her voice. “The warlock presses hard. He forces the forest to remember fear.”
Dar felt it then, the truth of it settling into his bones.
He could not outrun magic by skill alone.
So, he did something he had never done, he surrendered—to the forest.
“Help us,” he said aloud, not to Amelia, not to any creature he could name. “She belongs to you as much as she does to me.”
The words tasted strange, yet right.
The response was immediate.