The first thing Sereth notices is the sound.

  Not screaming. Not wind.

  Water.

  A slow, steady drip. Like an hourglass made of blood.

  There is no waking.

  One moment, Sereth is in the Garden of Remnants, reaching for Elyra as the earth splits.

  The next, she’s standing barefoot in Grayhollow’s square.

  Perfect sky. Sunlight on tiled roofs. The chapel bell ringing.

  No vines. No blood.

  “...No,” she whispers.

  This isn’t relief. It’s recognition.

  “Sereth?”

  She turns.

  Her old ranger company stands there. Every face she buried, alive and warm: Joren, Maera, Twin-Elen, Captain Rhys with that crooked smile. Their cloaks, their bows, their stupid jokes.

  “Sleep in again?” Joren grins. “Thought you’d retired to some cozy village or something.”

  Someone laughs. They all laugh.

  The sound scrapes raw across her nerves.

  She’s felt this before.

  Sereth’s hand flies to her back for her bow.

  It isn’t there.

  Maera steps forward, eyes full of fondness. “It’s alright, Seri. You’re home.”

  They open their arms.

  Behind them, just for a blink, Sereth sees the truth:

  Vines punched through spines. Thorns where eyes should be. Mouths split too wide.

  “Not this time,” Sereth says, breath sharp. “Not again.”

  The sky dims.

  The bell tolls once, then cracks, sound distorting into a low, sorrow-sweet hum.

  All her rangers’ heads tilt in unison.

  Varsha’s voice breathes through their mouths.

  “Why do you always refuse comfort, little ranger?”

  The illusion peels back.

  Grayhollow rots in an instant: houses collapsing into mulch, stone bleeding sap, the chapel’s stained glass weeping black orchids instead of light.

  Her company’s bodies hang like fruit from the dead tree at the square’s center, vines threaded through their ribs.

  Sereth drops to one knee as something tears inside her chest.

  Pain flares—not only in mind, but in meat.

  Far above, in the waking world, her real body convulses in its cocoon. Vines tighten around her ribs. Her pulse stutters.

  Varsha giggles, soft and broken. The sound echoes in both realms.

  “Every time you try to stand,” she croons, appearing beside Sereth in the nightmare—barefoot, gown of blooming thorns, eyes wet and luminous, “you make such a mess of your heart.”

  Sereth snarls, tries to punch her. Her hand passes through like water.

  “Get out of her head,” Elyra’s voice snaps.

  Sereth jerks toward it.

  Opposite the ruined square stands Elyra, bound back-to-back with her in some twisted geometry of dreamspace. Chains of woven roots coil her limbs, ankles buried in glass.

  Her boots are wrong—half-translucent, like the mirror corruption trying to claim her again.

  She pulls, teeth gritted, every movement sending hairline cracks through the glass at her feet.

  “Don’t listen,” Elyra says, fierce despite the fear in her eyes. “She’s lying. That’s all she does.”

  “Brave little hawk,” Varsha murmurs. “Still pretending you’re not made to break.”

  She clicks her fingers.

  The world around them fractures and reshapes.

  Now they’re standing in the Ember Tankard.

  Warmth, firelight, familiar voices—Elaris at the table, Sereth’s bow on the wall, Vex and Laz arguing about fashion, Garruk and Borin arm-wrestling over spilled ale, Arden lecturing Pancake.

  “See?” Varsha says sweetly. “Home. Safety.”

  Elyra looks wild-eyed. “That’s not real.”

  Pancake in this memory lifts his head. His eyes are black pits full of vines.

  “Not real,” Elyra whispers.

  Sereth focuses on Elaris.

  He’s laughing, that rare, unburdened sound he’s only just relearned.

  Then Varsha twists it.

  He’s laughing while Sereth chokes on thorns. He’s sipping tea while Elyra turns to glass. The others talk over their bodies as if nothing is wrong.

  Sereth lurches forward. “STOP.”

  In the waking world, the vines at her throat tighten. Her breathing goes thin.

  Varsha watches, delighted.

  “Every time you resist,” she says gently, hand over her own heart, “I drink a little more. Such rich vintage, ranger. All that old guilt, all that new love.”

  She turns to Elyra.

  “And you—your sweetness is almost unbearable. The joy of a second life. The terror of losing it. The devotion to your little family. I could bloom on that forever.” Her fingers brush Elyra’s cheek; a bruise of purple petals blossoms there.

  “Don’t touch her,” Sereth growls.

  Varsha beams. “Oh good, you still have claws. Let’s clip them.”

  She claps once.

  The scene changes.

  They stand in a forest again. The Wildpath outside Thornmere, moonlit and gentle.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Sereth knows this one. She trained Elyra here.

  In the nightmare, she watches herself teaching Elyra how to nock an arrow. How to breathe.

  “That was a good day,” Elyra whispers.

  Varsha leans between them like a lover. “It was.”

  Then: the Sereth in the memory turns, knocks her arrow—and aims it at Elyra.

  “You missed,” Dream-Sereth says flatly. “Again.”

  Elyra flinches. “That’s not—”

  Dream-Sereth snarls. “You’re a weight. He only brought you back out of guilt. You slow us down. You break. Look at you—half corpse, half candle. Even the devils want your soul.”

  She looses.

  The arrow hits Elyra’s chest.

  Real Elyra gasps, looking down at clean skin that still hurts.

  Varsha’s vines pulse, siphoning fear.

  “Is that what you think?” Varsha whispers to Sereth. “That you’ll fail her? That every promise you made is a lie waiting to be exposed?”

  Sereth sets her jaw, eyes wet, furious. “I know my thoughts. You’re not them.”

  “Not yet,” Varsha says. “But give me time.”

  She nods; the Wildpath peels away.

  Now: Sereth and Elaris in their room above the Tankard. Quiet night. Hands tangled. Plans whispered.

  Varsha corrupts it.

  In the mirror of the washbasin, Silvenna’s eyes gleam.

  On the wall, shadows move wrong.

  Lyra’s phantom appears at the foot of the bed, weeping blood.

  “You stole my life,” she hisses at Sereth. “My husband. My child.”

  Sereth flinches like whipped. “No—”

  Elyra watches, horrified. “Don’t listen. Mum, she blessed you.”

  But Varsha is merciless.

  “She lies awake,” she sings softly, “wondering when they’ll realize she doesn’t deserve them. When they’ll see her as the butcher who watched her friends die. When she didn’t save her. When she didn’t save you.”

  In the waking world, Sereth’s pulse falters again. Vines glow, pulling threads of life.

  Arden, far above, feels it like a cold wind through prayer. Elaris staggers mid-step in Thornmere days later, hand to his chest. The bond is thin, frayed.

  Every surge of Sereth’s defiance triggers another squeeze.

  Every crack in Elyra’s resolve feeds the bloom.

  Varsha drapes herself across their intertwined torment like a patron on a balcony watching her favorite opera.

  “You see?” she says, voice honey. “You fight, I tighten. You accept, I cradle you in dreams of what you lost. This is mercy. Let go. Sleep. Become roots.”

  Sereth’s breathing is ragged. She’s pale, flickering. Every time she tries to draw on rage, it backfires—pain lances her side.

  Elyra jerks against her bonds, glass creeping higher on her shins. “Sereth, stop—she’s using you. She’s feeding on you.”

  “I can break it,” Sereth grits out.

  “By dying?” Elyra snaps. Tears spill, furious. “That’s not breaking anything. That’s giving her what she wants.”

  Varsha claps softly. “Oh, I like you.”

  She steps close to Elyra, voice soft, intimate.

  “What if I told you,” she breathes, “that your father has already bartered your safety with Hell? That devils and queens are weighing your soul like a coin? Would you still call him ‘Dad’ with such devotion?”

  Elyra’s face goes white. “Shut up.”

  Images ripple:

  Valthrix leaning over Elaris. His broken whisper: I will do whatever it takes to save them.

  Varsha twists the memory to make it a vow.

  “You are everyone’s price,” Varsha says. “Didn’t you know?”

  Elyra starts to shake.

  Sereth snarls, “Don’t you touch her faith in him.”

  “I already have,” Varsha says.

  She brushes Elyra’s hair back. “How many more doubts before you shatter, little hawk?”

  Elyra inhales, shaky. “He loves me. He would never—”

  “Mortals promise that,” Varsha says, leaning in. “Right before they sign.”

  The vines tighten again.

  Elyra cries out. Sereth does too, feeling the pain through their shared terror.

  “It hurts more when you cling,” Varsha croons. “Let go. There is such relief in despair. Don’t you want to stop being afraid?”

  For a heartbeat, Elyra wavers.

  Then: a flicker.

  Somewhere through the choking layers of dream, she feels it—the faintest brush of a familiar presence. Arden’s prayers skimming the boundary. Elaris’s stubborn mind clawing along the Lattice. Kaer’s grim focus. Pancake’s strange, flickering magic like a tiny purple curse refusing to be categorized.

  Her fingers curl.

  “No,” Elyra whispers. “I don’t want to stop being afraid. I want to see them again.”

  Varsha hisses softly. Something in the dream quivers. For the first time, the roots shudder in annoyance instead of satisfaction.

  “Annoying girl,” she murmurs.

  She turns to Sereth.

  “Fine. If the daughter holds, we pluck the mother.”

  Vines sink into Sereth’s chest like a lover’s hands.

  In the waking world, her real heart stumbles.

  Veins darken. Breath thins.

  The bloom around her tightens, drinking deep.

  Varsha smiles as if tucking in a child.

  “Sleep, ranger. I’ll make your last dreams sweet.”

  The Grayhollow square returns—this time without vines. Her rangers alive. Elaris and Elyra beside her. A life where nothing went wrong.

  It’s so tempting Sereth’s knees buckle.

  Elyra screams.

  The sound barely ripples the illusion.

  Every attempt to claw free now, every flare of will, is met with more drain. Varsha has shifted tactics: reward surrender, punish resistance.

  The prison is closing.

  Out in the world above, days drip by.

  Sereth’s body hangs in secret root-vaults beneath the Crimson Spire, pale as old bark.

  Elyra’s is embedded in a half-formed mirror-bloom, glass in her veins, pulse defiant but weak.

  Each time Elaris reaches for their bond, he finds thorns.

  Each time Arden tries to scry, she sees only orchids and hears only Varsha’s lullabies.

  Each time the captured try to push up, Varsha turns the knife.

  And yet—

  At the edge of Sereth’s sweetest hallucination, where all is perfect and wrong, something small, purple, and profoundly annoyed begins gnawing at a root it has no business reaching.

  And in Elyra’s glass-shadow, a hairline fracture appears when she whispers, voice wrecked but steady:

  “They’re coming.”

  Varsha hears it.

  Smiles.

  “Good,” she says. “It wouldn’t be a proper tragedy if the heroes didn’t arrive just in time to watch.”

  Sereth blinks, and the world reshapes again.

  She’s back in the Vale. Her bow is in her hands, her fingers slick with sweat. She knows this memory — the ambush where she saved Arden’s life.

  But when she draws, the bow feels heavy — far too heavy.

  Her arms tremble.

  The string cuts her fingers.

  “What—?” she mutters. Her voice is high, soft, wrong.

  She looks down. Her hands are tiny, uncalloused. Her armor hangs off her frame like a child wearing her mother’s clothes.

  The arrow slips and clatters to the ground.

  The shadows of the forest ripple. The phantoms she once faced appear again — the Vale beasts, the creeping corruption — and her adult self’s instincts roar to act.

  But her body won’t listen. Her knees knock together. Her breath comes in squeaks.

  She tries to speak an incantation, the same sharp command she’d used that day —

  but it comes out as a frightened whimper:

  “Go ‘way!”

  The memory proceeds without her.

  The beasts close in.

  She reaches for her sword, but it’s too big, dragging along the ground.

  “Stop it,” she whispers.

  She runs. She trips. The forest laughs.

  Next, she’s back in the Ember Tankard.

  The party gathered.

  Her family.

  She knows this memory — Elyra teasing Garruk, Vex bragging about her title, Pancake stealing food from Laz’s plate.

  She opens her mouth to speak, but the words come out slurred, juvenile:

  “Lemme ‘elp! I can figh’ too!”

  Elyra doesn’t hear her.

  Neither does Elaris.

  Their laughter fills the room, bright and distant.

  She tugs on Elaris’s sleeve, but her hand passes through him like mist.

  “Don’t leave me ‘lone,” she says, voice trembling.

  Varsha’s laughter blooms around her like rot beneath flowers.

  “Oh, little ranger. That’s what you’ve always been, isn’t it?

  A child playing soldier.”

  “Stop it.”

  The tavern darkens. The laughter fades.

  “Stop it!” Sereth screams, voice cracking, tears streaking her face.

  The scene collapses again.

  Now she’s older — but too old.

  Her hair has gone white. Her skin is parchment, her eyes dim. She’s hunched, trembling. Her bow lies in the dirt beside her, splintered.

  The Vale stretches endlessly. The same trees, the same paths — empty.

  She turns, slowly, bones grinding.

  A shape approaches — Elyra.

  Older too. Her braid now silver, her once-bright eyes dulled with exhaustion. She limps toward her mother, reaching a frail hand.

  “Mum… it hurts,” she whispers.

  Sereth tries to stand. Her legs buckle. Her joints creak and collapse beneath her.

  She falls to her knees, gasping.

  Varsha appears behind them, radiant in her corruption — beautiful, eternal, ageless.

  “This is your future,” she purrs. “Isn’t it glorious?”

  Sereth’s breath rattles. “Why… why are you doing this?”

  Varsha crouches, tilting Sereth’s chin up with a vine. “Because you asked me to stop the pain.

  And I did.

  This is peace, isn’t it?

  No fighting. No losing. Just… waiting.”

  Sereth’s trembling fingers claw at the ground. “No… not like this.”

  Varsha’s lips brush her ear. “You will live long enough to be alone again.

  To watch them all die.

  To fail them again.”

  She gestures. Elyra coughs, a horrible dry sound, and collapses beside her mother.

  “Go help her,” Varsha says sweetly. “She’s right there.”

  Sereth drags herself forward.

  Her hands shake violently, fingers gnarled and weak. She manages one desperate crawl before her strength gives out.

  Elyra’s aged eyes flutter open — dim, fading.

  “Mum,” she breathes, voice paper-thin.

  “Please… help me.”

  Sereth’s voice cracks into a sob. “I… I can’t…”

  Varsha’s tone melts into satisfaction. “No, you can’t. You never could. You never will.”

  The words sink into Sereth’s bones like ice. Her vision swims. Her heart stutters.

  Meanwhile, in the mirror-prison beside the root vault, Elyra’s real body arches in agony.

  The crystal encasing her pulses with light, flooding her mind with mirrored echoes of Sereth’s torment.

  She can see it — every illusion, every manipulation — but she can’t reach her.

  She screams, but no sound escapes the glass.

  “Please!” she tries to cry out, “Mum, it’s not real!”

  Her words twist in the reflection and come back to her warped:

  “Mum… it’s your fault.”

  She slams her fists against the inside of her crystalline cage. Blood trickles down her palms.

  Each impact makes the crystal hum.

  Each attempt to reach Sereth triggers another pulse of psychic backlash — needles of light stabbing into her skull.

  Silvenna’s voice hums through the glass, gentle and cruel.

  “Careful, little hawk.

  You’ll cut yourself on the truth.”

  Elyra collapses to her knees, sobbing silently, eyes fixed on her mother’s fading figure in the reflection.

  “Please,” she mouths,

  “Don’t believe her.”

  Varsha’s shadow looms over both reflections, vines caressing Sereth’s face as she weakly reaches toward the dying Elyra.

  “See?” Varsha whispers to no one and everyone. “Even in their love, they break so beautifully.”

  The flowers around Sereth bloom crimson.

  The vines glow brighter.

  And in the waking world, far above, the faint thread of her life-force flickers — slower, weaker, pulsing like a candle nearly gone out.