The Price of Power

The stolen memory sits behind your eyes like a splinter of glass — sharp, foreign, and impossible to ignore. It belongs to an ancient elk, dead for centuries, and through it you know things: the layout of hidden root-tunnels, the name of the creature called the Rot, the location of the Heartstone it hoards in its festering lair to the north. The knowledge feels like a gift. The forest does not agree.

It begins subtly. Birdsong stops when you pass. Branches that should bend in the breeze hold unnaturally still, as though watching. The moss beneath your feet seems to recoil from each step, and twice you catch the amber glint of animal eyes in the undergrowth — only to have them vanish the moment you look directly at them. The bark-markings etched into your skin during the summoning have darkened, and they itch. When you press your palm to a tree trunk to get your bearings, the wood feels cold. Trees are never cold.

Worse still: the whispers. Low, rustling murmurs threading through the canopy like wind, except there is no wind. Trespasser. Thief. Wrong-chosen. You cannot tell if the forest is warning you or condemning you. Through the stolen memory's haze, you piece together the final trial — retrieve the Heartstone and return it to the oldest oak before dawn of the third day. But the knowledge cuts both ways. If you can sense the Rot's lair through these pilfered memories, something tells you the Rot can sense you right back. The path north is too quiet, too open, too straight. It feels like a corridor built specifically for you to walk into.

You stand at a fork in the roots, the stolen memory burning behind your eyes. Ahead, the northern path leads straight to the Rot — and whatever ambush waits there. To the east, half-swallowed by undergrowth, a crumbling stone marker bears a faded human handprint. The ruins of the previous candidate. Perhaps they left something behind. Perhaps they left a warning. Time is bleeding away, and the forest watches, and