Cael ran.
Roots tore at his boots, branches clawed his face, but he didn't stop.
Not when the Scabbard hissed against his spine.
Not when the Ash-Knight's fire-brand lit the woods behind him with flickering doom.
Not even when the voice returned—closer now.
"You bleed, child… you run…Even thorns must choose their ground."
The Thornwood swallowed him.
The trees grew twisted here, not by wind or age, but by something older. Vines slithered across bark like veins. Moss clung to the air like breath. Light dimmed, not from nightfall—but from the forest deciding it had seen enough of him.
Cael crashed through a curtain of hanging nettle and nearly lost his footing as the ground dropped beneath him.
He tumbled.
Rolled through muck and rot and came to rest in a hollow choked with briar and bone.
Snap.
Behind him.
A shape moved through the trees—slow, deliberate, metallic.
The Ash-Knight had followed.
Cael gripped a low branch and hauled himself to his feet.
His breath came in broken gasps. Blood ran down his cheek. The Scabbard pulsed like a second heart against his spine.
He turned to run again—when he saw her.
She stood not ten paces away, barefoot, wrapped in a cloak of living vines and crow feathers. Hair the color of dying leaves. Eyes black as riverstone.
She did not blink.
She did not breathe.
The forest knelt for her.
"You carry the scabbard," the girl said.
Her voice was ancient. Not old—ancient. It creaked like old wood and shimmered like starlight.
"You should not be here, Thornblood."
"I didn't ask to be," Cael snapped. "He was going to kill me."
"The knight follows law," she said.
"I follow survival."
A moment of silence.
Then the forest behind Cael screamed—trees cracking, fire blooming.
The Ash-Knight had found the trail.
Cael spun back, but the girl raised one hand.
"Choose."
"Choose what?!"
"Path or price."
She raised the other hand, and the briars behind her parted.
A tunnel—deep, green, and pulsing with old magic.
"Take the Thorn Path, child of scabbard. But know this—once you walk the forest's heart, you will never again be only human."
Behind him, the knight roared.
The girl held out her hand.
A thorned vine slithered across her palm—bleeding red, sharp as oathsteel.
"You must bleed to enter. You must want to enter."
Cael looked back one last time.
The Ash-Knight stepped into the clearing, fire licking across his armor.
Cael reached out—
And grasped the vine.
Pain. Immediate and deep.
It bit into his palm. Drank. Burned.
The forest responded.
The trees moved.
Roots closed behind him, sealing the path.
The Ash-Knight struck—but the clearing was empty.
Only thorns remained.
Only blood.
Cael stumbled forward into a forest that no longer obeyed the world outside.
The Thorn Path.
His wound still bled—but the vine around his wrist had coiled into a bracelet of living thorns.
And now… it whispered too.
"One path forward.One root deeper.One crown waiting in the dark."