Chapter 120

Skrimma was pounding on the gate at dawn.

She was the matron of Highstone - the village that had grown up around the keep after the war. Young for a matron at fifty-two, but she carried enough fire in her to make up for the years she hadn’t lived yet. And she had no trouble putting anyone in their place - especially anyone stupid enough to give her grief for being a goblin.

In Arvellia, just to the south, that kind of thing was common. Not loud, not always - but constant. Goblins and orcs drew open disdain. Dwarves and elves were tolerated - barely. And the further south you went, the less anyone bothered pretending otherwise.

About half the humans in town had come from there. The rest were a mix - goblins from the five surrounding villages, a handful of northern dwarves, a few Iilvarions, and the occasional Morentis scholar who’d wandered too far from their books.

I stayed out of politics as much as I could. Made it clear from the start - I was here to protect, not to rule. Skrimma respected that. Mostly. She only came to me when things threatened to spill over into something worse.

When she wasn’t on the warpath, she was patient. Good-hearted. Sharp-tongued. Her humor cut as easily as her temper.

Her hair was pulled high atop her head - dark as night except for the white streaks at her temples - giving her almost a bride of Frankenstein look. Deliberate and chaotic - like she’d dared the world to comment and was waiting for an excuse.

She wasn’t what anyone would call traditionally beautiful. But she carried herself with a kind of grounded grace and a presence that made it easy to understand why she’d never lacked for suitors - even now.

She’d had her children. Earned her place. Now she kept the village running. That was the way of things for goblins.

It wasn’t quite hyper-sexualized - but close enough that the distinction didn’t matter much. If you didn’t have children, you didn’t have a place. And if you couldn’t… You were usually cast out.

Mirri had been the exception. Her return to goblin society had been a condition of one of our earliest deals with the council of matrons - a condition that had not gone over well at the time.

Things had eased since then.

Skrimma stood in the morning chill, bare-chested like most goblin women, wearing only a short red leather skirt. The color stood out against her pale gray skin. Her frame was exaggerated in all the ways goblins tended to be - broad hips, heavy chest, compact height - built for life and babies.

Amber beads circled her neck. Bone bracelets, inlaid with amethyst, clicked softly at her wrists.

“Found one of those trees in town this morning,” she said, her gaze flicking toward the walled-off Weeping Gallows in the center of the bailey.

I stepped out and pulled the door shut behind me. “I can’t get rid of it,” I said. “But I can wall it off. We’ll need to make sure people keep their distance.”

She nodded once and turned toward the road leading down into town. I fell into step beside her.

“Tib have a good birthday?” she asked. Her voice was flat - not from lack of care, but from the weight she carried every day.

“He did,” I said. “Thanks for asking. Kel’s birthday is coming up, right? Two days after Brinja’s?”

She glanced at me. “That’s right. How do you remember all that? I’ve got thirty-seven grandkids and I can’t keep track of half of ‘em.”

I grinned. “That’s not so many. Grams has a hundred and two. Forty-six great-grandkids, too.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“I’m good with numbers,” I shrugged. “Always have been. Not like Elise - she’s on another level - but I see patterns. Kel’s your eleventh grandchild. Born the twelfth of Darkroot. Ten, eleven, twelve.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Alright. What’s my birthday?”

I laughed. “Easy. First of Longnight. Twelve, twelve.”

She snorted. “How’d you get that?”

“Simple,” I said, smiling. “Born on the first. Second prettiest goblin in town.” I reached over and pinched her cheek. “Twelfth month. Twelve twelve.”

She slapped my hand away, grinning despite herself. “Now I know you’re full of shit.”

“Hey,” I said, hands up in mock defense. “Not everyone can be as beautiful as Mirri.”

Mirri was an oddity among goblins. She didn’t fit the mold - small where others were large, narrow where others were wide. Barely four-two - petite in every way. I didn’t know if that was tied to her inability to have children, but I knew how others had seen it. Judged it.

Didn’t matter here. She was the shaman of six villages. People respected her. Trusted her. And knew better than to cross her.

Her magic had always been strong. Grams had nurtured it, shaped it, prepared her for the role she now held. But everything she’d endured since - everything she’d survived - had forged something far more formidable.

I’d seen her hurl boulders the size of wagons. Seen her close wounds that should have been fatal. Seen her trap people in stone like insects in amber.

And the mouth on her when she was upset? Enough to make a sailor run back to his mother crying.

Not to mention she carried my Faith.

I still didn’t fully understand how that worked. Faith was supposed to belong to gods - no one else. Mortals weren’t built to hold it. It burned them out. Broke them apart. Anyone who tried to wield it directly didn’t last long enough to regret it.

But something about me - or about my Faith - didn’t follow that rule.

It bled outward. Quietly. Constantly.

I didn’t have to think about it. Didn’t even notice it most of the time. It just… settled into the people around me. Strengthened them. Shielded them. Bound them to me in a way that let them step into my demesne - a pocket of reality shaped by my Will - and from there, cross instantly to anyone else who carried that same thread of Faith.

Mirri’s magic - especially her healing - had grown into something astounding in its own right. There wasn’t much she couldn’t mend anymore.

Ashlara was unparalleled. Strength, skill, instinct - she’d always had them. But now? There weren’t many mortals alive who could stand against her and walk away.

Elise… Elise had always been powerful. Her void magic didn’t need help. But with my Faith woven into it? There were fewer and fewer limits left for her to run into.

And Serah - Serah had defeated her father. Pyraeth - god of domination through strength.

She was a demigod when we met. Already powerful. But now she had grown into something even more - something that cast a shadow over the rest of her kind. At this point, she might be the largest dragon in the world.

All of them. Changed. Strengthened. Elevated.

Because of me or what I carried within me.

I still didn’t know if my Faith had anything to do with my bloodchildren ascending. Maybe it did. I knew twelve gods had given me their Faith when I was changing - helped push me over the threshold.

But I’d already been on that path. They hadn’t started it. They’d just made sure I finished it.

The bloodchildren were different. They were born in the aftermath of Urzan-Brek’s **** - when his Faith tore loose and flooded the world. It made sense they’d carry a spark of him. Something divine, buried deep from the moment they drew their first breath.

Maybe that was enough. Maybe I just… helped it along.

Whatever the reason - for all the power I had gained, for everything I had become - the people around me, my family…

They were just as dangerous as I was. Maybe more.

* * *

We reached the Weeping Gallows, and there was no mistaking it.

It stood barely three feet tall, but its branches had already begun to spread - drooping outward like a weeping cherry, only wrong in every way that mattered. The leaves were a deep, wet crimson. The bark was so dark it was almost black and from its cracked surface, thin rivulets of red sap crept downward like blood from a wound. The branches were hooked. Barbed. Waiting.

Two guards stood watch, holding the gathered crowd at a cautious distance.

It hadn’t taken long for the tree to claim something - a squirrel hung tangled in the roots. Its body was shriveled to a dry husk, as if everything that made it alive had simply been taken.

The whispers reached me as I stepped closer. Faint. Indistinct. Quieter than the one at the keep - maybe because it was smaller. Younger. I couldn’t make out the words, but I didn’t need to. I knew how they worked.

They spoke differently to everyone. For some, they sounded like a loved one - soft, familiar, calling them closer. For others, they promised secrets. Truths no one else would ever share.

It didn’t matter what you heard. If you listened too long, if you stepped too close, the branches would begin to move. Slowly at first - almost gently. Curling inward, closing off escape, drawing you in until there was nowhere left to go - until the tree fed.

Some said confessions made while hanging from a Weeping Gallows were always true. Others believed the pain it inflicted - slow, deliberate, and anything but merciful - was somehow purifying.

People had tried to use them. Tried to cut their wood, shape it into weapons. Blades that carried agony with every strike. That rarely ended well for anyone.

I gave the guards a nod and they stepped back immediately.

The tree had taken root on the far edge of the marketplace. Out of the way - but close enough that people passed by every day. It wouldn’t take much for curiosity to turn into a problem.

And the truth was, this wasn’t an isolated incident. These things appeared everywhere. There was no pattern. No logic. No history or event tying them to the places they grew. They showed up in war zones and quiet villages alike. In city streets, forest clearings, and plowed fields. In forests and deserts.

A symptom, not a cause.

They had to be a result of Zelmyra’s ****. There wasn’t another explanation that made sense. And even when a new god of truth through pain rose to take her place the trees wouldn’t disappear.

The world didn’t reset when gods died. It changed. Permanently.

The moon was still broken after Veythra fell, even after Lunythera rose. Bloodchildren were still being born to bloodchildren parents, even after Vel, Thae, Moss, Clo, Tansy, and Nim had taken their mantles. This would be the same.

“Everyone, please step back,” I called.

They shifted, but not enough.

I lifted my hands and gestured. The crowd gave more ground and took a few more steps back.

Then I stomped twice and clapped as I summoned my mana. Stomp-Stomp-Clap. Stomp-Stomp-Clap.

The ground split in a clean ring ten feet out from the tree. Granite surged upward in response - rising fast, smoothing as it climbed until it formed a solid wall twenty feet high, sealing me inside.

It finished in seconds. I didn’t even make it to the first verse.

Magic was a strange thing. It ran on mana - an energy that simply existed, threaded through the world like air or gravity. No one made it the way we made Faith. It was just… there. No one knew where it came from.

Stranger still, destroying Faith caused mana to build. Not directly - not a clean exchange - but it fed whatever unseen process gave rise to it, like cutting back a forest only to find new growth surging up thicker than before.

Mana could be drawn in, stored within the body, and shaped by will. It moved through natural pathways - mana circuits - carrying it from where it pooled at the base of the spine out through the limbs, and from there into the world.

People here were born with those circuits. They grew into them like muscle.

I wasn’t.

When I first arrived, I could absorb mana, but I had no way to move it - no structure to guide it. I was locked out of magic entirely. It wasn’t until I’d suffered horrible injuries and recovered that my body finally adapted and built those pathways.

But it overcorrected.

I had more circuits than almost anyone alive. Too many. Mana moved through me too quickly, too freely. Controlling it was like trying to cup water in a sieve.

I learned to manage it the only way that worked - through music.

Where others used incantations, diagrams, careful gestures… I sang. And even when I didn’t, the mana bled out of me as sound - rhythm, tone, something always playing just beneath the surface. Just another way I didn’t quite fit in this world.

I gave a sharp whistle and let the momentum carry me upward, clearing the wall in a smooth arc. I dropped lightly beside Skrimma, meeting her eyes with a small, quiet nod.

“These trees are dangerous,” I said, turning to the crowd. “Stay away from this one - and any others you find. If you see one, report it. Do not approach it. Do not listen to it.” I gestured back toward the wall. “We don’t want anyone ending up like that squirrel.”

I let my gaze sweep across them, making sure the weight of it landed.

“Thanks,” Skrimma said.

“I’ll let you know when I figure out how to stop them.”

She nodded once, then glanced back toward the wall. “Breakfast?”

I looked down at her, a grin tugging at my mouth. “From the second prettiest goblin in town?” I said. “Yeah. I think I can manage that.”