The Daughter

The black lines writhed beneath her skin, chaotic patterns of movement, like waves crashing on a violent sea. Branches coiled their way down to her hands and feet, before turning over on themselves and moving back up her limbs. Tellis’s body trembled beneath his grip and Opri watched as branches curled up and over her lips in all directions, forming a dark halo around her open mouth. A wet groan escaped her throat, but her eyes remained shut. Sleep still held her.

Everywhere. Movement was everywhere.

Then Opri noticed something. From what had been chaos mere moments before—a pattern emerged. Branches that had spread across her arms, her face, her stomach—all of them began crawling toward the circle over her heart. Opri watched in horror as they converged, drawn to that unmarked spot like iron to lodestone.

They seek her heart, he knew. To extinguish her light in its final moments.

“It will take her!” Opri managed to rip his eyes away for a moment. “Her heart. You must do something. You must—” He looked at the healer. His words died in his throat.

Kael’s eyes blazed with light unseen, beside which the firelight seemed dull. The air around him shimmered and bent, like looking through cracked glass. Icy wind sloughed off of the healer in waves like steam from the mounds. Patterns of frost crawled across his neck and hands.

The bandages at his wrists began to smoke.

Beneath the wrappings, something glowed—a fierce, terrible light that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. The fabric darkened, charring at the edges, but Kael did not seem to notice. His gaze remained fixed on Tellis, on the shifting lines—his eyes like manacles of iron, holding them at bay.

Heat and cold. Frost and fire. Though impossibly, they did not seek to extinguish each other. They rose together—hand in hand, fingers interlocked.

Jaw clenched, veins rising at his temples, he spoke through gritted teeth. “They. Will. Not. Take. Her.”

The hair on the back of Opri’s neck rose. A weight seemed to press down upon him from all directions.

A battle raged beneath the surface, one he could not see.

Tellis’s body shook beneath Opri’s grip. The lines pressed close to the circle, thick and tangled, climbing over each other in their desperation to reach the center.

But they never quite touched it.

At the very edge of the unmarked skin, they curved sharply upward—not spreading across her chest but pulling away from it, rising into the air. The flesh itself didn’t move. The lines themselves peeled upward, like ink lifting from parchment.

More lines followed. From her arms, her face, her hands—all of them rising, twisting, reaching. They braided around each other, climbing toward the ceiling.

Tellis convulsed. Her back arched. Opri’s hands tightened on her shoulders, holding her down.

The lines kept rising, coiling together, forming something. Branches. A tree of shadow and sickness, rooted in his daughter’s chest.

It was beautiful. It was horrible.

“The most dangerous moment has passed,” Kael said, breath whistling between his teeth. A bead of sweat cut a path through the frost crawling up his cheek.

Opri couldn’t look away. The firelight cast harsh shadows of the tree onto the back wall. As the mass shifted, patterns seemed to emerge in those shadows. Open mouths. Hollow eyes. Then the branches moved and they were gone.

“What…” Opri’s voice was barely a whisper. “What is that?”

“The disease has shown its hand,” Kael said simply. “Driven from hiding by your blood.” He studied the writhing mass, eyes tracking patterns Opri couldn’t see. “Threatened by my nature, pushed to desperation—a foolish mistake—then expunged by her own will.”

Opri looked at the healer. His heartbeat pounded in his ears.

Kael nodded. “She fights.” He glanced at Tellis. “Even now, she fights.”

After a long moment, he lifted the scalpel. “Now comes precision. Do not let go. No matter what.”

He brought the blade to the outermost branch.

The moment steel met shadow, the branch recoiled violently—a caged beast in a moment of frenzy. It swung wildly from side to side, cutting through air with a hiss. Kael’s empty hand was a blur. He seized the branch by its end and pulled it taut. It quivered in his grip, desperate to be free.

Tellis tensed beneath Opri’s hands. A quiet whimper escaped her lips.

Kael placed the blade where branch met trunk and cut, the blade sliding through the dark mass like a boat through water. The branch curled in on itself as it fell. It hit the floor and dissolved into black smoke—leaving nothing but the faint smell of burnt hair and a black stain on the floorboards.

For a heartbeat, nothing. Then Tellis gasped—a sharp intake of breath. Her hands clenched into fists. The tree rooted in her chest seemed to wilt, branches sagging, pulling inward toward the center. Even the shadows upon the wall seemed to thin.

The disease was as far from mankind as anything could be. But watching the way it moved, the way it tried to pull free—

Opri thought he understood.

It was afraid.

The next branch lashed out before Kael could even reach for it. He caught it mid-strike, blade already moving. Cut. Tellis jerked. Smoke.

Another branch. This one wrapped around Kael’s forearm as he grabbed it, trying to pull the scalpel from his hand. But branch met the violent light still burning beneath the bandages and recoiled, sizzling. He severed it at the base. Tellis moaned. Her head turned to the side.

Kael worked faster now. Cut. Cut. Cut. Each branch dissolving into smoke. Each cut pulling a sound from Tellis—whimpers, gasps, soft cries that had no awareness behind them.

The tree shrank with each stroke.

Opri’s muscles burned. His grip on Tellis’s shoulders had gone from firm to desperate—knuckles white, arms trembling. Sweat ran down his face despite the cold still pouring off Kael. Each sound she made tore something in his chest.

“How much longer?” he managed.

“Not long.” Kael’s voice was steady, clinical. “The seed is near. We draw it to the surface.”

He cut deeper. The branches here were thicker, more substantial. When the blade touched them, they didn’t just fight—they screamed. Not with sound, but with movement. Violent, thrashing, desperate.

One lashed across Kael’s face, leaving a thin line of frost where it struck. He severed it without flinching.

Tellis’s body convulsed beneath Opri’s hands. Her back arched.

Then her eyes snapped open.

Clouded grey, distant and unseeing. Streaked with black veins like cracks in glass, they roamed around the room wildly. Her body tensed and spasmed, struggling under Opri’s grip.

Then, those unseeing eyes locked with his.

Her mouth slowly opened.

And she spoke.

“Fa–ther…” Tellis wheezed, barely a whisper. “It… hurts. Please… make it stop.”

Opri’s grip loosened immediately, though he didn’t let go.” Tellis…”

“Do not heed the words, charcoal maker,” Kael commanded, eyes never leaving the branches as he cut them free. Another tumbled to the ground, curling and shriveling in on itself as it fell. “Hold her down.”

Opri wavered, looking between his daughter and the healer. “But… Tellis, she—”

“Listen, Opri!” Kael cut in. “Listen to the voice. It is not your daughter who speaks. If she moves at the wrong moment I could sever something vital. Hold. Her. Down.”

Another wheezing moan came from Tellis. “It hurts, father, pl–ease…”

Despite the pain that gripped his heart, Opri listened. The words sounded like Tellis, but… something was wrong. Like a lute strummed without knowledge of each note, each syllable came out strained, uncertain. A mimic of words, without understanding of their meaning.

But it was still her voice. Her face. Her pain.

“It’s all right, Tellis,” Opri said quietly, grip tightening. “I’m here. It’s going to be all right.”

Tears began to fall.

But Kael’s hands never stopped.

Cut. Another branch dissolved. Cut. Another. The tree shrank with each stroke.

“I’m sorry,” Opri whispered, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Little was left but the trunk now. Kael attacked it—carving chunks from it with each swing of the scalpel, now more a butcher than a surgeon. It shrank beneath the steel. The branches that made up the trunk began to unravel, pulling apart like rope gone rotten.

Cut. Carve. Cut. Carve. Kael’s breathing had gone ragged. Sweat and frost mingled on his face. But his hands never wavered. The trunk thinned with each stroke—collapsing inward, losing cohesion.

Opri could see through it now. Just scattered threads holding to a shape that no longer existed.

Until finally, something gave way.

The shape of a tree dissolved, whatever bonds had held it together disappearing entirely. The now disparate strands rose stiffly into the air, held for a moment, before they all collapsed outward. They draped limply over the edges of the bed, still clinging to where they had risen from Tellis’s skin.

A long silence stretched in the cottage.

“Is it done?” Opri finally asked.

The healer raised a shaking hand, index finger outstretched. Opri followed the gesture to Tellis’s chest. In the circle of unmarked flesh, a small lump had appeared—no larger than a fingernail. He glanced back at Kael.

Kael’s hand trembled as he lowered it. “One more cut.”

Kael leaned over Tellis one final time. He pressed the scalpel to the unmarked circle and cut—shallow, precise. Blood welled up, dark against her skin stretched as thing as partchment. He set the blade aside and reached into the wound with two fingers.

When he withdrew his hand, something writhed between them. A seed. Black as coal, no larger than a peppercorn.

Kael pulled another strip of white cloth from his satchel and dipped it into the copper bowl, darkening the fabric with their mixed blood. He dropped the seed onto it. New branches shot from the core, embedding themselves in the fabric, drinking the blood greedily. More branches reached skyward, coiling around each other, forming a smaller tree—a desperate, frantic thing.

Opri still held Tellis’s shoulders, unable to let go. “What are you doing?” he wheezed.

“In its final moments, we give it hope,” Kael said, watching the tree grow with something like pity in his eyes. He crossed to the hearth, face lit by the flames, hard shadows beneath his brow. “Then we cast it away.”

He threw the cloth into the fire.

The tree writhed as it burned. For just a moment, Opri thought he heard something—not quite a scream, but a sound like wind through dead branches. Then nothing but the crackle of flame and the smell of rotting flowers.

Silence filled the cottage. Not the tense silence of before, but something else. Something final.

Kael slowly approached the bed. His shoulders sagged. The frost that had crawled across his skin began to melt, leaving only water running down his neck. He looked down at Tellis, then stepped back, giving Opri space.

Opri looked down at his daughter. Her face was gaunt, marked with black lines that no longer moved. Her hands lay still at her sides. The twitching had stopped.

She looked like she was sleeping.

Her chest stopped moving.

“No.” The word came out small. Opri’s hands were still on her shoulders from holding her down. He couldn’t seem to let go.

“You said…” Opri’s voice cracked. “You said you could…”

But Kael had said she might die. Had been clear about the risk. Opri knew this. And still the protest rose in his throat, desperate for someone to blame. Anyone but himself.

“What can we do?” He looked up at the healer standing over him. “Is there anything…”

Kael shook his head.

Opri stared at him. Searched his face for any sign of hope, any possibility. Nothing. He released her shoulders. Sank to his knees beside the bed. He scooped Tellis’s limp form up into his arms, pulling her into a tight embrace.

His voice trembled. “I—I’m sorry Mara… I promised… Our child… I couldn’t… I couldn’t…”

Apologies to Mara, curses at the gods, pleas to anyone who might hear—they tumbled from him like water breaking a dam, eventually dissolving into a wordless moan. He clutched her frail body to him as tears wore tracks down his weathered face.

Kael quietly moved to one corner of the room. This was a private moment. One where he did not belong.

As Opri held her close, another sensation rose within him. Relief. It was over. Nothing more could be taken. The pain had come, and now it would go.

He hated this feeling, understood how wretched it was, but could not deny it as it slowly sank into the center of his chest, like a stone smoothed by the coursing river. The weight of it settled. Familiar. Almost welcome.

He would grieve. He would heal. He would learn to live with the absence. Just as with his mother. Just as with Mara. Just as he’d already begun with Tellis.

Bran had spoken true—Opri had already buried her in his heart.

A single word shattered it all.

“Papa?”

Opri froze, every muscle in his body tensing. A girl’s voice, so familiar. Who could have spoken? Slowly, he lowered her form back to the bed. It had been a trick of his mind. Surely it could not have been—

Black lines still crisscrossed her body like the cloth patchwork of a madman. Pale skin held taut to her frame—cheeks sunken craters, ribs rising like mountains. But her chest rose and fell with a calm, smooth breath. Slowly he raised his eyes to her face. Clear blue eyes stared back at him, a look of confusion on her face.

“Papa,” she said, her voice small, “why are you crying?”