Chapter 20
The Tether
As Jasper begins his vigil at the sealed door, the fragment in his pocket grows dangerously warm, revealing a living tendril that connects the sealed door to the world above. Following it to its source, he discovers the door is not as closed as they believed, and Eleanor's voice reaches him from beyond the seal, warning that the fragment is a tether he should never have taken.
The lantern's light cut a clean path through the undergrowth as I walked, white and steady, casting no shadow behind me. That was the strangest part—the way the world looked different now, every tree and stone standing sharp and distinct, unblurred by the gloom that had clung to these woods for as long as anyone could remember. I had spent years watching Greythorne from the edges, learning its rhythms, its secrets, its cycles. But I had never carried a light like this. I had never walked without my own shadow trailing behind.
The fragment in my pocket pulsed against my thigh, a slow, steady beat that matched my heartbeat. It was cold, impossibly cold for something that had come from the heart of a burning seed, and the lantern's glow seemed to slide off it, refusing to touch its surface. I had wrapped it in a cloth from Hemlock's cabin, but the cold bled through anyway, a constant reminder of what I carried.
The woods were quiet. Not the oppressive silence of the past days, but a natural hush—the kind that settles after a storm, when the birds are still deciding it's safe to sing. Sunlight filtered through the canopy, thin and golden, painting the mossy ground in patches of light. It should have felt peaceful. But I couldn't shake the sense that something was watching me from the spaces between the trees.
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