Devin_Clare

Verdant Soul: The Wild Forgotten - Book One

In the heart of an ancient forest untouched by war or civilization, a young half-elf Druid awakens in a burned-out campsite, surrounded by moss-covered ruins and whispering trees. Her name… she doesn’t know. Her past… a blank void. But the forest knows her. The wind bends toward her. And something old and powerful stirs beneath the roots.

Clutched in her hand is a carved wooden totem, inscribed with symbols of a forgotten circle of druids. Around her neck, a pendant pulses with faint green light. She has no idea who she is—or why she was left behind—but the wilds are calling. And something is hunting her.

As she travels, she begins to uncover traces of a lost adventuring party… and of a greater quest left unfinished. One by one, she’ll find the rest of the crew—each with secrets, powers, and reasons to run. Together, they’ll uncover what fractured them—and what they’re truly meant to stop.

Because beneath the forests, in ancient dungeons now stirring awake, something has begun to bloom. Something that should have stayed buried.

Book One: Bloom of the Lost

Not with wind or voice, but with memory—raw and unfiltered. Every spell ever cast in the valley rippled through the air at once, overlapping like echoes in a broken hall. Above it all, the spiral tower loomed, grown from stone and spell, its surface engraved with pulsing runes that changed faster than the eye could follow.

At its peak, a massive bloom opened—petals of light and crystal.

Inside it: the Root of Echoes.

Thalindra stood at the edge of the wound, Veyren leaning against her shoulder, barely conscious. Rowan and Kaelen flanked her. Eryndis hovered overhead on vines shaped like wings, playing a slow, defensive melody to anchor the wild magic in place.

It was unfinished—a fragment of the Song, never given a purpose, now feeding on forgotten spells and abandoned endings.

Thalindra could feel it inside her bones, trying to rewrite her story.

Trying to make her forgotten.

"We can't destroy it," she whispered.

"Because it's part of the Song," Eryndis called down. "A note that was never resolved. If we silence it the wrong way, it'll just rise again elsewhere."

Rowan stepped forward. "So we finish it?"

The Verdant Seed still glowed in her hand—now pulsing in sync with the Root itself.

The unfinished note that had haunted the world for generations… wanted a place to belong.

She raised the seed, let it absorb the spiraling Song.

And then, she sang.

A closing verse. A farewell. A memory laced with promise.

And folded inward.

The spiral collapsed gently into the earth, replaced by a bloom of flowers that sang softly as they swayed.

Then a new pulse—slow and steady.

But now, it belonged to them.

Chapter Eighteen: The Root of Echoes