God's Tree-Chapter 193: The Tree of the Unseen

The sun barely pierced the ashen clouds overhead.

A pale, washed-out light draped itself over the ruined world, casting long, skeletal shadows across the jagged landscape. It was neither true day nor true night—just a weary in-between, as if even time itself hesitated here.

Argolaith walked alone.

The temple where they had parted was long behind him, swallowed by the broken ridgelines and the heavy mist that curled like restless spirits through the valleys.

Each step felt heavier than the last, not from exhaustion, but from the knowledge of what he had left behind.

Kaelred's trembling voice.

Malakar's silent, burning stare.

Thae'Zirak's ancient blessing, given without condition.

Argolaith shook his head sharply, pushing the thoughts aside.

He couldn't afford hesitation.

The dream had shown him a direction—north, toward the place where Morgoth's influence frayed and the world began to rot into something older and more cruel.

But now, as he walked, doubt gnawed at the edges of his mind.

There were no roads here.

No maps.

Only crumbled stone, shattered earth, and the distant silhouettes of dead trees clawing at the horizon.

The deeper he pressed into the wastes, the quieter the world became.

No birds.

No insects.

Not even the whisper of wind through broken rocks.

It was a silence so absolute it became a weight, pressing against his ears, against his thoughts.

He adjusted the strap across his back, feeling the familiar comfort of his sword pressing lightly between his shoulder blades.

The four vials of lifeblood nestled safely within his storage ring pulsed faintly against his soul—silent witnesses to his journey.

Argolaith grimaced.

He had thought himself ready for solitude.

But already, after only a few hours of walking, he understood: this was not the solitude of quiet nights around a fire with friends nearby.

This was true isolation.

The kind that gnawed at the mind and hollowed the spirit.

The terrain worsened as he moved forward.

The ground was uneven and treacherous—slabs of broken stone jutting at odd angles, pits hidden beneath a skin of dead grass, occasional sinkholes that yawned without warning.

More than once, Argolaith had to stop, backtrack, or climb over unstable ridges, feeling the strain in his muscles as the landscape fought him every step of the way.

The mist thickened toward midday, turning the world into a ghostly labyrinth.

Shapes loomed and vanished at the edges of his vision:

The cracked remains of once-towering monuments, toppled by centuries of neglect.

Half-buried statues, their features eroded to faceless warnings.

Great skeletal remains of beasts long dead, their bones bleached to a sickly gray.

At one point, he passed the shattered remnants of a village—or perhaps a fortress. It was impossible to tell.

The structures were little more than husks, their stones blackened as if by some ancient fire, their streets choked with weeds that hissed faintly as he moved past them.

Argolaith paused at the crumbling gate of the ruin, eyes narrowing.

For a moment, he thought he saw movement deeper inside—something limping and broken, dragging itself through the debris.

But when he strained his senses, there was nothing.

Only the mist, playing cruel tricks.

He set his jaw and turned away, picking up his pace.

By evening, exhaustion crept into his bones.

He found a shallow hollow between two fallen pillars and made camp there, though 'camp' was generous—he simply sat with his back against the stone, pulling his cloak tighter against the biting chill.

He did not light a fire.

Something deep in his instincts warned against it.

Better to stay hidden, unseen.

The land beyond Morgoth was not merely abandoned—it was watching.

He felt it, even now: the faint, persistent prickle at the back of his neck, the way the mist seemed to breathe if he looked too long at it.

He drew one of the vials from his storage ring, holding it up against the dying light.

The fourth lifeblood vial—the essence of Yuneith—glimmered faintly inside.

A reminder of why he endured.

Of what still waited for him at the end of this broken road.

Argolaith closed his eyes and whispered a silent promise to the fading sky:

"I won't fail you."

He tucked the vial safely away again, adjusted the sword at his side, and leaned his head back against the cold stone.

Sleep did not come easily.

But he had learned to take what rest he could, when he could.

The real journey would begin tomorrow.

Tonight was simply about surviving.

Far off, beyond the mists and the unseen horizons, something shifted.

A hollow wind stirred for the first time in days, carrying with it the scent of burning wood and ancient sorrow.

The edge of Morgoth was near.

And beyond it—

The land where even the strongest dared not tread.

The broken earth stretched endlessly before him.

Argolaith pressed forward, head bowed against the rising wind, his boots kicking up ash and dust with every step.

The landscape had shifted subtly over the past hours—less ruin now, and more raw wilderness, as if the world itself had simply given up on shaping this place.

No more ruins.

No more traces of those who had lived and fallen.

Only the breath of an ancient emptiness.

He knew he was near the true edge of Morgoth.

And yet—something gnawed at him.

A pressure behind his eyes.

A whisper threading itself through the gusts of wind.

At first, he ignored it.

Focused on walking.

On surviving.

But as the mist thinned and the last crumbling hills began to fall away into flat, broken plains, the feeling grew stronger—

Not fear.

Not danger.

Something older.

Something waiting.

Argolaith stumbled once, the ground shifting treacherously beneath his feet, and as he caught himself—

The world around him shattered like glass.

He stood in a sky not his own.

Above him, the heavens burned—a vast, endless sea of stars unlike any he had ever seen, each one flickering with colors too deep, too fierce for mortal sight.

And there, towering between the stars, was a tree.

It was colossal beyond imagining—its roots threading through constellations, its branches brushing against the silent music of distant suns.

It bore no leaves, no flowers.

Only endless, gleaming strands of silver and gold that twisted around its trunk like veins of living starlight.

Time did not touch it.

The withering breath of ages could not scar it.

This was not a tree of earth or stone.

This was a tree of the unseen realms—the places between breaths, between heartbeats, between the worlds that mortal eyes could glimpse.

Argolaith stood frozen, breath stolen from his chest.

A single branch bent low from the infinite canopy, a tendril of luminous bark twisting downward until it hovered just before him.

And from its heart—

A voice.

Soft.

Powerful.

Vast as eternity itself.

"Argolaith."

His name, spoken in a voice like the echo of stars being born.

He staggered back a step, heart hammering.

But the tree only pulsed gently with a light deeper than memory, its voice washing over him again:

"Come to me."

The branch brushed lightly across his forehead, and visions cascaded through his mind:

He saw himself walking across endless frostbitten fields, where storms howled with the cries of forgotten gods.

He saw himself climbing a jagged mountain whose peak tore through the firmament itself.

He saw blackened rivers, shattered bridges of bone and stone—and a path that wound ever upward.

And at the very end—

The Tree of the Unseen.

Waiting.

Bearing the weight of countless forgotten things, unseen by mortal eyes but witnessed still by its eternal branches.

It had endured without song.

It had grown without praise.

It had suffered without hope.

And yet, it had never ceased reaching upward.

"Claim what is yours," the tree whispered, voice threading itself into his soul.

"Carry me in your blood. Become what you were meant to be."

Argolaith gasped, the images burning themselves into his mind.

He reached out instinctively toward the branch-

And the vision shattered.

He collapsed onto the cold stone of the wasteland, the breath torn from his lungs.

The sky above him was once again gray and broken, the mist curling low against the ground.

But something had changed.

The direction was clear now.

He could feel it, like a thread tugging at the core of his being—pulling him north, toward the lands where even the memory of Morgoth faded into nothingness.

His final tree was not the crumbling, hollowed remnant he had seen before.

It was something greater.

Something untouched.

Something unseen.

Argolaith pushed himself to his feet slowly, every muscle trembling, his heart pounding in his ears.

He set his eyes on the horizon where the mist thinned and the sky stretched open into a vast, empty plain.

The tree was calling him. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ

And he would answer.

Without hesitation.

Without fear.

He tightened the strap across his chest, adjusted his sword at his back, and began walking again—each step firmer than the last.

The true final trial awaited.