The forest no longer whispered warnings. It sang a slow, solemn farewell.
Kai moved with purpose now, though every step away from the Everwood felt like peeling away layers of himself. Behind him, the ancient trees stood tall, their branches brushing sky like old hands. Ahead, stone and snow waited.
Lyra was already preparing, quick, efficient, focused. She barked orders to the small band of rebels who had come to escort them: five warriors, lean and weathered, clad in mismatched armor. She moved among them like flame through dry grass.
Kai watched her, quiet. She noticed.
"Something on your mind, forest man?"
He hesitated. "You wear command like second skin."
Lyra snorted. "Learned early. You hesitate, people die. Doesn't mean I'm always right, just… fast."
He nodded. "I'm not fast. I'm careful."
"That's why you're still alive," she said. "We'll balance each other."
Before they departed, the trees stirred one last time.
From the mist emerged an old woman, her back curved like a bow. She leaned on a staff of twisted pine, gnarled as her hands. Her eyes were veiled with cataracts, but still they saw too much.
"So," she rasped. "The sleeping king awakens."
Kai tensed. "You know who I am?"
"I knew before your first breath," she said, smiling without softness. "I am Elara, Seer of the Everwood. I have watched you longer than the sun has watched the trees."
She reached into her cloak and offered him a small wooden box, carved with symbols that shimmered as if breathing.
"This was your mother's," she said. "Inside is a fragment of the Sunstone. Not just light, it is memory. It remembers what came before, and what could be again."
Kai opened the box.
Warmth spilled over his hands like summer wind. The stone inside glowed faintly gold, carved with a spiral that pulsed in time with his heart.
"Use it wisely," Elara said. "It is a shield, a key… and a test."
He bowed, a motion that surprised even him. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet, boy," she said, turning away. "Walk well between the worlds. The dark is watching."
Then she was gone, mist curling where she'd stood.
They departed that same day.
The Everwood gave way slowly, moss giving way to stone, green softening to frost. The mountains loomed ahead, sharp and wide, like the jaws of a beast waiting to bite.
At night, Lyra told stories around the fire, of villages razed, of children stolen in the night, of the black banners of Sgaazoz's warbands. She spoke without fear, but not without sorrow.
Kai listened, and each word carved him deeper.
"I didn't know," he said once, when her tale fell quiet.
"You weren't meant to," she replied. "That was the only way you'd survive."
Days passed. Kai's senses sharpened further. He could feel paths that hadn't yet been trodden. Sense when a storm would break hours before the clouds darkened. The forest still lived in him, but now it answered to something deeper.
The whispers of his ancestors walked with him.
By the time they reached the edge of the mountain pass, he was no longer only the man the forest raised.
He was the king the land remembered.