Whispers of the heart

[Zeik]

Zeik walked into the den of the forest as if the dew itself had birthed his shape — trailing behind him like mist unthreading from time. The earth knew his footsteps; the wind curled lovingly around his shoulders. Each leaf bowed in reverence. He stepped within the Verdant Confines of the Heartwood — the breathing, ancient rhythm at the forest’s center — a pulse older than language, deeper than memory.

His hand passed across the vines with reverent softness, fingers threading through tendrils like a whisper across a lover’s skin. The moss clung to his touch as though it, too, remembered his name. He wasn’t reaching for the forest — he was reminding it that he was still here.

And the Heartwood answered.

A breath surged through the earth — not a wind, but a living exhale, stirring every branch, every blade of grass. The canopy above shimmered as though dipped in sunlight and rain all at once. Emeralds shifted into golds, then into shades of violet that did not exist outside the forest’s favor. Sap ran like honeyed starlight along the bark. Ferns bloomed with impossible speed, unfolding their spiral arms as if stretching after a long slumber.

The warble of birds, the rhythm of beetles tapping leaf to leaf, the low purr of a slumbering cat-beast in the upper boughs — all harmonized into a single, unbroken song. It wasn’t noise. It was recognition. His presence echoed across every root, every wing, every breath of pollen. The forest didn’t just see him.

It was apart of him

Colors wrapped around him like robes — waves of light that pulsed from his skin and reflected off the trees. Not light, not aura, but something in between — an exchange. The Heartwood was feeding him not just naten, but vitality. His limbs filled with warmth, his mind with clarity. He didn’t merely feel rested.

He felt reborn.

He closed his eyes. The heartbeat of the forest matched his own. They were in sync — his lungs breathing with its rhythm, his bones humming with the song of bark and blood. He stood in the eye of something sacred. Not just a guardian. No mere king.
Stillness fell.

The moment was full of pressure — not from fear, but from purpose. From the responsibility of being seen by something greater, and being known all the way through.

He wondered — not with dread, but with depth.
About what it meant to be.....
To be its sword and its shelter.
To be a father...
To be a crown without a throne, a flame that must not falter.

To be Zeik.

He stepped forward. Leaves parting for him.

The Heartwood glowed, its ancient bark flowering in patterns of blue fire and silver glyphs — sigils only he could read. It welcomed his truth.

His eyes opened, deep amber pools wet with a peace too heavy for words. And then, quietly, but with the weight of storms, he spoke.

“I... seek you—”

He stopped. Set aside his silver tongue.
And spoke, solemnly:

“I... need you.”

A breeze rolled through the Heartwood.

Not cold, but carrying a weight — the scent of ash where there should have been moss, and a tension in the soil that made even the roots pull tighter.

Zeik stood still as the forest began to move around him. Suddenly he becme aware of A family of silver-backed foxes slinked between the ferns, low and alert. One trotted ahead — only to vanish beneath the crushing talon of a hawk too gaunt to escape. The others didn’t run. They simply turned, stared toward Zeik with eyes of knowing, and vanished into the bramble, leaving the body behind.

He shocked...the forest often spoke this way;but, the imagery.
Then came the deer. Antlered and proud, its coat shimmered with morning light, but its legs shook. From across the clearing, a horned serpent — twisted, breathing shallow and fast — lunged not to eat, but to bite and retreat. The deer staggered, not from wounds, but from the poison of fear. It looked to Zeik, dropped to its knees before him, and then crumbled into dust. Flowers bloomed in its place — blooming upside down.

Zeik lowered his eyes.

“The fox… a guide outpaced by tragedy. The deer… once a symbol of grace. Now it falls to poison and panic. These are no mere omens — they’re your memories. What you've suffered in silence.”

He clenched his fists.

“You’ve always spoken in the stories of animals. But now those stories end in death.”

Above, the trees groaned — and every branch above Zeik filled with birds. Owls, nightjays, hawks, ravens — all predators, all silent. They didn’t sing.

They stared.

And the wind came.

It swirled through the clearing with the hush of mourning, curling around Zeik’s shoulders, then rising behind him like a tide made of breath. A soft voice — not spoken but felt in bone and bark — moved through the wind.

“I made us strong...
Yet I'm choking?”

Zeik pressed his palm into the moss beneath his feet. His voice cracked, but he spoke.

“I feel it. The stillness... at the border. Ive seen it. In the armor of the Instrument of armegadon. It’s pressure. You’re holding your breath so your screams don’t disturb the dying."

“I gave you sanctuary…
Yet my children... torn limb from limb?”

Zeik raised his head.

“Our children,” he corrected gently, eyes mournful.

The forest shuddered.

A warm gust surged through the glade — not violent, but relieved. The owls blinked once. The hawk preened its wing. In the canopy above, a nightjay began to sing. For just a moment, the forest remembered its trust in him.

“War sows roots in my woods.
Even the mushrooms carry grief.”

Zeik's expression softened, his voice a whisper now.

“They... used to transmute sorrow into light. Even decay was reborn through them. But now... even they are still. That isn’t natural.”

He stood taller.

“I will make this right.”

The wind swirled tighter, until the form of a woman emerged from pollen and petal — not flesh, but suggestion. Her eyes were twin clusters of fireflies. Her hair was vine and whisper. Her voice was every branch creaking at once.

“They burn their flags into my skin.
.”

She stepped forward — though she did not walk.

“Zeik...”

The word struck like thunder through his ribs.

It was the only audioble word the forest had ever spoken aloud in his presence. All other werr whispers xarried by the cries of animals and the breeze of the forest.

But today. ...it spoke.


Its sound bent the trees. The glyphs on the Heartwood flared brighter, and Zeik staggered, clutching his chest. His knees hit the ground. His lips trembled. His body reacted to the sound like it was being unmade — not from harm, but from unbearable grief. The forest had called his name.

And it hurt.

At her feet, a badger wrestled a rabbit into the earth. Not out of hunger — but fury. Both screamed. Neither survived. The ground swallowed them in silence.

Zeik’s jaw tightened.

The Matron leaned in — towering now, ephemeral, wrathful.

“Hesitation...”

She said aloud. Around him, vines twisted into nooses. Birds flew in frantic circles until they collapsed mid-air — exhausted from panic, from migrations cut short by flame and steel.

The forest sighed — and the leaves began to fall.
Too many.
Too soon.

Outside the Heartwood, in the greater forest, trees turned to autumn in the height of summer. Patches of gold ran red bledding across green canopies. "You call for blood..." Zeik looked around, heart heavy with worry. "....I will answer your call "

[Zeik]

He wrestled with the weightbof his responsibility for a while before, thebpresence of thebforest watching him and patiencly waiting he response. He rose slowly and wandered toward a small arbor overgrown with ivy and shaped into a cradle of ancient wood. Within it pulsed a faint hum — subtle, harmonic.

He ran his fingers along the rim.

It was shaped like a heart, carved from branches that had twisted together willingly. This was where he had first felt the pull. The impossible rhythm that led him to the Sanctus Crystal — long ago, on a day the world had held its breath.

His thoughts drifted back.

The glade where he found the crystal hadn’t obeyed natural law. Time skipped like a cracked mirror. Space folded in slow spirals, as if the clearing were stitched just outside the fabric of reason.

And there it had waited — The Sanctus Crystal— humming with the sorrow of dead stars.

The moment he touched it, the world had vanished and he returned to a place just inbetween reality and dreams. It was just like his first fateful encounter.

Flashback:The Shattering

No sky.
No ground.
No Zeik.

Only memory.

His consciousness was taken, flung beyond form, past time, beyond meaning — into the broken pieces of a dying cosmos. He lived countless lives in an instant. He became them. Heroes, tyrants, children, beasts. Their joys, regrets, their final breaths. All encoded into that single shard and now encoded in him.q

He saw the Horsemen — not as monsters, but natural disasters given shape. Not evil. Inevitable.

He saw the destruction of the universe — a realm beyond his own — and strangely enough he saw a Trinity who gave everything to save what little remained. He understood then:

The crystal was no weapon.
It was a witness.

And in that moment, Zeik was changed.
He was no longer simply a man.
He became the living union of forest, memory, and time.

End Flashback

The cradle pulsed beneath his palm — steady, alive, and waiting.

But Zeik no longer trembled.

He had returned from the outer threads of reality, from the memories of a lost universe, and from the voice of the forest itself. And in that communion — through root, crystal, blood, and time — he understood what he had always been.

The Axiom.

The convergence of will and witness.
Of resonance and remembrance.
Of sword and soul.

He turned to meet the forest visage, Amber eyes ignited with calm purpose. His steps no longer echoed with sorrow — they rang with judgment. The Heartwood did not wail this time. It stood with him.

Around him, the leaves ceased falling.

Above, the birds took to the skies, no longer panicked, but watchful. The vines relaxed their nooses and curled into archways. Flowers bloomed right-side up. The mushrooms glowed faintly again, their grief slowly transmuting into power. The forest was no longer warning him.

It was with him.

He raised his hand — and the canopy parted, revealing the open sky, veiled in rolling smoke far beyond the treeline. War was not just coming.

It was here.

Zeik’s voice was low, but carried like a war drum across the glade. Not just words — a promise spoken in the forest’s tongue, felt in every root and wind-worn leaf.

“I will become....judgement."

The light pulsed across the Heartwood.
Somewhere, far off, the birds of war scattered.
And the Forest of Resonance remembered how to roar.