CHAPTER 89: THE STORY OF VARRUK

The Council Room unfolded like the hushed interior of a living heart. It was dome-shaped, ribbed with root-pillars and glowing with aether-threaded fungus that pulsed with the rhythm of slow breath. The air was thick, not with dust, but with a presence that felt ancient and alert.

Every inch of the space hummed with intent, as if it, too, listened.

Ash stepped inside, his paws treading the ground that was made of polished bark etched with glyphs that loosely created a trail to guide him.

Their lines shimmered faintly beneath each step he took, marking his passage as if the room itself remembers every movement.

In the center of the circle, a special fire burned in colours not found in natural fire- deep violet, spectral green, and hues that seemed to bend light itself. The logs feeding it were also unlike any Ash had seen- smooth and dark, not bark but bark-mimic. They did not blacken or crack, instead, they shimmered with etched glyphs that glowed faintly before dissolving into the flames, consumed like thoughts being erased.

There was no heat, no crackle, no scent. But the fire pulsed.

And around the fire, five Murkfen elders sat in a crescent, unmoving but immensely present. Each bore the weight of age not only in their forms, but in the roots and moss threaded into their bodies.

Elyrra was the first to rise.

Her form was cloaked in glowing furs, veined with bioluminescent threads that drifted like mist. Bone rings adorned her limbs, and a root-crystal staff rested in her grasp. Burned antlers arched skyward, and her eyes were veiled by a moss-woven blindfold speckled with softly pulsing spores. Her voice, when it came, was soft and measured, echoing with age and quiet power.

"You’re finally here," Elyrra said, as though completing a sentence long begun.

Ash nodded once, "Apologies, I ended up finding your kin and your home a lot more fascinating."

Elyrra’s blindfolded head inclined gently as her tone uplifted, "That’s great to hear. Please join us."

She stepped forward and extended her arm inward with the grace of someone enacting a moment long before. As Ash stepped fully into the circle, Elyrra’s voice remained calm, but purposeful, as she began to introduce the future—the council who would shape it, and perhaps, be shaped by it.

"This is Ghranak of the Sixth Bloom, a Rootborn. His body blooms anew with each cycle of decay, shaped by the Nest to embody the balance of death and regrowth."

Ash noted the fungal circuits laced through his moss-crusted form, pulsing like bioluminescent veins with each breath. Ghranak’s posture was rigid but alive, like a tree that remembers the fire it survived.

Elyrra gestured left, "Trollen Sootcloak, an Ashblooded who walked through the Void Pulse and returned altered—he sees what others miss, and carries silence where flame once lived."

Trollen sat cross-legged, his charred muzzle lifted ever so slightly, revealing the glossy gleam of void-aether like a bruise that never healed. His eyes met Ash’s with quiet judgment, like a fireless forge weighing untested metal.

She turned, "Uvaak the Deep-Marked, another Rootborn, bears truth through pain—his markings glow in response to lies."

Etched runes wrapped Uvaak’s frame like tribal armor, shifting as if alive. His steady gaze pierced Ash’s own, and the glow intensified, not in suspicion, but in awareness — as if seeing someone who had not yet spoken their truth.

Elyrra’s blindfold tilted gently as she addressed the next, "Seyra, Mistborne, blind from birth but hearing the tides of memory—her speech flows between echoes of what was and what must be."

Seyra’s form was shrouded in haze, her limbs almost indistinct beneath a layer of breathable mist. Her veil stirred with every breath, and when she inclined her head toward Ash, it felt like the wind bowing in silence.

Finally, Elyrra pointed toward a still figure at the edge, "And Malreth, a Coilbound whose bond with sentient flora cost him his voice for years. Now he speaks only when needed, and his words weigh more than law."

Malreth’s body bore crawling vines that pulsed faintly with gold. One opened a small lidless eye along his collarbone and blinked toward Ash — once — before sealing shut again. The silence he carried felt denser than the swamp.

Each elder acknowledged Ash with a subtle gesture—nods, murmurs, or a simple flare of fungal light along their skin. Uvaak’s markings flared in a slow ripple as Ash met his gaze.

Elyrra’s voice carried again, steady and calm, "These are the elders, the memory of who we are. Now if you look behind you, you’ll see our forces, the ones that saved you from the arena."

She gestured toward the edge of the chamber, where the mist parted just enough to reveal a quiet ring of warriors and scouts standing just outside the glow of the Rootflame. Each bore a different silhouette — sleek, massive, cloaked, antlered — a spectrum of the Kin’s diversity.

Among them, standing closest to the entrance with his arms crossed and eyes unmoving, was Tholn.

Elyrra turned her gaze back to Ash, her voice now shifting in tone, carrying the solemn weight of what was to come. "Now that the eyes of the hunt have seen you, it is time to speak of what brought you here. The prophecy."

She paused a beat, her veiled gaze fixed on him. "Tell me, Ash. What did you see in the Archive?"

Ash felt exposed under their scrutiny, but did not flinch. "The Archive showed me Varruk. His story. His choices. His... power. Please tell me, who was he?"

At that, Elyrra turned slowly toward the crescent of elders.

"Ghranak," she said simply.

The Rootborn elder moved without a word. Gnarled hands reached toward the Rootflame. As his fingers extended, the flame dimmed, its chaotic light pulling inward like breath being held. For a moment, everything was still.

Then a ripple coursed through the flame. Not smoke, but memory.

Within the fire, a shape took form — not a clear image, but the feeling of a moment. A vast hollow darkened by mist. A hyena, slumped and snarling. And from the trees above, coiling down like a dream, came a massive serpent of silver bark and aether-stained scale.

From there, Elyrra began speaking.

"Varruk was not born to greatness. He was hunted, broken, and cast out by his own kind- the Shadow Hyenas. But it was in his isolation that he found Arvul, the Great Serpent. Arvul was not a creature of war, but of wisdom, our first leader, born in the Nest’s deepest roots during its first awakening. He was the first to speak to the memories that flowed through the fungal veins of Aegaryn, and it was he who saw in Varruk not a beast, but a beginning."

Her voice deepened, "Their bond was not forged in ceremony, but in suffering. Arvul took Varruk beneath the Hollow-Canopy, fed him on memory and root, and taught him not how to fight, but how to remember. They did not speak often, but in silence, they learned about each other. One of Shadow. One of Root. Together, they worked together to bring balance to the chaos of the demons that were threatening the Nest."

Elyrra paced slightly, her staff trailing light through the air, "They faced much. Warlocks and Alphas of the surrounding territories came to twist the Nest’s breath into weapons while the demons clawed at the edges of the world, freezing spores and breaking roots with each step. Back then, the Murkfen were scattered."

She looked around the chamber, "Varruk was the sword, and Arvul, the mind behind its strike. Where Varruk carved the path in blood and smoke, it was Arvul who chose the battlefield. Their bond was not master and summon, nor kin and kin—it was the convergence of need and will."

"It was Arvul who first saw the storm coming. Who gathered forgotten clans through whispers, roots, and memory. And it was Varruk who made them believe — not with words, but action. He stood at the edge of the Howling Hollow not because he was ordered to, but because the Kin needed a symbol. He became it."

She stepped forward, the Rootflame glinting off her antlers, "When the Nest fractured, when demons of frost and decay breached the Umbral Core, Arvul devised the seal. But it was Varruk who offered himself. Not because he had no fear. But because he believed no one else should bear that pain."

"And on his final breath," she continued, her voice laced with reverence, "Varruk made an oath. A promise forged in shadow and sealed by root — that one of his blood, his spirit, or his kind would one day return. Not by force, nor by summoning. But by the will of the Nest. For his mission was never complete. And the Kin’s path never finished."

Elyrra paused, voice now barely more than a breath, "Arvul buried him beneath the final root, not in mourning, but in reverence. We carved no grave, because the Nest remembers. Because every shadow we cast now carries a sliver of him."

Ash’s eyes remained fixed on the Rootflame.

"Varruk’s final words," his voice came low, steady, "Is that... the prophecy?"

Elyrra turned toward him slowly.

"Not exactly," she said. As she spoke, the Rootflame pulsed once more—then began to die down, the colors dimming until only soft embers glowed.

She stepped past the fading firelight and gestured for Ash to follow. The room dimmed behind them, their shadows stretching long along the bark-etched floor. They moved toward the far end of the chamber, opposite the entrance, where the air grew heavier, as though memory itself lingered thicker in that corner.

There stood a raised platform crafted from intertwined roots, fossilized and shaped by centuries of purpose. Vines coiled gently around its base, pulsing faintly with slow aether beats. Suspended above the platform was a veil of moss — not ordinary moss, but one woven with threads of ancestral spores that shimmered in the air like suspended stars.

Beneath this veil, centered perfectly within the roots, rested a solemn altar. Its surface was carved from rootstone—ancient and smooth—bearing the weathered touch of generations. And upon that altar lay a stone tablet, dark as a void moon and veined with a living silver that pulsed faintly, like breath held in anticipation.

Ash stepped closer, the gravity of the moment pressing against his chest like unseen weight.

"This," Elyrra said quietly, "was carved by Arvul himself — at the very end."

Her hand hovered near the tablet without touching it. "After Varruk’s death, Arvul managed to stabilize the Kin — to mend what could be mended. But he saw what we did not. The cycle was not broken. Only delayed."

She exhaled, her breath catching slightly. "So in his final days, he used the last of his divine essence to etch these words — the true prophecy. Not of doom, but of return."

Her hand finally lowered, fingertips brushing the edge of the tablet. The silver veins pulsed brighter in response, as though stirred by her presence. A hum passed through the altar — faint but resonant — and the air itself seemed to lean in.

Elyrra’s voice lowered to a whisper, but its clarity rang like a bell across the chamber.

"And so it is written..."