Taboo Online

Lauren reached for the final light.

Silence.

The Heartroot hesitated.

Lauren pushed the full meaning through the connection.

No shouts. No arrows. No striking shields. Give the hammer nothing.

The fifth light vanished.

The Heartroot carried her warning through every surviving root. Commands died on the defenders’ lips. Archers lowered their bows, injured elves bit back their cries while healers carried them away, and weapons stopped striking armor.

Within seconds, Lethariel fell silent.

The hammer wielder looked around while the vibrations surrounding his armor weakened.

"What are they doing?"

The leader tightened his grip around the Queen’s wrist. "It doesn’t matter. Finish her."

The giant swung.

The Queen twisted beneath the leader’s arm. With almost no sound left to strengthen the weapon, the hammer struck the bridge far more weakly than it had in Lauren’s other futures. The roots bent instead of breaking.

Living wood wrapped around the trapped hammerhead and climbed the handle. As the giant fought to pull himself free, the Queen drove her curved blade into a gap beneath his armor.

His roar entered the weapon.

The hammer released the sound back into him, throwing him across the bridge and shattering part of his chest armor.

The Queen tore her burned wrist from the leader’s grip and struck him across the face before he could place another brand. Her defenders burst from the roots in disciplined silence and forced both villains away from the evacuation route.

The warning bought them time, but nothing more.

The eastern wall remained open, homes still burned, and wounded defenders lay throughout the village while corruption spread beneath the streets. The villain gang had lost ground, but they were still inside Lethariel.

Lauren could no longer help because all five lights were gone.

[All warnings have crossed the final root.]

[The living future has changed.]

[The Oracle guided without commanding.]

[The second truth has been accepted.]

Lauren withdrew her hand from the Heartroot.

Watching the fight continue without her was harder than she expected.

The Queen retreated toward the central tree with the defenders remaining inside her final circle. Beyond them, other elves continued fighting through the burning homes and guiding civilians into the lower roots.

The broad villain marked another bridge while the masked woman began forming new threads from her bare fingers.

Lauren knew enough to help them, but the connection would not carry another warning.

"Give me one more."

The Heartroot pulsed, but nothing appeared.

"One more warning might save her."

The tree refused.

Pain and certainty traveled through the root beneath Lauren’s palm. She had changed what she could. The elves had to make the rest of their choices for themselves.

Lauren clenched her fingers against the bark.

She hated watching people make decisions she could not correct. When her daughters first began hero training, she had studied every recording they brought home and pointed out every mistake she noticed. Even after they joined an agency, she struggled to stop imagining all the ways their missions might go wrong.

Luke had become another person she wanted close enough to protect.

She knew why she felt that way, but knowing did not make it easier to let him act without her.

The Queen raised a new barrier around the central tree while her defenders chose their own positions. Some made choices Lauren would not have made.

That did not mean they were wrong.

They were fighting for their home, and Lauren could not make every decision for them.

The Heartroot withdrew the vision.

Lethariel vanished from the chamber, leaving Lauren alone with blood drying beneath her nose and a headache pulsing behind her blindfold.

"You could have shown me whether they survived."

A root moved along the wall and traced a circle through the bark before splitting into dozens of smaller paths. Several ended abruptly, while others continued beyond the chamber.

The spirit did not know what would happen next. The battle was either beyond its immediate reach or changing too quickly for it to follow.

Lauren stepped closer to the symbol.

"Was that happening now?"

The roots formed one straight branch and another that curved toward it from the side. When the two lines touched, she understood.

The vision had come from living Lethariel rather than one of the dead villages. However, the curse had tangled the connection so badly that she could not tell whether she had seen the village at that exact moment or several minutes out of place.

Either way, the elves did not have long.

A new system message appeared.

[The final village remains under threat.]

[The path to Lethariel has been found.]

[The trial continues.]

Dark corruption seeped between the roots.

Lauren turned as oily mana entered through the same five channels that had carried her warnings. It resembled the Black Rain, but it was not the substance Luke had been holding beyond the Root Gate.

This infection had followed her connection back from Lethariel.

The Root Gate above remained sealed. Luke had not failed.

The Heartroot recoiled as darkness spread through the chamber.

Lauren activated Unveiled Weakness.

Corrupted knots appeared inside the invading mana, but there were too many to examine one at a time. Every stream split into smaller branches and entered another part of the tree.

The spirit tried to close the paths, but the corruption forced them open.

"Of course it followed me."

Roots coiled around Lauren’s ankles and pulled her away from the infection.

She followed as the chamber changed around her. Walls folded inward to seal corrupted sections, while new passages opened through clean wood. The Heartroot guided her deeper, but the invading mana entered each passage only seconds after they left it.

The corruption was not searching randomly. It could feel Lauren through Oracle’s Glimpse and was following the connection she had created between the Heartroot and Lethariel.

If it reached the center of the spirit, the final path to the village would die.

Lauren stopped running, though the roots continued pulling at her legs.

"We cannot keep doing this."

Fear passed through the connection. Empty roots opened throughout her perception, each ending in ruined soil and the remains of another village the Heartroot had failed to save.

Lethariel was all it had left.

Lauren pressed both hands against the nearest wall.

"I’m not abandoning it."

The corruption reached the passage behind her, and a system window opened.

[The Oracle may withdraw.]

[Withdrawal will end the trial.]

[The Oracle will return safely to the Root Gate.]

[All unreconciled rewards will be lost.]

Lauren stared at the final line.

The tree was offering her an escape because keeping her connected placed its last surviving village in danger.

She could return to Luke.

He was somewhere above the Root Gate, fighting alone because the trial had dragged her underground. She had heard his spear striking the soil before the memory opened.

What if he was injured? What if the creatures outside had already reached him?

She had spent the entire trial helping strangers while Luke faced the Black Rain without her.

The Heartroot reacted to her fear.

The passage vanished, and Lauren found herself standing inside the shelter.

Black puddles covered the ground. Broken roots and dark water surrounded Luke, who lay against the Root Gate with one hand pressed to his side.

His spear had broken, and a creature made from mud and bark towered above him.

Luke tried to rise, but his arm collapsed beneath him.

"Lauren."