Chapter 153: Pillars of Noon (Patreon)

2/5 ---

Kage stepped out of the hollow tree and let the living bark fold shut behind him.

The Verdant Reach closed around him at once, thick with mist and the low hum of dream-touched wood. Lavender vapor rolled over his boots. Starlight sap moved inside the redwoods in slow, luminous veins, and the phantom elven balconies overhead hung in the canopy like a city remembering itself.

He checked the quest panel.

[Epic Quest Updated: The Final Sylvan Decree]

[Progress: 432/1000]

568 petals remained.

Math first.

A withered bed took 100 to 140 Awen, a spoken couplet, and several seconds of careful harvesting. Beds damaged by stray violence often resisted the first wake. That meant a second cast. That meant double cost. That meant time.

He needed roughly 60 to 80 bed interactions to reach one thousand, depending on bloom density. At a conservative average, that placed the total somewhere above 7000 Awen and below 9000.

His pool sat at 1690. Regeneration would refill part of it between casts. Artistry saw to that. Pacing belonged to another night.

If Greenlanders kept swinging swords, loosing arrows, and dropping AOE spells around him, every collateral burst could seal or wither fresh blooms within twenty meters. Each interruption could force a recast. Each recast would burn another 100+ Awen. If he let their rotation dictate his movement, his pool would run dry long before the petals reached four digits.

So the forest gets fast.

He pulled the route together from what he had observed on the way in.

The Greenlanders farmed the primary Dream-Wells in four main kill-boxes. Their scouts dragged mobs along luminous paths. Their AOE teams burned on strict timers. The secondary logging lanes circled those kill-boxes in wider, less guarded arcs, used mostly for material collection, stray pulls, and repositioning.

An orbital loop around those secondary lanes would give him access to the dead margins.

Mob respawn patterns were readable. Mist-Veil Stags phased through solid trunks on predictable circuits. Glimmer-Bark Treants rooted near old growth unless provoked. Gossamer Weavers held canopy webs and dropped silk ambushes where the mist thinned. Will-o’-Phantoms drifted toward sound.

He could time them.

He could run them.

Mumyo stayed sheathed. The blade gave a single curious pulse against his hip.

“No,” Kage said. “No heroic monster hunting. Petals first.”

He rolled his shoulders once, set his weight forward, and broke into a sprint. The forest answered with a soft rush of displaced mist.

[AWN: 1690/1690]

A withered bloombed waited in the crook of two roots beside the first secondary lane. Its petals had gone grey from a nearby spell burst, the archival color buried under frost and dead light.

Kage slowed just enough to speak clearly.

Title: Withered Bed.

Poem: “[Memory] keep what sun has known, / [Growth] restore what light has sown.”

[-128 AWN]

Gold punched down through the dark.

A pillar of noon sunlight slammed into the bed with enough force to flatten the surrounding ferns.

[Harvest Successful: Sylvan Record-Blossom Petal x7]

[Progress: 439/1000]

Kage already moved. The sunlight lingered for a breath, bright enough to cast shadows through the mist, then faded into the forest’s dream-blue dusk.

Ahead, another bed clung to the side of a mossy gully.

Title: Frostbound Shelf.

Poem: “[Purity] wash the ash away, / [Growth] return the living day.”

[-133 AWN]

A second shaft of gold dropped through the canopy.

The frost flashed white, then vanished. Six blooms opened in a tight spiral, shedding pale ash into the air.

[Harvest Successful: Sylvan Record-Blossom Petal x6]

[Progress: 445/1000]

His boots carried him up the gully wall without pause. The Treads of the Ashen Dune found purchase on loose bark and wet stone, distributing his weight over ground that should have swallowed his ankles. The Strider’s Hollow-Bone Legguards kept his steps light. His charcoal longcoat streamed behind him, silver filigree catching the ghost-light.

A phantom staircase spiraled around the next redwood.

To the Greenlanders, that architecture would have been scenery. Translucent. Untouchable. A twilight illusion layered over the real forest.

Title: Ghost Stair.

Poem: “[Memory] recall the glass, / [Shape] the stair to let me pass.”

[-122 AWN]

Glass became stone. Light became railing. The floating steps hardened under his boots with a clear, bell-like chime. He took them three at a time, vaulted a gap where the stair had once been broken, and landed on a balcony that had existed as a glow two seconds before.

Below him, a withered bed hid beneath the balcony’s edge.

Title: Burnt Root.

Poem: “[Purity] wash the blackened stone, / [Memory] call what light has known.”

[-131 AWN]

The pillar of noon struck the rootbed sideways. Eight blooms opened at once.

[Harvest Successful: Sylvan Record-Blossom Petal x8]

[Progress: 453/1000]

“Pillars of noon,” Kage murmured. “Terrible for stealth. Excellent for morale.”

He kept moving.

The forest began to change around each restored bed. Where [Memory] touched the old archive, the phantom architecture leaned closer to truth. Railings solidified. Floating gazebos gained weight. Glass archways took on edges sharp enough to cut the mist. The Verdant Reach became a vertical course of fascinating, intricate surfaces, half twilight dream, half elven stone.

Kage used all of it.

He ran along a balcony that had been an illusion moments before, dropped onto a broad root shelf, turned a corner in the air, and cast again before his boots touched bark.

Title: Broken Balcony.

Poem: “[Strengthen] hold the silver vine, / [Shape] the rail along the line.”

[-126 AWN]

The balcony snapped into solid existence beneath him.

A Greenlander puller on the lane below jerked to a stop, shield raised, as the mist around him brightened with residual gold.

“What the hell?” the player said.

Kage passed overhead before the man could look up. Another bed waited in the hollow of a split trunk.

Title: Withered Bed.

Poem: “[Memory] keep what sun has known, / [Growth] restore what light has sown.”

[-124 AWN]

Gold crashed down.

[Harvest Successful: Sylvan Record-Blossom Petal x9]

[Progress: 462/1000]

The forest thrummed with a deeper resonance. Somewhere far below, roots shifted. The phantom elven galleries above glowed brighter, responding to the restored archive. More stairs hardened. More bridges became walkable. The zone’s dream logic accepted his edits and built them into the terrain.

The Greenlanders noticed.

A Mist-Veil Stag on the adjacent lane shied as a sunbeam scorched the mist beside it. Its antlers flared silver. Instead of following the puller’s taunt, it phased sideways through a redwood and vanished.

The puller’s shield lowered in confusion.

“Where did mine go?”

“Lane Three just lit up,” another voice called through the trees. “What’s with the sunbeams on Lane Three?”

“Pull desynced. Stag broke aggro.”

“Did someone call an AOE early?”

“No. Look, that’s… actual daylight?”

Kage grinned without slowing. Actual daylight. High praise.

He crossed a suspended garden shelf, spotted a cluster of sealed blooms near a webbed canopy gap, and checked the spacing. A Gossamer Weaver waited above, translucent legs spread across a silk line. Its body glittered like wet glass.

Too close.

Kage adjusted his route, took the trunk wall in two diagonal steps, and kicked off a hardened railing. The Weaver dropped a silk loop toward him. He passed beneath it, felt the sticky hum of the thread cross the air behind his shoulders, and landed on a moss shelf beyond the web.

The blooms there had sealed tight.

Title: Moss Shelf.

Poem: “[Memory] wake what slept in green, / [Growth] lift the stored sheen.”

[-118 AWN]

The shelf bloomed. Eight petals opened under his hand, each one bright with archived noon.

[Harvest Successful: Sylvan Record-Blossom Petal x8]

[Progress: 470/1000]

The Weaver recoiled as the sunlight touched its silk. Kage was already gone.

The secondary lane curved east around a fallen redwood. The trunk lay huge and dark across the mist, its bark split by old lightning. Three more withered beds clung to its upper surface, killed by some earlier fight and left grey against the wood.

He angled toward them. A faint creak came from the left. Kage’s stride shortened.

A ranger emerged from behind a fern thicket, bow drawn, green tabard bright over layered leather. At the same moment, a rogue slid from the shadow of the fallen redwood, dagger low, weight already committed.

A pin trap. Classic.

The ranger wanted him rooted against the trunk. The rogue wanted his ankles or his back.

Kage read the wind-ups.

The ranger’s bow arm locked a fraction too high. The rogue’s heel dug into the moss for a pivot. The fallen redwood sat exactly where they expected him to retreat.

He kept going forward.

The ranger loosed.

The arrow carried a pale green binding glow. Kage turned his shoulders and let it pass along the line of his coat. The shot struck the Glimmer-Bark Treant behind him instead of his sleeve.

The treant’s glass-chime foliage rang with sudden outrage. Star-fire flared inside its hollow trunk.

The rogue arrived a half-step later, dagger sweeping low in a controlled arc meant to hamstring. Kage’s boot came down on the crossguard as the blade passed. He used the rogue’s own forward drive as a step, pushed off the dagger hilt, and vaulted toward the fallen redwood in one fluid motion.

Mumyo stayed sheathed.

The rogue’s curse cut off as the treant turned.

Kage hit the trunk’s upper bark, boots finding the split made by ancient lightning. The three withered beds waited right in front of him.

He spoke fast.

Title: Lightning Bed.

Poem: “[Purity] wash the blackened stone, / [Memory] call what light has known.”

[-129 AWN]

Gold erupted across the fallen redwood.

The blooms opened in a violent burst of noon. Kage swept his hand through them while still in motion, fingers closing around petals that shed ash and turned archival gold.

[Harvest Successful: Sylvan Record-Blossom Petal x8]

[Progress: 478/1000]

Behind him, the treant brought one heavy limb down on the rogue.

The impact shook the trunk.

The ranger scrambled backward, bow coming up again, but the treant had already chosen a target. Its second blow caught the rogue across the shoulders and sent him rolling into the mist. The ranger’s next shot struck bark where Kage had been a breath earlier.

Kage ran along the fallen redwood, jumped from its far end, and landed on a solidified elven balcony that had not existed ten seconds before.

Below, the treant clobbered the rogue a second time.

[Convergence: 7/100]

The system graded the sidestep as a clean action under pressure. Kage accepted the number and moved on.

Another horn sounded in the distance. This one carried authority. Spotters started calling from the lanes.

“Lane Four, sunbeam again.”

“Lane Six, balcony materialized. I’m serious. It’s solid.”

“My stag panicked and phased out. Timer’s busted.”

“Who’s pulling daylight?”

Then a voice changed.

“Wait. Charcoal coat.”

Kage glanced down as he crossed a hardened bridge of glass and root.

Two players stood beneath a lantern-vine, staring up at him. One carried a scout’s shortbow. The other had a spotters’ lens hanging from his belt.

The scout squinted.

“Uh, thought he left already?”

The second player swore under his breath.

“No one’s seen him since entering.”

“What does it matter, idiot? DM Erthrix asap.”

Kage passed beyond their view before they could finish the sentence.

That was faster than expected.

He had hoped for another twenty minutes before identification. The beret and coat had betrayed him. Too distinctive.

First, petals.

He dropped from the bridge into a lower garden shelf, rolled over one shoulder to keep momentum, and came up speaking.

Title: Frostbound Shelf.

Poem: “[Purity] wash the ash away, / [Growth] return the living day.”

[-130 AWN]

Sunlight crashed down.

Six blooms opened.

[Harvest Successful: Sylvan Record-Blossom Petal x6]

[Progress: 484/1000]

His Awen pool dipped hard, then began to refill. The regen ticked upward with every breath, helped by the sash, the coat, and the sheer weight of his Artistry. He could feel the reserve as a warm line behind his ribs, brightening and thinning with each cast. The Synesthesia turned the number into sensation. Full Awen felt like a held note. Low Awen felt like a string pulled too tight.

He was approaching the tight part.

Keep spacing. Cast on the move. Regen between landings.

The next bed sat beside a Dream-Well runoff, where starlight sap pooled in a shallow depression. A Greenlander AOE team held the far side of the clearing, mages cycling spells on a forty-five second rhythm. Their explosions bloomed blue and white against the mist, and every burst made the nearby flowers seal tighter.

Kage counted the timer.

Three. Two. One.

The mages released a synchronized wave.

Mist exploded outward. A pack of Will-o’-Phantoms dissolved into sparks. The beds nearest the blast curled inward and greyed.

Kage moved the instant the spell finished.

He crossed the runoff in four steps, spoke over the nearest greyed cluster, and kept his voice under the noise of the team’s next cast.

Title: Sapline Bed.

Poem: “[Memory] keep what sun has known, / [Growth] restore what light has sown.”

[-127 AWN]

The pillar of noon rose behind the AOE flash.

The mages turned.

“Hey!”

Kage harvested five petals and ran.

[Progress: 489/1000]

A sunbeam tore through the clearing behind him as another bed answered. The Greenlanders’ next AOE timer collapsed into confusion. Someone shouted for a tank. A stag phased through the central tree, chased the light with a ringing chime, and vanished into the canopy mist.

The forest was becoming difficult to read.

Good.

Kage reached the outer edge of Lane Seven and found a long slope of exposed roots climbing toward a ruined elven terrace. Withered beds marked the slope at intervals, all dead, all waiting.

He began to climb.

Title: Root Bed.

Poem: “[Purity] wash the blackened stone, / [Memory] call what light has known.”

[-132 AWN]

[Harvest Successful: Sylvan Record-Blossom Petal x7]

[Progress: 496/1000]

Another step. Another cast.

Title: Terrace Bloom.

Poem: “[Memory] recall the glass, / [Shape] the stair to let me pass.”

[-121 AWN]

The terrace solidified under his boots.

He vaulted the new railing and found three more beds sheltered beneath a collapsed arch.

Title: Broken Arch.

Poem: “[Strengthen] hold the silver vine, / [Shape] the rail along the line.”

[-125 AWN]

The arch locked into place.

The beds opened from the reflected truth of the restored structure. Kage harvested without kneeling.

[Harvest Successful: Sylvan Record-Blossom Petal x8]

[Progress: 504/1000]

The guild horn sounded again. Closer this time. A voice carried through the trees, amplified.

“All secondary teams, halt rotations.”

Kage’s eyes narrowed.

The voice belonged to Erthrix, the man he met at the zone's boundary.

The horn crackled once more.

“Emergency lockdown. Hunt him down.”