for Power up Prompt #9: 8.9.25 hosted by
The rain had been falling since before dawn, hissing on the heath and turning the moor path to slick black mud. Sarai Rashan moved without sound, bow across her back, twin daggers at her hips.
A small shape ahead stopped her mid-step.
The fox lay half across the path, head canted at an unnatural angle, eyes dull as cloudy glass. Ribs jutted under sodden fur. At first she thought the dark sheen on its muzzle was wet earth, but when she crouched and nudged it with her dagger point, the skin split open with a soft tearing sound.
A swarm of tiny metallic insects burst out, their high-pitched wingbeats a whining needle in the ear. They rose in a tight spiral, moving not like a random scatter of startled flies but with purpose, cohesion. And then they darted east, toward the village.
Sarai froze, pulse thudding in her throat. She had seen those before—spilling from the mouths of dying kin in Avondale, the day the forest was devoured.
No. The World Tree holds it prisoner.
She stood, sheathing her dagger, and scanned the horizon. The Chronoscepter’s weight under her cloak pressed between her shoulders like a silent reminder of promises she had not yet broken. She never touched it unless she had no other choice.
Greyharrow crouched on the forest’s edge, its outer fields long since surrendered to briar and weed. As she came in off the moor, she spotted a trader’s cart in the square, mules steaming in the rain. The driver was talking to the village reeve, a stoop-shouldered man with a ledger under one arm.
“…dead fox on the road,” the driver was saying. “Some sort of rot.”
“That’s swamp fever,” the reeve said, before glancing up and seeing her. His eyes narrowed at the sight of her ears. “Burns itself out.”
“It doesn’t,” Sarai said.
The driver shifted uneasily. The reeve gave a thin smile. “That’s an old ghost story you people tell. A lie to keep humans out of your trees. There’s nothing in Avondale but dead wood.”
She took a step closer. Rain dripped from her hood’s edge. “Then tell your hunter to stop scratching his chest,” she said. “And listen for the clicking.”
The reeve frowned. “What—”
Click. Click. Click.
The sound came from the hunter she’d noticed earlier, dragging a sled with a young boar strapped to it. His hand was pressed to his sternum. He coughed, and something black flecked his lips.
The reeve’s face tightened. “Tomlin—”
But Sarai was already moving.
The hunter’s trail was easy to follow, churned mud leading toward the forest’s fringe. She kept low, bow ready. Somewhere ahead, branches creaked.
Bootsteps splashed behind her.
“I’m coming with you,” a young voice said.
She didn’t look back. “No.”
“My sister vanished in there when I was eight,” the voice said. “No tracks. No scream. Just gone. I’ve been waiting for a reason to go back.”
Sarai kept moving. “The reason you’re looking for isn’t in there.”
“I’ve got salt,” he said.
That made her glance at him—a lean boy with a hunter’s bow and the mud of the moor still fresh on his boots. A small leather pouch hung at his belt, tied with frayed red cord.
“A ward?” she asked.
“From my sister,” he said. “Said it keeps out the bad things in the trees.”
She said nothing, but didn’t send him back.
They found the hunter on his knees in a hollow between two black-trunked oaks, retching. His fingers clawed at his chest. When he coughed, a mist of black spores drifted from his mouth. The skin across his collarbone stretched too tight, splitting in jagged seams that wept something darker than blood.
Sarai loosed her arrow before he could rise. The shaft punched through his heart. He sagged forward into the wet ferns.
Kael—she’d caught his name from the reeve’s earlier bark—stared, his mouth working. “You—”
“Once the seed sprouts,” she said, yanking her arrow free, “there’s no coming back.”
They followed his tracks deeper, to a clearing where the air grew warmer, heavier. The smell was wrong—like fruit gone to rot, like flowers left too long in stagnant water.
The stag lay on its side in the clearing’s center, ribs split open as if from within. Its antlers had grown into thorned branches, their tips pulsing faintly with black veins. Nestled inside the cage of its ribcage was something the size of her fist, pale and slick, threaded with dark tendrils that pulsed in time with her own heartbeat.
Sarai’s breath shortened. “Death,” she whispered.
Kael crouched beside her. “What is it?”
“A Rot Seed. It’s not supposed to exist outside Avondale’s border.”
They dug it free carefully, Kael pouring salt from his pouch over it until the veins recoiled. They wrapped it in oilskin and tied it tight.
The ground shuddered beneath their knees. Roots erupted from the soil, questing toward the bundle.
“Run,” she said.
They sprinted, roots and branches lashing at their legs. A thorn whipped past and scored her shoulder. Fire spread from the wound, black veins threading outward.
The forest thickened, then broke open into a clearing dominated by an oak so vast and gnarled it seemed older than the ground itself. Its bark was split in long seams, the wood beneath a strange gray-white.
The oak’s bark groaned and opened like a wound.
A voice filled her mind, layered as if dozens of voices were speaking through one throat, some whispering, some booming:
“Daughter of Avondale. My roots unweave. My sap curdles. The rot gnaws at my heartwood. Bring the heart-piece back to me, or all will drink decay.”
The words carried images—The World Tree itself, bark cracking, the dark inside pushing outward. She could almost feel the straining of roots deep in the earth.
“I thought you held it,” she whispered.
“I am dying. Return it to me, or the realm will be as your forest.”
Kael’s voice broke through, sharp and small. “Who are you talking to?”
Her fingers found the Chronoscepter’s smooth shaft under her cloak. The artifact’s metal orb seemed to hum faintly. With it, she could escape even from Avondale’s core… but not without a soul to feed its power. His soul.
She looked at him—mud-streaked, breathing hard, eyes still steady despite what he’d seen.
“Go home,” she said.
“No—”
“Go. If the forest falls silent, run far and don’t look back.”
She pressed her bow into his hands. Then she turned toward the heart of Avondale.
The border swallowed her. The air thickened until each breath scraped. Trunks rose like black pillars, their bark veined with something that shifted just under the surface.
Shadows slid from between the trees. Faces she knew—her mother, her brother, friends from childhood—twisted into something eyeless and sharp-mouthed. They called her name in voices that were almost right.
She cut them down, each strike carving a wound in her chest that had nothing to do with steel. The corruption in her shoulder burned hotter, numbing her arm.
At last, she reached the World Tree. Its roots writhed, its hollow gaping like an open mouth. The Rot’s tendrils recoiled and reached at once, eager for what she carried.
She tore the seed from its wrapping and hurled it into the hollow. Tendrils lashed around her, dragging her forward. Bark closed over her vision, and darkness swallowed everything.
Kael staggered into the open fields as the clouds over Avondale tore apart. For the first time in years, sunlight touched the highest branches.
It lasted three breaths.
Then the light was gone. The forest groaned, a sound deep enough to make the ground tremble.
He dropped to his knees in the wet grass, chest heaving. The bow was still warm from her hands. “You’ll find a way back,” he told himself. “You have to.”
The salt pouch at his belt shifted. Something inside clicked—three sharp beats, then silence.
A whisper slid into his mind, oily and cold, and it was not Sarai’s voice:
Now you will carry me.
Oooooohhhhhh, this was AMAZING!! I love how you captured the eldritch horror elements of The Rot so perfectly in both the descriptions and imagery. There are some truly outstanding lines throughout this story.
You also did an amazing job with Sarai's character. Her cold and calculated determination came through beautifully here. I also appreciate the attention to detail, like the mention of a soul needed to power the Chronoscepter.
This was such an incredible story. I'll be shouting it out on this week's podcast for sure!