Linle led him away from the camp, away from the Hollow's edge, deeper into the forest where the trees grew thicker and the canopy blotted out the sky entirely.
The path twisted between roots as wide as his torso, around trunks that pulsed with faint bioluminescent veins.
The further they went, the more the forest seemed to breathe around them, each exhale carrying that sweet scent a little stronger.
Linle stopped at a clearing where the ground was covered in luminescent blue-green moss.
The light came from everywhere at once—from the moss, from the trees, from the spores that drifted lazily through the air like tiny falling stars.
"This is the Heart-Well," she said quietly. "Where the forest's first seed was planted."
Lin Tian stepped into the clearing.
The moss gave slightly under his feet, warm and springy, and the scent here was almost intoxicating—honey and night-blooming jasmine and something else, something he couldn't name but that made his skin prickle with awareness.
