Chapter 224: Cycle of Life

The source of the howls did not take long to show themselves.

Leaf wolves pushed through the undergrowth in a loose pack, six of them, shoulders covered in bark-plate and vine-fur, eyes reflecting the low light.

Their paws sank into the wet earth without any trouble. One snapped its jaws toward Thea the instant it saw her.

Kalon did not give the pack time to finish closing in.

Photon Slash cut the first two apart at the shoulders. A compressed burst from Ninefold Sujbreaker took the next three in a powerful detonation that left scorched leaf-matter and cracked bark scattered across the roots.

The last wolf tried to break sideways into the trees.

Kalon slammed a short earth wall into its path and stopped it in it’s tracks.

"Thea."

She was already moving.

Thea closed the gap, hooked an arm around the leaf wolf’s neck from behind, and dragged it down into a choke hold against the forest floor. The beast thrashed hard enough to tear moss up under them.

She held on, blue eyes locked, and forced Wither Touch into its body through the contact.

The effect was ugly and fast.

The wolf’s bark-plate dulled. The vine-fur along its neck went grey, then brittle. Its thrashing weakened in uneven spasms as the skill shut it down from the inside. Within seconds the body sagged in her arms, lifeless, the death affinity leaving a cold stain in the air around her hands.

Thea released it and scrambled back.

She stared at the greyed corpse with her hands still raised, breath short, face pale under the sun light.

"I killed it."

"You did," Kalon said.

"It felt... wrong. Like I emptied it."

Kalon walked over and stopped beside the body. The rest of the pack lay broken across the clearing. One clean kill from her. Five from him.

"Death isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As long as you use it for good, it can be a blessing... Not all things deserve to live. Not when their sole purpose or living is to take life from others, like those wolves. They are not a defensive species, they are herbivores who attack for the fun of it."

Thea gulped.

"Still, I don’t want to become someone who only ends things."

"Then don’t." Kalon nodded at the dead wolf. "Death is only one side. You still have Life dormant in you. I think the way you reach it is by understanding the cycle properly, not by pretending Death is a bad thing. Things die. Other things grow from that. If you can hold both without running from either, Life has somewhere to surface."

Thea looked at the body for a long time.

Then she knelt.

She rested one hand on the leaf wolf’s greyed shoulder and lowered her head. It was if she was coming to terms with what she did.

When she finally stood, some of the panic had left her face. Not all of it, but it was enough.

"Let me take you to someone who might understand this better." Kalon eventually said.

...

The cathedral was lit with soft green-gold light when they arrived.

A few lesser priestesses were moving through the outer hall, robes open at the chest in the Veylorian way, when they noticed Kalon. Recognition spread immediately. Then they noticed Thea and slowed, uncertain.

Nyphara came from the inner path a moment later.

Her gold-green eyes moved from Kalon to Thea, then to the faint residual cold still clinging to Thea’s presence.

"I can sense death on you, Thea Bluegale." Nyphara observed calmly.

"She awakened it," Kalon replied. "She wants to understand more about the concept of life and death."

Thea stood straighter under the priestess’s gaze.

"I killed a forest beast with it. I don’t want that to be the only thing this affinity means."

Nyphara studied her for a quiet stretch of time, then gestured toward the pews near the Mother Tree’s statue.

"Sit."

They sat. A couple of the nearby priestesses remained at a respectful distance, listening without interrupting.

Nyphara folded her hands in her lap, heavy green breasts naked in the temple custom, voice calm and even.

"On Veylora, we do not separate life and death into moral boxes. The Mother takes, and the Mother returns. Leaves fall. Roots feed. Beasts die in the wild and their bodies open the ground for new growth. A woman who can only preserve becomes stagnant. A woman who can only end becomes hollow. The ones who last are those who understand both motions as part of the same current."

Thea listened without looking away.

"I can feel how final it is," she said. "When I used the skill, there was no softness in it."

"There should not be," Nyphara answered. "Death that hesitates is only cruelty with extra steps. But death that understands its place can clear space for life to enter. If Life sleeps in you, it will not wake through denial. It will wake when you stop treating its opposite as an enemy."

One of the younger priestesses nodded quietly from the side.

Kalon leaned forward slightly. "That’s what I told her in the forest. Focus on both."

"Then you told her correctly," Nyphara said. She looked at Thea again. "You are not stained for touching death. You are incomplete only if you refuse to learn the rest of the cycle. Return to the wild when you are ready. End what must be ended. Then pay attention to what grows after."

Thea exhaled slowly. The tightness in her shoulders eased by a fraction.

"Thank you."

Nyphara inclined her head. "Trust in the light bringers guidance. He is a wise man.*

They spoke a little longer beneath the mother tree, about balance, about fear, about the difference between killing from panic and ending from understanding. When Thea finally stood, her death affinity still sat in her, but it no longer looked like a negative thing at all.

Kalon rested a hand against her back.

"Ready to go home?"

"Yes."

He focused on the system and took them both home.