#Chapter 177: Facing Truths

CASSANDRA I survived the Blightwood. Barely. The memories came back to me in jagged flashes, like shards of broken mirror pressed too close to my eyes. The searing pain in my lungs as I ran, the stench of rot curling into my throat, the sensation of the forest closing in around me—not just the trees, but something beneath them. Something old. Watching. Waiting. The roots hadn’t just tangled around my legs. They’d tightened. Bitten. Like they wanted to drag me down into the earth and keep me there. Feed me to whatever lived below the moss and stone. And the air—Goddess, the air had turned thick and wrong. Like syrup laced with poison. Every breath was a punishment. The presence I felt in those woods wasn’t metaphorical. It wasn’t some trick of the darkness. It was real. Alive. A sentience that existed in silence and shadow and blood. And it didn’t want visitors. It didn’t want deals. It wanted tribute. It wanted me. If I hadn’t crawled my way back to the ridge—if I hadn’