Chapter 18
Chapter 18: The Lantern's Truth
Eleanor's arrival with the shadowless lantern changes everything. She reveals that the door isn't just opening—it's been opened before, and she was the one who closed it. The ground splits open beneath the bleeding tree, revealing a staircase descending into darkness. Skylia must decide whether to follow Eleanor into the unknown or stay behind as the shadows close in.
The ground kept splitting, the sound of breaking bone giving way to something deeper—a rumble that came from beneath us, from the earth itself. I stumbled backward, my boots sliding on loose soil, and watched as the crack widened into a gash. The green light from the bleeding tree poured into it like water finding a drain.
Eleanor stood at the edge of the fissure, her lantern held steady. The flame inside it burned without flickering, casting a circle of clean light that the shadows couldn't touch. She looked down into the darkness, and for a moment, her face held something I couldn't name. Not grief. Not relief. Something older.
"You've been standing on it for forty years, Thomas," she said. Her voice carried that same distant quality, as if she were speaking from the other end of a long tunnel. "Every time you drove iron into the roots, every time you sealed a body in the ground, you were standing on the threshold."
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