The drums stopped.

  For a moment, Racines was completely silent.

  Hundreds of people stood in the mud, breathing hard, their eyes fixed on the figures in white and gold who had just entered the clearing, and the panic that had ruled the last few minutes faded quickly, replaced by something else.

  Awe.

  People stepped aside without being asked, the crowd parting naturally as the Watchers advanced through the clearing, their robes untouched by the mud beneath their feet.

  Kael felt it too.

  The fear.

  But not the same kind.

  The terror that had driven him to run moments ago was gone, and in its place was something colder, something deeper that settled into his bones.

  Power.

  The Watchers carried it like a weight the world itself obeyed.

  Beside him, someone whispered.

  “Gaia’s chosen…”

  A woman dropped to her knees, and others followed, until dozens of people were kneeling in the mud, praying.

  “Holy Gaia, Mother of the Living, watch over us beneath your roots, shelter your children in your shadow…”

  The Watchers did not acknowledge them and moved forward in silence until they reached the iron gate that separated them from the devastation beyond.

  Kael’s breathing slowly steadied as, for the first time since the creature appeared, he felt the panic leaving his body.

  They’re here.

  The Watchers had arrived.

  The creature would die.

  It had to.

  That was what Watchers did, everyone in Racines knew that; they were Gaia’s chosen, the guardians of the Tree, the ones who stood between humanity and the horrors outside the Thorn Wall.

  Kael had seen them before, from a distance, but never like this and never close enough to feel the air shift around them.

  The clearing outside Racines looked like a battlefield.

  Broken huts lay scattered between the roots, and mud churned by hundreds of boots had turned into thick sludge where bodies were scattered everywhere, some still moving and most of them not.

  Kael forced himself not to look too closely.

  And in the center of it all stood the creature.

  It had grown fully now that it had space to move, its long body coiling between the huts while its limbs spread outward as it searched for more prey, plates of hardened flesh shifting across its surface and glistening under the pale light filtering through the roots above.

  It turned slowly toward the Watchers.

  For the first time since the attack began, the creature stopped hunting and simply watched them.

  The air tightened.

  One of the Watchers stepped forward and struck the ground once with his staff, the sound echoing across the clearing like a crack in stone.

  Then the roots responded.

  At first it was subtle, only a tremor in the mud that Kael felt beneath his boots, but then the ground split.

  Thick vines erupted from the earth in violent bursts of motion, surging forward in twisting waves as they burst upward like spears, their surfaces lined with vicious black thorns.

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  The creature reacted instantly, its limbs lashing outward and slashing through the first wave of roots, severing several vines immediately.

  But more followed.

  Roots burst from the mud again and again, coiling around the creature’s limbs, wrapping its body and tightening like living chains.

  The creature shrieked, the sound tearing through Racines like metal ripping apart, and Kael flinched even as the Watchers remained perfectly still.

  They raised their staffs in unison.

  From the massive roots above, thick streams of pale sap began to pour downward like rain, striking the creature’s body and beginning to hiss immediately.

  Acid.

  The smell spread through the clearing instantly as the flesh plates along the creature’s back blackened and cracked, smoke rising where the sap touched it.

  The creature screamed again, thrashing violently now as the vines tightened around its limbs.

  Kael stared, because he had never seen magic like this before.

  It wasn’t fire.

  It wasn’t lightning.

  It was the Tree itself.

  The roots.

  The sap.

  The earth.

  The Watchers weren’t casting spells the way traveling storytellers described, they were commanding Ygdrasil.

  But they did not stop.

  The ground shook again as chunks of earth tore free from the roots above and slammed down into the clearing like falling boulders, the impacts shaking the mud beneath Kael’s feet.

  One strike crushed a limb completely while another shattered the creature’s outer plates, sending fragments of bone-like armor flying through the air.

  Still the Watchers did not move.

  They simply raised their staffs again.

  The magic continued.

  People were still running.

  Workers who had not escaped in time were scattered across the clearing, scrambling through the wreckage and trying to reach the gate before it closed again, while one man crawled through the mud and another staggered blindly through the wreckage.

  The Watchers did not look at them.

  They continued casting.

  The earth surged again, and a wall of thorns exploded outward from the ground, catching several fleeing workers instantly as the spikes punched through their bodies as easily as cloth.

  Their screams lasted only seconds.

  Kael felt his stomach twist.

  They aren’t even trying to save them.

  The realization struck him harder than anything else he had seen, because the Watchers weren’t protecting the workers.

  They were purging the creature.

  Everything else was irrelevant.

  More sap rained down.

  More roots surged forward.

  The creature’s body was already collapsing under the assault, several of its limbs lying twisted in the mud after being severed by the crushing strikes of stone and earth.

  But it was not finished yet.

  The creature gathered itself suddenly, its body tightening while the plates along its sides shifted violently.

  Then one of its limbs shot forward.

  The appendage was long and thin, covered in barbed ridges that looked disturbingly similar to thorns, and it moved faster than anything else had.

  The limb struck one of the Watchers directly through the chest, the barbed spike bursting through the back of his armor in a spray of blood.

  The Watcher staggered.

  For a moment no one moved.

  The creature shrieked again before ripping the limb backward, and the body of the Watcher collapsed into the mud.

  A murmur passed through the crowd.

  Shock.

  Fear.

  But the remaining Watchers did not react, and not one of them looked at the fallen body as they raised their staffs again.

  The earth answered them.

  The ground beneath the creature split open with a deafening crack, and massive roots erupted upward, thicker than tree trunks, slamming into the creature’s body from below and lifting it off the ground.

  The creature shrieked as another wave of acidic sap poured down, its flesh dissolving where the liquid touched.

  The creature thrashed wildly, striking blindly at the roots holding it in place.

  But there were too many.

  Too much magic.

  The Watchers lowered their staffs together.

  The roots tightened.

  With a sickening crack, the creature’s body split apart and its limbs collapsed into the mud, the massive carcass sagging between the roots like a broken puppet.

  For a moment the clearing was silent again.

  The creature was dead.

  A breath passed through the crowd as people began to rise from their knees, some even starting to cheer.

  Kael didn’t cheer.

  He couldn’t stop staring at the Watchers and the way they stood there, untouched, unshaken, unconcerned.

  They had killed the creature.

  They had crushed it like an insect.

  Even after one of their own had fallen.

  Power.

  Real power.

  If I had that power, Kael thought, his mind slowing as the idea formed clearly for the first time.

  If I had that power, I wouldn’t have to run, I wouldn’t have to crawl through tunnels, and I wouldn’t have to watch people die in the mud.

  His jaw tightened.

  I will become one of them.

  No matter what it takes.

  Then the corpse moved.

  At first it was small, only a twitch, but then the creature’s body convulsed violently and one last limb lashed outward, whipping across the clearing with terrifying speed.

  Kael didn’t see it coming.

  The impact struck him across the side and pain exploded through his body as the world spun, lifting him off the ground before throwing him backward into the mud.

  The sound of the battle faded instantly and his vision blurred as the sky above Racines flickered between the tangled roots of Ygdrasil.

  People were screaming again.

  But the sounds felt distant now.

  Kael tried to breathe.

  His chest wouldn’t move.

  Something warm spread across his side.

  Blood.

  The clearing spun slowly above him as faces flashed through his mind.

  The orphanage.

  Sister Maelin.

  The tunnels.

  Daren shouting his name.

  The child calling for his mother.

  Everything blurred together.

  The sounds of the crowd faded while the roots above him swayed gently in the dim light.

  Then the world went dark.

  Thank you for reading.

  This chapter marks the moment where Kael finally witnesses the true power of the Watchers. Until now, they were only distant figures — almost legends to the people of Racines. Seeing them act reveals something important about this world: power exists here, but it is not kind.

  The Watchers protect the city… but not necessarily the people.

  Kael’s path is beginning to take shape. What he saw today will stay with him, and the decision forming in his mind may change everything.

  As always, thank you for reading. Your comments and theories mean a lot and I read every single one of them.