CHAPTER 75: WITCHPINE

Smoke bled into the sky behind them, swallowing the trees in a wall of grey and flame. The forest screamed. Birds scattered from the canopy, fleeing into silence.

Leon didn’t look back.

Every second counted now.

The vanguard pushed forward, the scent of pitch clinging to their cloaks, ash riding the wind. Naeve was ahead, guiding them down an animal path that twisted between knife-thin trees and black stone ridges. They moved fast—faster than the enemy expected.

But the woods changed.

Somewhere beyond the fire, the trees bent inward. Their trunks thickened, gnarled and blackened, branches forming a jagged ceiling overhead. The path narrowed to a jagged crawlspace that led into an unnatural clearing.

A wide hollow.

And silence.

Leon held up a hand. The troops slowed. Even the horses resisted stepping forward. The snow here was darker, tinged with soot. The air felt heavier, like the forest had exhaled something ancient.

Kellen appeared at Leon’s shoulder, eyes scanning the trees. "This place... it’s wrong."

Elena stepped forward, squinting into the gloom. "We’ve entered a dead zone. No sound, no movement."

Leon didn’t reply. His gaze was fixed on the stones that ringed the hollow—tall, narrow slabs driven into the earth like fangs. Each one was marked with black sigils, older than any he’d seen. Fire had blackened their base, but the symbols still gleamed faintly.

Elena approached one, hand hovering over its surface. "This is a binding ring."

Naeve emerged from the edge of the clearing, bow low. "I saw no one pass through here. But something is here. I can feel it."

Leon turned to the troops. "Form a perimeter. No one enters the centre."

Kellen moved quickly, barking orders. Shields locked into a half-circle. The mages moved into the rear, readying veils and wards.

And then it shifted.

The snow beneath the central ring pulsed.

Once.

Then again.

A crack splintered through the earth, and from it, something rose—a figure wrapped in layers of frost-touched cloth, its face hidden beneath a veil of bone.

It didn’t move like a person. It glided, half-floating above the surface. And its presence swallowed the wind.

Elena’s voice cut through the stillness. "That’s not a warlock. That’s a binder spirit."

Leon stepped forward, sword in hand. "Is it bound to this ring?"

"I don’t know," she answered. "But it shouldn’t be awake."

The figure turned. Not fast. Not slow. As if time bent around its motion.

And then it screamed.

The sound was wrong.

Soldiers flinched. Horses reared.

The binding stones cracked.

And the fight began.

The scream didn’t stop. It echoed off the stones and split the air like a jagged blade, making the very marrow of their bones ache. Some of the younger soldiers stumbled, clutching their ears. Even the mages staggered, one collapsing to their knees, blood trickling from her nose.

Leon moved first.

He charged straight into the ring.

"Elena—break the seal!" he shouted.

The spirit turned toward him. It didn’t raise its hands. It didn’t summon magic. It simply leaned forward, and the ground surged beneath Leon’s feet—roots, slick with frost, erupting from the soil like snakes. He vaulted over them, blade flashing.

His sword struck nothing.

The binder spirit vanished like mist.

Then reformed behind him.

It was fast.

Leon twisted mid-air and rolled, blade slicing upward just in time to intercept a surge of force that struck like a hammer. The energy cracked against his blade, throwing him back a dozen steps, boots skidding through snow.

Kellen’s shield unit surged forward, forming a barrier between the spirit and the archers. Naeve’s command followed a heartbeat later—arrows loosed in a single, crisp wave.

None found purchase.

The spirit twisted unnaturally, its shape flickering in and out of visibility. Arrows passed through empty air.

Elena sprinted toward the binding stone, her hands glowing as she muttered a counter-sigil under her breath. The symbols flared on the stone—briefly—before something pulsed from the centre and shattered her concentration.

"It’s rejecting the glyphs!" she called. "Whatever bound it here wasn’t human magic."

Leon rose to his feet. "Then we kill it."

"Kill a binder spirit?" Elena spat. "Leon—those things don’t die. They end.

Or they wait."

The spirit’s veil of bone cracked, and beneath it, for a brief second, Leon saw a face.

Or the memory of one.

Pale. Hollow-eyed. Familiar.

His grip faltered.

The figure hissed, not with sound, but with presence. A chill swept the hollow, and the edges of reality warped.

Then something else cracked—another of the binding stones, this one near Kellen’s line.

The wind reversed, spiralling inward, dragging the air with it.

Leon looked at the soldiers. Panic rippled through them.

If more stones fell, the spirit wouldn’t just be loose.

It would be free.

"Elena," he said, voice steady. "You need to break the ring before it breaks itself."

She didn’t argue.

Kellen rallied his shield line, pushing forward despite the pressure. "Form a crescent! Anchor your feet!"

Naeve loosed another volley, this time fire-tipped. It forced the spirit to shift, its form glitching like a shadow trying to mimic light. One arrow brushed its veil, burning it slightly. The scream that followed sounded like a thousand whispers torn from time.

Leon rushed again, faster this time, ignoring the roots. He drove his blade into the spirit’s side as it phased in fully—this time the sword bit deep. The spirit shrieked and spun, lashing out with a force that wasn’t wind, wasn’t magic.

It was memory.

Suddenly, Leon was somewhere else—standing before the burning gates of the capital again, smoke in his lungs, ash in his eyes. A child crying behind him.

No.

He forced it back.

He drove the sword deeper and shouted.

"Now, Elena!"

A pulse of violet light erupted from the binding stone. Elena screamed the final word of the counter-sigil, and with a deafening crack, the final stone split.

The ring broke.

The spirit froze.

And in the silence that followed, Leon whispered, "Be still."

And the binder spirit... listened.

Its shroud of bone began to fall away, flake by flake, as if stripped by unseen hands. The cloth unravelled, drifting upward like ash caught in slow wind. The face beneath was not a face at all—only a shape, a suggestion of what had once been a woman. A memory kept together by pain and magic.

It looked at Leon.

No words.

But he felt it.

Regret.

Elena stepped beside him, her hands still glowing faintly. "It’s still bound to the hollow," she whispered. "But not by us. Not anymore."

The spirit drifted backward, weightless now, rising slightly above the cracked ring. The wind had returned, brushing snow across the stone floor.

"Stand down," Leon called, raising a hand. The soldiers eased their weapons, the tension bleeding slowly from their forms.

The spirit turned to the stones, and one by one, the sigils darkened. The last to fade was the one nearest Leon. It shimmered, pulsed—then vanished.

And the binder spirit dissolved.

A single snowflake landed where it had hovered.

Then the forest breathed again.

A branch creaked. Birds stirred.

And the air, once still and thick with dread, felt alive.

Kellen exhaled, dragging his shield to the ground with a heavy thud. "Is it over?"

Leon didn’t answer. Not immediately.

He stared at the empty centre of the ring, chest rising slowly with each breath.

"I don’t know," he said.

Then he turned to Elena.

"But I think we bought ourselves time."

He looked back one last time. The place where the spirit had stood was just snow now—untouched, undisturbed, like none of it had happened. But Leon knew better.

The soldiers resumed formation with quiet purpose. No one spoke. Even those who had faced a hundred battles moved as if carrying something heavier than steel.

Kellen adjusted his bracers and glanced toward the northern pass. "If that wasn’t the trap... then what is?"

Elena’s eyes flicked to the tree line, her voice low. "That was the lock. Whatever it was holding back... might be waiting up ahead."

Leon nodded once. "Then we don’t rest. We move while the forest still lets us."

He gave one last look to the fading ring, then turned.

And the vanguard marched once more—into the shadow of something far older than war.