Eldenroot had always breathed slowly, like a creature resting in the arms of its own ancient rhythm. But after the Rootmind's acknowledgment of Sid, something subtle shifted. The forest no longer just observed him—it made space for him.
The path from the Rootmind clearing was quiet but not empty. Verdant Thief walked beside Sid with a rare looseness in his movement, the Echo Step now in sync with Sid's rhythm rather than reacting to it. Bob floated ahead, blowing translucent bubbles from his tail, popping them on Mira's ears just to annoy her.
Mira didn't smile. But she didn't stop him either.
They were heading to the Crossroads of Cloaks, a hidden convergence of forest trails used by rogue summoners, wandering mystics, and the occasional criminal who wanted to avoid the highroads. Mira had been there once before. Sid never had. But both of them felt it: this wasn't just another journey—it was a test cloaked in shadows.
"Why are we going to the Crossroads?" Sid asked.
"To learn what you are," Mira replied.
He blinked. "I thought I was the Weirdest Summoner."
Bob cackled. "You're barely even that."
Mira gestured at the scroll strapped to her side—old, cracked, sealed by runes that flickered under moonlight. "This scroll holds records from the old Summoner Tribunals. There's a name scratched into the forbidden pages. Not a summoner. Not a beast. Not a magic. Just a title: Freakbound."
Sid raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't sound helpful. Or flattering."
"The Crossroads holds someone who might explain it. Or challenge it. Either way, it's where we start the second phase of your journey."
Bob floated sideways. "Or we could take a detour and get weird mushroom soup from the Mycosage in Hollow Fen. Just saying."
"No," Mira said flatly.
---
The forest changed as they approached the Crossroads. The trees grew closer together, bark turning dark and oily. The air smelled of wet stone and burnt herbs. An unnatural fog coiled at their feet, but it wasn't cold. It was watching.
Verdant Thief paused. The mist curled around his paws, refusing to touch them.
Bob stopped floating. "Something's wrong. The fog usually tries to mess with my hair."
Sid readied himself. Summoning energy thrummed at his fingertips.
A whisper slithered from the trees.
"Three steps in, you find the path. Four steps in, you lose your past. Five steps in, you wear the mask."
Sid looked to Mira.
"Don't answer the rhyme," she said sharply. "It's a lure. One of the Crossroads' guardian echoes. If you speak to it, it binds you to a trial you didn't choose."
"And if I already whispered it in my head?"
Mira groaned. Bob facepalmed. Verdant Thief growled softly.
The fog thickened. A flicker of gold and grey shimmered ahead.
A figure stood at the heart of the Crossroads: hooded, cloaked, barefoot. Their cloak shimmered like moth wings, changing hue as it caught light from nowhere. No face. Just the glint of a single silver chain running from neck to fingertip.
"Another maskless one," the figure said.
Mira pushed Sid gently forward. "You must approach alone."
"Yeah, I really hate how many things in this world have that rule," Sid muttered.
He stepped forward.
The figure's voice slithered like silk in smoke. "You call things that shouldn't come. You summon names that do not belong. You walk with paradoxes, and the forest welcomed you. Why?"
Sid shrugged. "Guess I was too weird to reject."
The figure reached into their cloak and drew out a mask—wooden, cracked, with an eye carved on one side and a spiral on the other.
"Put this on."
"Will I regret it?"
"If you don't, you won't grow."
Sid hesitated, looked back at Mira. She nodded. Verdant Thief lowered his head in solemn agreement.
Bob was humming a funeral tune.
Sid sighed. "Great. Peer pressure."
He put on the mask.
---
Darkness.
Then—light.
But not of this world.
Sid stood in a forest that wasn't real. Colors inverted. Trees glowed from inside. Leaves hung in the sky like constellations. And before him, twelve cloaked figures floated in a ring.
Each one wore a mask.
Each mask was cracked.
One mask, however, was missing.
A thirteenth.
The center of the ring remained empty.
One of the figures spoke. "You are summoned, not summoner. You are echo, not origin. Why do you claim?"
Sid swallowed. "Because someone has to."
Another asked: "Would you burn your sanity to learn truth?"
"Yes."
A third whispered: "Would you burn truth to save your bond?"
Sid hesitated. "Yes."
The ring of masked judges leaned in.
One by one, they raised a hand and snapped their fingers.
The sky collapsed.
The ground exploded.
Sid fell.
Fell through colors, through time, through memory and future.
And then, he stood again. At the Crossroads.
No more fog.
The figure with the moth-cloak was gone.
Only the wooden mask remained in Sid's hand.
Mira approached, eyes wide. "You came back. With the mask."
Bob gave a low whistle. "He didn't melt. Impressive."
Verdant Thief touched the mask gently.
It glowed briefly.
Then the glow vanished.
And something in Sid changed.
---
> [Echo Title Earned: The Maskbreaker] [Ability Unlocked: Echo Displacement — swap positions with a summon once per battle without delay] [Mask Item: Unknown origin. Can reveal hidden Echo fragments in certain locations.]
---
Sid looked at the item, then at his party.
"So what now?"
Mira turned toward a new path. One marked with red stones.
"Now we find someone who remembers what a Freakbound really is."
Bob grinned. "Onward, weird one. The real fun hasn't even started."
Sid stared at the winding crossroads that opened before him, the forest canopy above forming a dome of shifting light. The sun had begun to sink lower in the sky, casting long shadows that twisted like fingers across the mossy ground. With Bob's heavy steps squishing slightly against the earth and Mira's quiet humming filling the air, the trio had begun their journey again, this time toward something more uncertain than ever before.
They had left the whispering forest behind, but the weight of its watchful presence still clung to Sid's thoughts. Mira seemed to sense it too. She walked with one hand always on her satchel, where her sealed pact scrolls rested, while Bob lumbered beside them, occasionally sniffing the wind and growling at unseen things.
"Crossroads ahead," Mira whispered. "They say this is where paths split not just in terrain, but in fate."
Sid raised a brow. "That's just poetic, right?"
Mira's lips curled, half a smile, half a warning. "Only until the wrong step costs you a limb."
The path forked four ways. The first led to an old ruin marked by pillars wrapped in vines, flickering with faint ethereal light. The second descended into a misty valley—eerily quiet and blue-tinged like twilight frozen in time. The third sloped upward toward what looked like a burned forest, charred and cracked with embers still glowing beneath. The fourth was deceptively mundane: a straight, grassy trail with birds chirping merrily overhead.
Bob grunted. "Smells like traps. All of them."
Sid nodded. "Which is why we need to pick the one least likely to kill us immediately."
Mira closed her eyes. "We'll go through the mist valley. Ruins are unstable, the charred path has elemental residue—fire-based, maybe cursed. And the grassy trail... too perfect. That's either a glamour or bait."
They chose the mist valley.
As they walked into the fog, the temperature dropped slightly. Not uncomfortably cold, but enough for goosebumps to rise. Mira took the lead, lighting a small lantern with a summoning sigil etched in glass. The faint blue glow pushed back the mist just enough for them to see two steps ahead.
"Stay close," she said, her voice muffled by the thick air.
Sid stayed close, Bob closer. The beast clearly disliked the mist. His fur stood up in patches, and every sound—every tiny crack of a branch or flap of a bird's wing—drew his attention.
Then came the voices.
Whispers, soft and beckoning, curling through the air like smoke. At first indistinct. Then clearer. Then personal.
"Sid... why didn't you save me...?"
He stopped cold. It was a girl's voice. Familiar, but impossible.
"Sid?" Mira turned.
He didn't respond. The voice had already vanished. Or maybe it was never there.
Mira grabbed his wrist. "Ignore them. They're echoes. This valley reflects your guilt, your regrets. It's why most people who come in never leave—they follow their own ghosts."
Bob growled. "No ghosts beat Bob."
Sid smirked despite himself. "That's oddly comforting."
The path narrowed, the mist deepened, and soon they could barely see each other. But Mira didn't stop walking. She reached into her pouch and tossed a few dark seeds to the side of the trail. As they hit the ground, they sprouted instantly into vines, marking their path.
"You're prepared for everything," Sid said.
She nodded. "My mother once told me: 'Fear what you don't see, but never stop moving through it.'"
The mist began to thin. But what came next wasn't relief.
It was a scream.
A loud, bloodcurdling, very real scream. Not a ghostly whisper. Not an illusion.
"Help! Someone, help!"
Sid looked at Mira. Mira looked at Bob. Bob didn't wait—he charged.
They burst through the mist to find a boy—young, maybe fifteen—pinned under a fallen tree. He was clutching his leg, blood pooling beneath. Behind him loomed a creature.
It looked like a deer—except wrong. It had six legs, each bent backward. Antlers made of vines and bone twisted upward from its skull, and its eyes glowed with red fire. The Verdant Thief's echo. Or worse.
Bob leapt without hesitation. The creature reared back, screeched, and flung a root-laced projectile at them. Sid raised his hand instinctively, forming a weak summoning circle midair.
The creature's attack hit the circle—and bounced off.
Mira's eyes widened. "You deflected that?"
Sid looked at his hand, surprised. "I think... I did."
She didn't have time to comment further. The creature turned to her next, charging with supernatural speed. But before it could close the gap, Bob slammed into its side, sending it sprawling.
"Sid! Help the boy!" Mira shouted.
He nodded and ran to the injured boy. "Hey, stay still. We'll get you out."
The boy's eyes were filled with tears and terror. "Please... don't let it take me..."
Sid placed a hand on the trunk and summoned. It wasn't graceful. It wasn't fast. But it worked. A summoned creature—some kind of earthy badger—materialized and burrowed under the trunk, lifting it just enough for Sid to pull the boy out.
"Got him!"
Mira, meanwhile, had summoned her own entity—a shimmering, floating blade of light—which danced around the creature, forcing it into defensive postures. Bob wasn't letting up either. Together, the two drove it backward until, with a pained screech, it melted into the mist.
Silence returned.
Then the mist began to clear completely.
The boy trembled in Sid's arms. "Thank you... I thought I was going to die..."
"Who are you?" Sid asked.
"I'm Alric... I was on a trial... from Birchvale. I got separated from my mentor..."
Mira's brow furrowed. "Birchvale? That's nearly a day's journey from here. How did you get this far alone?"
"I don't know... the paths... they twisted..."
Mira muttered. "Spatial distortion. The mist doesn't just confuse minds—it warps geography."
"Can we help him?" Sid asked.
"We can. We will." Mira knelt beside Alric and began cleaning the wound. "But we can't linger. This place doesn't like guests."
Bob was still watching the forest warily, ears twitching.
They walked the rest of the way with Alric leaning on Sid. The vines Mira had grown earlier led them back, like breadcrumbs through a labyrinth.
As they emerged from the mist valley, the air warmed and light returned.
They were safe.
At least for now.
---
That evening, they made camp beside a clear, shallow stream. Mira brewed tea from gathered herbs, Bob curled near the fire like a fuzzy fortress, and Alric slept under a blanket of summoned warmth.
Sid sat on a rock, looking up at the stars.
"Mira," he said quietly, "why does this world always seem to test us at every turn?"
She didn't look up. "Because it knows what we are. Or maybe it wants to know if we'll become something better."
Sid smiled faintly. "That's a lot of pressure."
"It is," she said. "But you're holding up better than most would."
He glanced at her. "You've been through a lot, haven't you?"
She nodded. "But that's a story for a different crossroads."
The fire crackled. The stars shimmered. And somewhere far off, the forest whispered its secrets to the night.
They weren't just travelers now.
They were survivors.
And the path ahead promised both wonder—and war.