The mists of the forest clung to their ankles like reluctant memories as Bedwyr, Gwyn, Skif, and Galahad pressed deeper. The light behind them had long since faded, swallowed by the ancient canopy. What passed for daylight here was a dim haze, filtered through leaves so old they whispered in languages no Fae remembered.

Gwyn moved first, her eyes sharp and her hand never far from the hilt of her greatsword. Galahad followed closely, quiet as the grave, but watchful. Bedwyr brought up the rear, one hand on his silver blade and the other resting on the neck of his lyre. Skif hovered close to his shoulder, her usual commentary dulled by the weight of the woods.

“What do you feel?” Bedwyr asked quietly.

“The trees are tense,” Skif replied. “Like they’re bracing for something.”

Gwyn paused ahead, laying a palm against the bark of a massive tree. Her tattoos shimmered faintly, golden warmth pressing against the cold silence of the forest. She frowned. “There’s a ward here. Something old. Broken.”

Galahad stepped beside her. “This was a border, once.”

“Between what?” Bedwyr asked, stepping forward.

The knight hesitated. “Life and whatever this is now.”

They passed through what felt like a threshold, the moment unnoticed until the air thickened around them. The woods here were twisted, not with cruelty, but with despair. Trees leaned too close, their trunks gnarled like fists. The ground pulsed faintly, veins of some bioluminescent moss writhing underfoot.

They reached a clearing where the trees grew in a perfect ring, and in the centre stood a figure.

It wore a mask of bark and bone, its body slender and dry like a tree stripped bare. Long limbs hung at its sides like empty sleeves, and faint green mist clung to its shoulders. It stood unmoving, but every instinct screamed danger.

“A Spirit Warden?” Skif whispered.

“No,” Bedwyr said, voice low. “Look at its roots.”

Dark tendrils curled outward from beneath the figure’s feet, tapping into the moss, poisoning it.

The masked figure stepped forward, and the forest seemed to recoil. Roots twisted out of the soil like serpents, pulsing with a dull green glow, and the trees leaned as if trying to shield their faces.

Gwyn raised her sword in a defensive guard, but didn’t advance. “You’re no Spirit Warden. What are you?”

The figure laughed, dry and hollow. “Once? I sang to the roots. I danced in moonlight. I tended the Grove. Now I am what your Courts forgot.”

Skif flitted behind Bedwyr’s shoulder, visibly trembling. “It’s a Wight. A Grove Wight. They’re Dryads… when the tree dies and the soul doesn’t pass on.”

“A ghost,” Bedwyr murmured. His hand hovered over his lyre, fingers twitching toward the strings. “A trapped song.”

“You tread near Titania’s Veil,” the Wight rasped, voice shifting like broken wood. “The Goddess has abandoned her old wards. Her silence grows roots of its own.”

“We’re not here to fight you,” Galahad said again, but there was less certainty in his voice. “We seek the truth. The Spirit Trees are failing. Something is poisoning the roots.”

The Wight’s empty mask fixed on him. “The truth is rot.”

With a sudden screech, it flung out an arm, and the roots surged forward, lashing like whips. Gwyn was faster, her greatsword met the first wave of vines with a blast of sun-charged heat, cleaving through the corrupted bark. Bedwyr followed suit, his fingers striking a chord that sent a shockwave through the clearing, music turned to magic, harmonic and cutting.

The Wight screamed, recoiling as shimmering notes tore through the mist. “You carry dusk and dawn,” it hissed. “But the Gloam comes beneath both.”

More roots surged. Galahad raised his shield and braced the line, blocking a blow meant for Skif. “We don’t have time for this!” he barked.

“We’re making time,” Bedwyr shouted, spinning into motion. He slashed with his silver blade, a weapon forged for beauty but stained by purpose. The roots hissed as silver met soil-born darkness.

Gwyn shouted a war cry, a single, piercing syllable of the old tongue. Fire bloomed around her as her blade cleaved the Wight’s mask in two. Beneath it was not a face, but a tangle of moss and sorrow. The thing collapsed, twitching and shrivelling into ash.

Silence fell, broken only by the crackling of fading embers.

Skif landed hard on a branch, wings flickering. “That was no accident. It knew who we were.”

Bedwyr’s voice was low. “Why did it blame Titania?”

“And it mentioned the Gloam,” Galahad added grimly. “That’s three times now. Always in whispers. Always near death.”

Gwyn looked down at the ash where the Wight had fallen. “We’re close to something. I can feel it under the soil.”

Bedwyr met her gaze. “Then we keep going.”

They pressed on, deeper into the forest, each step taken in wary silence. Behind them, the forest sighed, but whether in relief or anticipation, none could say.