Chapter 197: Chapter 197: Honoring The Fallen "We bury them in the roots," she continued, her eyes fixed on the bundles of cloth. "The forest gave them strength at birth. Now, their strength returns to the forest. In exchange, the Great Heartwood grows stronger. Its wards thicken. It protects us because we are made of the same blood." Sol looked at the bundles. At the very front, the largest bundle lay in a place of honor. It was the only one with a spear laid across it. "Korg," Sol murmured. Kira nodded, a single tear escaping and tracking a path through the ash on her cheek. "He was a Pillar. To lose a Master like him... it’s like losing a limb. The forest feels colder already." Suddenly, the drums stopped. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the crackle of the torches. Sol looked around curiously and found that almost the whole tribe seemed to have gathered here, as he even saw... the leadership of the Veynar. Warchief Veylara stood at the head of the roots, her White Tigress phantom manifest but silent, its translucent head bowed. Beside her were the Elders, their faces like cracked stone in the firelight. And then there was High Shaman Zephyra. As the drums stopped, High Shaman Zephyra stepped into the center of the square. Sol blinked, barely recognizing the woman from the Bone Hall. The casual, carefree etherealness was gone. She was no longer the pipe-smoking woman who spoke in smoke rings. She stood tall, her silver hair flowing like a river of liquid mercury down her back, floating around her head as if she were underwater. Her robes of deep violet were replaced by a gown of shimmering gossamer that seemed to be woven from the moonlight itself, and her eyes... usually sharp and amused... were now wide, vacant, and filled with a terrifying, milky radiance. She held a staff of white bone, and as she began to chant, the air around her began to ripple. Zephyra’s chant shifted, rising in pitch until it became a haunting, melodic wail. She raised her bone staff, and from the tip, her phantom manifested. It wasn’t a great beast like the others. It was a cloud... thousands of tiny, mystical glowing butterflies, their wings a pale, translucent blue. The butterflies swirled into the air, a living river of sapphire light that swirled around the plaza. They weren’t just for show, as they descended upon the bundles. They fluttered over the corpses, their wings brushing against the burial cloth. To Sol’s Sovereign’s Gaze, it was a terrifyingly beautiful sight. Each butterfly was a tiny conduit of essence, drawing the lingering, stagnant energy from the dead and "soothing" the fractured spirits, guiding the lingering remnants of the warriors’ souls back into the world. Zephyra began to chant. It was a language Sol didn’t recognize, even with his divine shard... a series of low, guttural hums and high, whistling chirps that mimicked the sounds of the forest. "Is he... is she really talking to them?" Sol whispered. "She is singing them to sleep," Kira replied. "When a warrior dies, their phantom often refuses to let go. It stays trapped in the flesh, angry and confused. If the Shaman doesn’t soothe them, they can turn into ’Ghouls’... corrupted spirits that haunt the hunting grounds." Sol watched as the fading, tattered remnants of the warriors’ spirits... the ghost of a wolf, the flicker of a hawk... shimmered briefly above the cloth bundles. They looked confused, pained, and terrified. But as Zephyra’s butterflies touched them, the spirit remnants grew calm. They dissolved into golden sparks, merging with the butterflies and being carried upward toward the branches of the Great Heartwood. Sol watched as the butterfly phantoms settled onto Korg’s bundle. The white cloth began to glow with a soft, golden light. A phantom image of a Great Bear appeared for a fleeting second... magnificent, scarred, and weary. It let out a silent, mournful roar that Sol felt in his soul, then dissolved into golden sparks that sank deep into the massive, gnarled roots of the Heartwood. The grief in the square reached the peak. Sol saw mothers clutching children, warriors leaning on each other, their faces masks of stone. "Is something like this... common?" Sol asked, his voice low. He watched a young boy, barely ten years old, collapse over one of the smaller bundles, his wails piercing the rhythmic thumping of the drums. The boy’s mother stood behind him, her face a mask of iron, her hand resting on the boy’s head, but her eyes were dead. Kira finally looked at him, her stormy eyes reflecting the orange flames of the braziers. "More common than it should be. The Marauders grow bolder every season. The Zeriths expand their hives. Every time the sun sets in this forest, we do this. Every time a hunting party goes too deep into the forest, we do this. It is the price of the forest." "How do you survive this?" Sol asked, gesturing to the wailing boy. "How does a tribe continue when the cost is so high?" "We don’t have a choice," Kira said, turning her gaze back to the horizon, where the silver leaves of the Orrath whispered in the dark. "The Veynar are alone, Sol. The other human tribes... the Zharun, the Northern Clans... they don’t see our blood. They don’t see the sacrifice. They only see our land. They only see the Heartwood. They think that because we harmonize with the trees, we are weak. They wait for us to bleed out so they can feast on the remains." She looked back at the burial site. "Here, survival isn’t a gift. It’s a debt you pay every single day with the lives of your brothers." Sol went quiet. He thought of his own "Overlord" daydreams from earlier. How arrogant he had been, thinking he could just waltz in and "civilize" these people with a few 3 AM YouTube videos. He looked at the boy wailing over a bundle that was likely his father. No amount of "crop rotation" or "hygiene tips" could fix that hole in the kid’s heart. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂 The ritual continued for hours. Kira stepped forward as the ritual reached its climax. The warriors of the tribe stepped forward, lifting the bundles with a reverence that made Sol’s throat tight. They didn’t carry them to a graveyard. They moved toward the base of the Great Heartwood, where the massive, ancient roots had naturally formed hollows and chambers. One by one, the fallen were laid into the earth between the roots. There were no coffins. No stones. Only the cool, damp embrace of the tree. As Korg’s bundle was lowered into the largest hollow, Warchief Veylara stepped forward. She didn’t speak a long eulogy. She simply placed her hand on the white cloth, her eyes closed. "Return to the sap," she whispered, her voice carrying through the square with the weight of a mountain. "Guard the roots as you guarded the gates." The Shaman Zephyra slammed her staff against the obsidian floor. A wave of silver light erupted, and the roots of the Great Tree seemed to respond. The earth shifted, the massive, vine-like roots slowly coiling over the bundles, drawing them deep into the heart of the mountain, sealing them away in a living tomb. Just then, Zephyra collapsed. The butterflies vanished, and the silver light died out of her hair.