Chapter 48: Trap

Foster closed his eyes and placed his palm against the massive bark of the Mother Tree. Immediately, a familiar wave pulsed under his skin, moving up his arm and spreading throughout his body.

He inhaled deeply and surrendered to the connection.

The Mother Tree didn't speak in words.

It felt. It transmitted.

A flood of emotions, vague visions, ancestral forebodings.

Foster immersed himself in it.

At first, he sensed the Tree's mistrust. A dull vibration, like a rumbling in the hollow of the earth. The tree remembered the dark miasma, the shadows that crawled, the filth it had pushed to the borders of Vollua.

It didn't want to let this thing in.

A blurred silhouette appeared in Foster's mind. Kassandra.

But she wasn't like before. Her glow was hazy. Altered.

A knot of foreign magic was binding her, gripping her like invisible chains.

Foster felt the warning.