Sito was already awake when the soft knock came at the root-door.
He had slept lightly, one hand resting on the dragon pendant, the other near the hilt of a katana. The dreams that came were of open plains, steel and the clean crack of bone on bone.
Sylwen waited outside with three other Rootguard. No Marcus. No royal escorts. Only the four elves and the small human prince.
Marcus stood in the doorway behind Sito, jaw tight. "I still don't like this."
"I know," Sito said.
He adjusted the straps of the dual katanas so the sheaths sat high and quiet against his back. "Three days was the agreement. This is day two. I'll be back before the sap-light fades."
Marcus looked at Sylwen. "If he returns with so much as a scratch that was not already there—"
"He will return whole and healthy," Sylwen answered. Her voice carried no offense, only certainty. "The forest has accepted the request. We do not break such acceptances."
Sito touched the pendant once for luck he did not believe in, then followed the Rootguard into the living paths.
They moved downward this time, spiraling along the inside of a massive trunk until the platforms of the city fell away above them.
The air grew cooler and denser. Moss underfoot gave way to bare root that pulsed faintly with the same slow rhythm as the sap-light.
The elves walked without sound. Sito matched their pace as best he could, placing each step where theirs had been.
The deeper forest was different from the outer rings. Here the trees were older than any kingdom, their trunks ribbed with age and thick with shelves of luminous fungus.
The mist no longer drifted; it clung.
Sound died within a few paces. Even the dual katanas on Sito's back seemed reluctant to shift.
Sylwen spoke only once during the long descent. "The upper vein is not a mine. It is an exposure. The land itself pushed the mithril toward the surface centuries ago, the way a body pushes a splinter. We have left it undisturbed. You will see why."
They walked for what felt like half the morning. The path narrowed until it became a single living bridge of interwoven root spanning a dark ravine.
Far below, water moved with a low, continuous roar. On the far side the trees thinned, and the ground changed.
Sito felt it before he saw it.
A wrongness settled into the soles of his boots. A deep, persistent ache that rose through bone and muscle.
The air tasted of metal and cold stone. The usual green scent of the forest thinned and was replaced by something sharper, like the smell after a storm.
The exposure lay in a shallow basin no wider than the training arena back home.
The soil here was black and cracked. At the center, a jagged ridge of pure mithril rose from the earth like the spine of some buried creature.
It caught what little light reached this deep and threw it back in dull silver-blue flashes. The metal looked unpolished and raw, veined with darker streaks that pulsed in time with something far below.
Around the ridge the trees leaned away. Their roots had withdrawn, leaving a ring of bare, dead earth.
No moss grew. No insects moved. The silence here was absolute.
Sito stopped at the edge of the dead ring. The ache in his feet climbed higher, settling behind his sternum like a second heartbeat that did not belong to him.
Sylwen watched his face. "Most humans feel nothing. Some feel greed. A few feel the wound. Which are you?"
Sito did not answer immediately. He stepped forward onto the cracked earth. The dual katanas shifted against his back with a soft sound that felt too loud.
The closer he came to the mithril ridge, the stronger the sensation grew—not pain, but a vast, slow sorrow mixed with pressure, as if the land itself were holding its breath against an injury that would not heal.
He crouched and placed one bare palm flat against the cool metal.
Images that were not memories flickered behind his eyes: deep earth under impossible weight, a song older than language fracturing note by note, something bright and hard being forced upward against its will.
He pulled his hand back as if burned, though the mithril had been only cold.
"It's not dead," he said quietly. "It's… waiting. Or hurting. I don't have the right word."
One of the younger Rootguard—an elf with leaf-green hair and a thin scar across one cheek—spoke for the first time. "The child feels the song's break. That is rare."
Sylwen's expression remained unreadable, but she nodded once. "Rare enough that the Elder will listen more carefully when the child speaks."
Sito stood and walked a slow circle around the exposure. He noted the way the dead earth stopped in a near-perfect ring.
He noted the faint shimmer in the air above the mithril—mana, raw and unfiltered, leaking upward in thin threads.
He noted the complete absence of animal tracks. Whatever lived in Mist Forest had decided this place was not for them.
"The dungeon portal," he said. "Where is it from here?"
Sylwen pointed toward a darker fold of the ravine wall, half-hidden by hanging roots. "Forty paces that way. The occlude your people placed still holds. For now."
Sito walked to the indicated spot. The portal was a vertical tear in the air, edges flickering with unstable light.
A single human figure sat cross-legged just inside the threshold—an older man in plain brown robes, eyes closed, breathing in a steady rhythm that matched the slow pulse of the mithril. The occlude. He did not look up when Sito approached.
The pressure behind Sito's sternum sharpened. He could feel the portal the same way he felt the vein: a second wound, smaller but more urgent, held closed only by the will of the man sitting inside it.
He turned back to Sylwen. "If this breaks, everything downstream dies. Human towns. Elven outer settlements. The forest itself for miles."
"Yes."
"And if we dig the mithril carefully, under shared control, the pressure lessens. The dungeon stabilizes or can be cleared properly."
Sylwen's silver eyes studied him. "That is the argument your diplomat will make. I asked what the land feels to you."
Sito looked at the dull silver-blue ridge again. The ache had settled into a steady presence, neither friendly nor hostile—simply there, vast and old and injured.
"It feels like something that was never meant to be brought into the light," he said at last.
"But it's already here. Leaving it alone doesn't heal it. It just lets the infection spread slower."
The scarred Rootguard shifted his weight.
Sylwen was silent for a long time.
"You will tell the Court exactly that," she said. "No more. No less. The Elder will decide whether the words of an unawakened human child carry weight."
Although they didn't linger, the return path felt longer.
The ordinary forest, when they re-entered it, seemed almost loud by comparison—the drip of water, the distant call of some high bird, the soft creak of living wood.
Sito's body slowly released the deep ache, but a ghost of it remained behind his ribs, a reminder.
Marcus was waiting at the guest chamber entrance when they returned in the late afternoon.
His eyes scanned Sito from boots to hairline in one rapid sweep, then the tension in his shoulders eased a fraction.
"You're whole."
"Whole and healthy." Sito smirked.
He walked in and unstrapped the katanas and set them against the wall. "And I know what I'm going to say tomorrow."
Marcus poured two cups of the clear elven tea and handed one over. "Tell me."
Sito did. He described the exposure, the dead ring, the occlude, the sensation that had risen through his palm and settled in his chest.
He repeated the words he had given Sylwen almost exactly. Marcus listened without interrupting, silver eyes narrowed in thought.
When Sito finished, the diplomat set his cup down with care. "Your father will want a stronger push for extraction rights. The council will want volume estimates and timelines. What you just described is more nuanced than either side will like."
"It's what I felt."
"I know." Marcus rubbed his face. "And that is exactly why Thalanor sent you alone. He wanted the version that hasn't been polished by politics. Tomorrow you will give it to him. After that, the rest of us will live with whatever answer the Court returns."
Sito drank the tea. It tasted minty and soothing on more than just a physical level. He let out a sigh of relief as he basked in the flavor.
Outside the narrow window the Living Bough continued its slow cycle of light and shadow.
Somewhere far below, the mithril ridge waited in its basin of cracked earth, not yet fully broken.
He spent the remaining hours of daylight in the limited space of the chamber, moving through dual-blade forms at half speed. The black edges whispered against the air. Each cut felt cleaner than the last.
When the sap-light finally dimmed toward night he cleaned both blades, checked the self-sharpening enchantments, and laid them within easy reach of the moss bedding.
Marcus spoke from the other side of the chamber, voice low. "Whatever happens tomorrow, you conducted yourself as a prince should. The Old Master would approve. Your caretaker would as well."
Sito closed his eyes. "Tomorrow I just have to tell the truth."
"The hardest part of any negotiation," Marcus said. "Sleep. The forest will be listening when you speak."
Sito slept. The dreams that came were of steel and open sky and the clean weight of a well-made blade in each hand. No cabins. No snow. Only the road ahead and the quiet certainty that he would walk it with his back straight and his words unsharpened by anyone else's desire.
At the first brightening of the sap-veins he rose, dressed, and strapped the dual katanas into place. The dragon pendant settled against his chest like a second pulse.
When Sylwen came to escort them to the hall of the Living Bough, Sito was ready.
The Court waited.