CHAPTER 637: THE MYSTERIOUS ENCOUNTER (END)

The emerald morning light slipped between layers of colossal leaves, painting moving patterns across the Heart-Tree Plaza. Dawn here never arrived in a rush; it bled in slowly, like dye seeping through cotton, until every vine and bench glimmered in soft jade. High above, half-open fronds caught the first shimmer of the sun and turned it into thin ribbons of gold, sending the glow downward in wavering strands. Motes of crystalline pollen drifted through those shafts of light. They spiraled lazily, catching and releasing color with every tiny turn, so the air itself seemed stitched with glimmering thread.

At ground level, ancient benches—grown, not carved—circled the wide clearing. Their twisting roots had been coaxed centuries ago into comfortable arcs, polished smooth by thousands of quiet mornings exactly like this one. On them sat elder archivists in vine-thread cloaks the color of rich soil. The older elves hardly moved, but their eyes shone, cataloguing every detail for the living records they carried in memory. Scattered between them waited small groups of apprentices. The youngsters’ leaf-braided hair bobbed in nervous rhythm as they whispered practice verses under their breath, lips barely moving.

No one spoke above a hush. Even the plaza’s floor respected the moment: moss-stones that usually glowed a dim turquoise faded to near darkness as dawn’s first real sunbeam slipped over the eastern bough. It was an unspoken rule—when the day’s first light touched a moss-stone, the plaza grew still, allowing the forest to breathe before voices joined the morning.

A hush this deep can feel uncomfortable, yet here it felt like comfort. The scent of sweet sap and morning dew floated between breath and heartbeat, and somewhere in the canopy a lone dew-finch sang a short, single note, as though tuning an invisible instrument.

From the archway of the Songkeeper’s shrine, a single voice answered. It wasn’t loud; it was clear, sliding into the quiet without tearing it. The singer, the Songkeeper herself, raised her palms and sang in a tone halfway between lullaby and sermon:

"From bud to bloom, from root to sky,

we bind the breath, we sing, we try."

Her melody curved through the plaza. It coaxed the wavering motes to pulse brighter for half a second. Children’s eyes widened; elders bowed their heads. The words were simple, but their cadence carried decades of morning rituals, and the plaza seemed to remember every one.

In practiced rows the apprentices stepped forward. Each moved with the careful precision of dancers on a glass floor. They stretched out both palms and brushed the thick moss-runners that circled the plaza like soft green railings. Whenever fingers touched moss, the runners pulsed faintly—little bursts of emerald fire that faded to nothing in a heartbeat. The apprentices whispered an answer to the Songkeeper’s refrain. None spoke loudly enough for outsiders to hear exact words, but the collective murmur wove into the breeze until it resembled wind through high branches.

"Let no root suffer alone.

Let no green fall in silence."

A final formation: the apprentices knelt, pressing foreheads gently to the moss. Older archivists laid one hand on the nearest apprentices’ shoulders, lending their silent approval. The faint vibration that always hummed through the Heart-Tree—deep, slow, reassuring—suddenly rose half a note, like an old drum tapped once. A warm breeze stirred, fluttering vine-threads along robes. Someone exhaled shakily, as if surprised by the forest’s answer.

Ritual complete, the apprentices eased back. A deeper hush followed—the kind that feels impossible to break. Then an elder cleared her throat, and life returned in soft rustles of cloak and quiet questions about breakfast. The plaza’s moss-stones brightened again, pale green at first, then their usual calming turquoise. Day had officially begun.

No root suffers alone. The phrase lingered in every ear long after the chant faded.

—

Below this sun-dappled calm, the vestibule of the Council Chamber pulsed with deeper, more focused energy. Five colossal sap-pillars grew from floor to ceiling. Each spiraled clockwise, veined with a color that never bled into bark beyond its channel. Amber for Memory glowed steady, like banked coals. Violet for Vision flickered, as though trading glimpses of futures only it could see. Silver for Justice pulsed slow and cold. Jade for Harmony shimmered in shifting patterns, almost playful. Gold for Renewal was brightest, but its light carried a nervous tremor—a reminder that renewal requires decay first.

Four Elders stood in quiet debate near the pillars’ base. Their voices, though soft, carried weight that bent the air. Anyone approaching instinctively slowed; even the sap-pillars’ glow adjusted, gold dimming so words could float without glare.

Matria arrived first, smoke-leaf cloak trailing faint wisps that scented the vestibule with cedar and charcoal. Deep bark lines etched near her eyes told how many dawns she had ushered. She looked once at the spiral above—perhaps asking the Memory pillar to remember this very conversation—then addressed the circle.

"We speak again of the surface," she said, tone like charred wood crackling under new flame. "The Chancellor sends message after message. He speaks of friendship, but forgets the scarred trunks we still tend from the Ash Accord."

Vyra responded with a tilt of her mirrored hood. Light caught her robes and fractured into prisms that skittered across the walls, making it hard to watch her too long without feeling dizzy. "And now a human carries a bond-light not seeded by our own roots," she noted. "That glow on his palm... it hums with a rhythm the sap does not know."

Her face hid behind the shimmer, but worry lived in her voice—thin, brittle.

Lorian’s shoulders slumped but his gaze stayed sharp. Small spore-lanterns clung to his cloak, glowing faint green and blue. With each exhale they brightened, as if breathing off his tension. "You fear the prophecy," he said. Even fatigue couldn’t blunt the quiet conviction in his words. "I fear the creeping rot more. The Blight has punched through three outer orchards since last moonturn. If fresh thinking saves a single branch, should we refuse it?"

Vyra’s mirrored face angled toward him, catching pillars of light that ran along her cheek like liquid stars. "Prophecy speaks in broken branches, Lorian. Unity through splitting. What if that glow splits us first?"

Before anyone answered, Sevrin unfolded his arms. He rarely moved without intent, and even that small gesture sent a hush through the group. He stood beside the Glass-Root pillar, a sculpture of clear bark that held a thousand tiny fractures, each reflecting the others until the eye gave up finding a beginning. "My scouts saw black dew," he reminded—words clipped, factual. "Fruit-glades eastward are wilting. The Archive of Amber Tears holds stories older than our fears. Some of those stories say sharing knowledge ends in fires. Are we ready to show a human every fracture in our trunk?"

Matria touched one hand to her chest, fingers spread as though calming her own heartbeat. "Then we show him nothing," she decided. "He enters our halls, we measure him, he departs. We mend."

"But the pact was forged in open root," Lorian said. His spore-lanterns pulsed brighter, matching the urgency in his tone. "The tree itself accepted him. He walked the Green Gate; its wards let him through. He claimed no songs, yet the Hollowguard heard the bark under their boots hum his name."

Purple light from the Vision pillar flared at that moment—an odd coincidence that pulled every gaze upward. The glow faded fast, but during that heartbeat Vyra’s mirrored surface showed flickers of silhouettes: a human figure, an elven sapling, and roots twisting together until one trunk cracked. When the light died, the image vanished.

"Send a shadow envoy," Sevrin offered, voice low as falling seeds. "While he works, we work. Let a quiet path follow his steps, see which of them leave footprints in forbidden chambers."

The statement hung in the vestibule. None leapt to accept; none dared to refuse. Instead, silence pooled, heavy with old fears and new uncertainties. Sometimes agreement in Elven council took the form of collective stillness—every elder holding breath until they decided how loudly they wished to disagree.

So silence settled, thicker than the dawn hush above. Golden Renewal light trembled, as though uncertain whose side to choose. The hollow corridor leading to the main Hall remained empty; the next Elder had not yet arrived to break decision.

None agreed. But none opposed either. Silence was as close to consensus as the Elders would get.

_____

The priests of the First Grove led Mikhailis forward, and the hush that fell around them felt almost physical, as if sound itself had been braided into the living arches overhead. Those arches weren’t mere decoration; each one was a lattice of vine-wood coaxed into slow spirals, the green bark slick with morning sap. Tiny pulses of light raced along the veins, darting from knot to knot like fire rolling through fuse-cord. Whenever Mikhailis stepped beneath an arch, a faint hum slipped down the pillars and settled in his chest—an echo pitched so low it felt more imagined than heard.

Great, he thought, even the architecture hums a fanfare. No pressure at all.

With every footfall, the walkway answered: harp-strings stretched beneath living planks sang three or four tinkling notes that only he seemed to notice. They were soft, tentative—like someone tuning before a concert—and they vibrated right through his soles. He fought the urge to tap out a counter-melody.

Ahead, the Living Altar crouched beneath a curtain of moss, glowing faintly. It looked less like furniture and more like some old beast half asleep, waiting to be fed stories. Priests in layered leaf-vestments flanked it, faces hidden by bark masks carved into serene smiles. As Mikhailis approached, they lifted their arms in a single measured motion, palms up, as if offering him to the altar or the other way around.

Beside the wide path, spectators crowded five or six rows deep. Elders with root-cane staffs kept strict lines, but children broke formation constantly, poking heads between grown legs for a better view. Moss and bark-leather garments blended into the surroundings until the whole audience resembled extra shrubbery—except for their wide, luminous eyes.

One small boy, freckles dusting his cheeks like spore-dots, pointed at Mikhailis’s stiff stride and announced in a voice that carried far too well, "He walks like his legs are made of sticks!"

Soft laughter rippled along the benches—quick, polite, then stifled.

"Because I dance when no one’s watching," Mikhailis muttered, raising an eyebrow in the child’s direction.

The boy blinked, then grinned as if secretly delighted.

You are being observed by precisely three hundred forty-two individuals, Rodion intoned, voice cool in his inner ear. Current emotional readout: 14 % curiosity, 9 % apprehension, 77 % concealed skepticism. Awkwardness index climbing. Would you like a breathing exercise?

Shut up, Rodion, he replied, forcing his shoulders down and a nonchalant half-smile up.

They stopped before the altar. Up close, its bark was smooth as polished stone, but warm—almost pulsing. A priest stepped forward cradling a chalice grown from a single hollowed gourd, exterior etched with swirling runes that glowed pale teal. Inside, translucent moss-water eddied lazily, and thin tendrils drifted just beneath the surface like dormant jellyfish.

"Drink of memory," the priest intoned, voice low enough to stir the dust motes between them. "Let the sap recall what the mind may lose, that you may remember what roots forget."

The chalice smelled of wet earth after rain and something sharper—mint or pine sap cut with iron. Mikhailis nodded, took it with both hands, and tipped it back. The liquid was icy at first sip; then a wave of cold threaded down his throat and unfurled in his chest.

Instantly whispers bloomed in his head—not words exactly, but brushstrokes of memory: a treaty scratched into bark by moonlight; a silver-haired queen resting her crown on a stump to share wine with a field captain; flames licking up a scaffold of live wood while someone wept in the distance. A kiss beneath night-blooming blossoms. A betrayal sealed with black-ink sap. Faces blurred, trees screamed, laughter rang, all in the space of two breaths.

He choked and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. "Tastes like regret," he rasped, "and cucumber."

A few elves near the front twitched, unsure whether to frown or laugh.

Regret and cucumber is historically accurate, Rodion offered. That particular infusion was last used the night the Ash Accord was signed. Regret levels measurable. Cucumber optional.

Helpful, he thought, grimacing.