CHAPTER TWELVE: THE FALL AND THE EXILE

Elias awoke to the sound of roots breaking the air.

He had failed.

The temple trembled with the force of Vrath'kul's wrath. Elias could feel the pressure building around him as if the world itself were closing in. The air was thick with malevolent energy, suffocating him with each breath. His heart pounded, not from fear of the King, but from the unbearable weight of the truth that had been revealed to him in the last moments of his life. His father had never been a man. He was the very essence of the forest itself. The ancient spirit that gave life to the Greywood, a being older than the mountains and the sky, a force of nature that had slumbered for eons. And now, Elias was his offspring.

The bloodline of the forest coursed through his veins, and he had been foolish to think he could escape his inheritance. Vrath'kul would not let him leave. Before Elias could gather himself, before he could even take a step forward, the roots shot from the ground, bursting through the stone floor with a terrible speed.

They wrapped around his limbs like iron chains, pulling him deeper into the earth. A howl of pain escaped his lips as his muscles strained against the roots, but there was no strength in him to resist. "Your blood is mine, child of the Grove," Vrath'kul's voice echoed in his mind, cold and commanding. It was not a voice of flesh but of the earth itself, ancient and eternal.

The world around him spun, the ground beneath him breaking apart as he was dragged deeper into the temple's core. Elias felt his bones snap, the air thick with the scent of decay and rot. His heart beat erratically, the pressure in his chest rising as the roots tightened their grip. But Vrath'kul was not done. The King of the Mycobionts did not simply want Elias to surrender. He wanted to break him. To reshape him into something else. Elias's vision blurred as the world around him collapsed, his mind slipping into unconsciousness. His thoughts were a disjointed mess, flashing between memories of his mother, his father, and the forest he had once trusted. And then, a final, horrifying realization struck him—his mother was gone. She had died because of him. Because of the blood he carried.

The same blood that now coursed through his veins, binding him to the very roots that sought to drag him down into the depths of Makehsm. With a final cry of defiance, Elias was torn away from his body, sent spiraling into the darkness. --- The next moment, Elias found himself lying on cracked, dry earth. His body ached, his muscles strained, but there was no escape. His eyes opened to a sky devoid of stars, a sickly yellow hue that made the air seem even more suffocating than it already was. The ground beneath him was barren, cracked and dry like a long-forgotten wasteland. The trees that surrounded him were twisted and blackened, their bark peeled away in jagged strips as if something had torn them apart from the inside. The ground was littered with remnants of bones, both human and animal, remnants of those who had come before him, or perhaps those who had been left behind by the creatures that now inhabited this forsaken realm. The realm of Makehsm. The Hell of Mycobionts. Elias had heard of it in whispers—the dark dimension beneath the earth, a place of eternal torment, where the borders between life and death were as thin as the threads of a spider's web. The Mycobionts were the keepers of this realm, creatures made of fungus and rot, born from the very heart of decay. They were not alive in the way he understood life, but they were not dead either. They existed in a state of perpetual hunger, feeding on the souls of the lost. Vrath'kul was their king. The ruler of this dark realm. And Elias was now in his grasp. ---

Back in the Greywood, the silence hung heavy in the air. The old cabin, once the home of Elias and his mother, had been overtaken by the forest. The roots had claimed it, creeping up the walls, burrowing into the floorboards, twisting through the beams of the roof. The house was no longer a home but a part of the forest itself. Elias's college friends had come, drawn by the unsettling silence that had fallen over his house. They had tried to contact him for weeks, but there had been no response. No word from Elias, no sign of life. Mark, Nathan, Blake, and Emma stood at the edge of the clearing, staring at the cabin. The trees had grown thick around it, their roots stretching deep into the earth, pulling the house into the ground like some ancient, living creature. "This isn't like Elias," Mark said, his voice low. Nathan shot him a look. "What, you think he just vanished?" "I don't know," Mark muttered. "But this doesn't feel right. This place is… wrong." Blake was the first to step forward, pushing through the overgrown weeds. "I don't know, guys. I just feel like we're doing something stupid by coming here. But Elias wouldn't just disappear without a word. He wouldn't." Emma hesitated, her eyes scanning the twisted trees that surrounded the cabin. "Something's wrong. I can feel it." They reached the cabin, and Mark reached for the door, which creaked open with a groan. The inside was even worse than they had imagined. The furniture was broken, overturned, and the walls had been splintered open by thick, gnarled roots. The air was thick with the smell of rot and decay, as though something had been festering here for far too long. "Elias?" Mark called out. His voice trembled slightly, but there was no answer. "I don't think he's here," Nathan said, glancing around the room. "It looks like he just… vanished." "Vanished?" Emma repeated, her voice rising in alarm. "What do you mean? Where would he have gone?" Blake's eyes fell on the symbols carved into the wooden floor near the fireplace. "These… these are Elias's symbols. I recognize them. What is this?" Mark knelt to examine the symbols, his fingers brushing against the carvings. "This doesn't make sense. This doesn't look like anything Elias would do. There's something… more to this place." Suddenly, the ground beneath their feet rumbled, and the floorboards groaned in protest. They stumbled back as roots shot up from the floor, reaching for them like twisted hands. "Run!" Mark shouted, but it was too late. The roots erupted from the ground, wrapping around their legs, pulling them toward the walls. Emma screamed, struggling to free herself, but the roots were too strong. They surged around her, squeezing the life from her with an inhuman strength. "We have to get out of here!" Nathan shouted, but the roots continued to pull them into the earth. And then, they were gone.

[To be continued.]