The silence after the Verdant King's declaration was more oppressive than the thunderous thoughts. It was the quiet of a verdict passed. Arrion could see the brutal logic in it—a cosmic purging fire to burn out a cosmic infection. But it was a logic that saw Hearthstone, Elara and Lyra, Borryn's laughter, and Father Alden's green-eyed faith as acceptable collateral damage. They were the "quiet ones" who would be silenced in the roar of the mountain's fall.
He could not accept it. Not as a Warden's son, sworn to protect thresholds, not destroy them. Not as a nephew and a brother-by-oath. The defiance that had carried him through Ralke's assassins and the lightning-giant's trials now burned cold and sharp.
"No," Arrion said, the word cutting through the glade's charged stillness.
The great amber eyes, fixed on a distant, bloody horizon, swung back to him. The pulsing light in the antlers flared, a warning. The stone-beasts grumbled, a sound of grinding tectonics.
YOU REFUSE THE COURSE? YOU, WHO CAME TO PETITION? The psychic voice held not just anger, but a profound, weary incredulity.
"I refuse the cost," Arrion clarified, standing his ground beneath that god-like gaze. "You are the King of the *Whispering Weald*. Your first duty is *here*. To the roots that know your tread, the groves that hold your memory. You would march to a foreign mountain to wage a war that might take seasons, while the blight *here* festers and kills every living thing you leave behind. You would save the idea of a forest by letting your own kingdom die."
He took a step forward, his own aura of gathering storm—the nascent power of his Adept rank and the thrumming legacy in his blood—pushing back against the divine fury. "That is not strategy. It is despair wearing the mask of wrath."
The accusation hung between them. The Verdant King did not strike him down. The ancient intelligence within those eyes was calculating, weighing the insult against the truth it might contain.
THE SOURCE MUST BE DESTROYED, the King insisted, but the thought was less a decree, more a pained statement of fact. THE BLIGHT IS A SPELL. ITS HEART BEATS IN THE DARK. UNTIL THAT HEART IS PIERCED, ANY EFFORT HERE IS A BANDAGE ON A SEVERED ARTERY, AS YOU SAW.
"Then let the hand that wields the knife be the one to pierce it," Arrion said, the plan crystallizing as he spoke, born of desperation and a wild, reckless hope. "You say I am of my father's line. A Warden. My duty is to the thresholds. This blight is a breach—not of space, but of natural law. Let me go to the source. Let me face the Glutton's servants, the shamans, Ralke himself. My fight is with them. It has always been with them."
He gestured to the towering, awakened geography around them. "Your war is here. Your power is the land. Use it. Not to march away, but to *fortify*. Hold the blight at the Black Creek. Contain its spread. Burn it back with your will, tree by tree if you must. Give the land a fighting chance to resist while the poison's font is attacked. Be the shield, not just the sword."
He saw it then—a flicker in the vast consciousness before him. Not agreement, but a moment of strategic recalculation. The King was an entity of deep, patient growth and sudden, devastating seasons. Arrion was proposing a division of labor that played to their respective natures.
YOU ARE ONE MORTAL, the King thought, the concept dripping with skepticism. YOU WOULD WALK INTO THE MOUNTAIN-HOLDS OF THE CORRUPTED, INTO THE DOMAIN OF A HUNGER THAT CONSUMES WORLDS. YOU WOULD DIE, AND YOUR DEATH WOULD MEAN NOTHING.
"I am one mortal with a Warden's blood and a Warden's sword," Arrion countered, his hand resting on the star-dusted scabbard of Nightshade. "My father went to the mountains for a reason. Perhaps he sought the same crack you feel. I carry his purpose, and I carry a debt of vengeance that gives my 'nothing' a sharp edge. The Glutton and its servants know the forest. They do not know me."
He pressed his advantage, the hunter in him sensing a shift in the wind. "And I will not be alone. My uncle knows the loyalty of men who have been wronged. The Pathfinders in Oakhaven hunt for gold and glory; what greater bounty than the salvation of a continent? The Draken of Ashfall hate the shamans as rivals and defilers. Even the Empire, if its borders are threatened by spreading blight, might finally look east. I can be the spark. You… you must be the unbreakable dam."
The glade was silent again, but the silence had changed. The air still crackled, but the fury was being tempered, forged into a colder, more deliberate purpose. The stone-beasts watched, their immense patience now focused on this parley.
YOU BARGAIN FOR THE SOULS OF YOUR HIVE, the King mused, a trace of that ancient, terrible judgment returning. YOU ASK ME TO GUARD THEM WHILE YOU WAGE THEIR WAR.
"I bargain for the life of *your* forest," Arrion corrected, his voice steel. "And for a chance to prove that not all of the hive is diseased. That some of us can be the cure. My village, my family—they are the proof. Protect them, and you protect the best of what we are. Let me hunt the worst of what we can become."
It was the crux of it. Not an appeal to mercy, but to strategic interest. The Verdant King was being offered a chance to save his own kingdom *and* test Arrion's audacious claim—that humanity contained within it not just the cancer, but also the potential antibody.
The colossal stag lowered its head until the fortress of its antlers was level with Arrion's face. The smell of petrichor and deep earth washed over him, but beneath it was the iron scent of ozone and the cold of stone. Those amber eyes, each larger than his skull, bored into him, seeing past muscle and bone into the core of his will.
YOU WILL GO TO THE MOUNTAINS. YOU WILL FIND THE HEART OF THE POISON AND STOP ITS BEAT. YOU WILL DO THIS BEFORE THE BLIGHT REACHES THE OLDEST GROVES, THE PLACES WHERE THE WORLD'S MEMORY SLEEPS.
It was not a request. It was a condition, a timeline set by the slow, inexorable spread of death in the King's own veins.
AND IF YOU FAIL? IF YOU DIE IN THE DARK, OR PROVE TOO WEAK?
"Then you lose nothing but a mortal who was already dead," Arrion said simply. "And you are free to unleash the Bones of the World. Your war will go on, and Hearthstone will have had a few more weeks of life because you held the line here. It is a better bargain for you than marching away today."
The truth of it was undeniable. The King was risking nothing but a sliver of hope.
A sound echoed in Arrion's mind, not a voice, but a sensation—the deep, resonant click of a colossal lock turning, of a fate being accepted. The Verdant King raised its head, its antlers scraping the sky.
SO BE IT, WARDEN'S SON.
The air shimmered. From the King's crest, where the living moss was densest, a single, gnarled thorn the length of Arrion's forearm broke free. It was not shed, but **offered**, floating on a current of green-gold light to hover before him. It hummed with condensed vitality, a sliver of the King's own defensive will.
CARRY THIS. IN THE PLACES WHERE THE GLUTTON'S BREATH IS THICK, IT MAY ANCHOR YOU TO LIFE. IT WILL ALSO BE MY EYE. I WILL SEE THE DARK YOU WALK. DO NOT TRY TO HIDE FROM IT.
Arrion took the thorn. It was warm, heavier than steel, and vibrated in his grip with a low, steady pulse that synced with his own heartbeat. A tracking device and a lifeline, given by a being who trusted nothing, but was willing to gamble on a single, stubborn thread of possibility.
GO. THE DAM WILL HOLD. BUT THE WATER RISES. DO NOT TARRY.
With that final, urgent thought, the audience was over. The Verdant King turned its back, a continent pivoting away. The stone-beasts shifted, their attention returning to some deep, silent conference of minerals and pressure. The mustering in the glade continued, but its vector had changed. The army would not march east. It would dig in, become a living wall against the creeping rot.
Arrion clutched the warm, living thorn, the weight of the new bargain settling on his shoulders heavier than any armor. He had just committed to a suicide mission into the heart of his enemy's power to save a forest god's kingdom and buy time for his family. He had no army, no plan, only a sword, a bow, a thunderous will, and now, a king's reluctant, conditional faith.
He turned and left the glade, the scent of fire and thunder now receding behind him, replaced by the grim, decaying sweetness of the blight ahead. He was no longer just a fugitive or a hunter. He was a promise made to a force of nature. And he had to go home and tell his family he was leaving to wage a one-man war against a mountain.