God's Tree-Chapter 177: The Weight of Every Step

Just loss.

This wasn't a world trying to keep him trapped.

It was a world trying to convince him to stop walking.

The rune on his arm glowed faintly blue—a light against the void. The only thing grounding him to truth.

He took one step.

The gravestones did not react.

Another.

Still nothing.

But he felt it—the pressure of the space around him shifting. The invisible weight of countless failed steps. Each marker a dream that faltered. A hero that stumbled. A soul that never reached their end.

Kaelred's voice echoed faintly in his memory.

"You don't stop walking. Ever."

And so he didn't.

Half a mile.

A mile.

Time did not flow normally here, but his legs ached as though days were passing.

The rune pulsed with each step, brighter with every grave he passed. A silent rhythm. A heartbeat in defiance of stillness.

Then—

He saw it.

A gravestone taller than the rest.

Cracked. Half-sunken. But unlike the others, this one had a name.

It wasn't his.

It was Athos.

Argolaith's breath caught.

He stepped forward, hand trembling.

The inscription was barely readable, half-devoured by moss and time:

He was never meant to carry this alone.

Argolaith dropped to one knee, brushing the stone clean. He placed a palm against it, lips tight.

"They were never illusions," he whispered. "They were memories. Every one of them."

He stood.

And behind him, a single line of graves began to glow blue.

A path.

Not forward.

But upward.

He followed the glowing line in silence. With each step, the weight in his chest began to lift—not because the loss had disappeared, but because he accepted that it would always be part of him.

He could lose.

He could fail.

He could fall.

But he would keep walking.

Because the only souls that stayed buried in this place were the ones who gave up.

And he wasn't ready to stop.

The light consumed him one final time.

Cold.

Silent.

Final.

Then—

The canyon returned.

Stone beneath his boots. Wind at his back. The fire of the rune warming his blood again.

Malakar stepped forward. "You're free."

Kaelred offered a hand, eyes searching his face. "What did you see?"

Argolaith took the hand, breathing hard.

"Everything I could lose."

Kaelred said nothing.

But he didn't let go.

The Sentinel stood still at the center of the runic circle.

"You have passed the Trial of Loss."

Argolaith stepped forward. "How many failed there?"

The Sentinel was silent for a long moment.

Then: "All but one."

Argolaith's eyes narrowed. "Who?"

But the Sentinel's voice was already fading.

"The fourth tree lies far from here. The road will bend. The land will bleed. But you will find it—if you do not bury yourself first."

Then it vanished, dissolving into ash carried by the canyon's wind.

The canyon was behind them.

Its towering walls faded into shadow with each mile they traveled, until the haunted silence of the Trial of Loss became just another scar in Argolaith's memory. The Sentinel's final words echoed quietly in the back of his mind—"The road will bend. The land will bleed."

And it did.

Before them stretched a plain unlike anything they had seen.

No forest.

No hills.

No sky-painted fields.

Only a vast, wind-blasted wasteland—cracked and silvered, like old glass shattered and then frozen mid-break. The ground shimmered faintly beneath their boots, shifting with their steps, as if reluctant to be walked on.

It was called, simply, the Bending Wastes.

And already, it was trying to confuse them.

Malakar halted after only two hours of travel.

"This path… was not here."

Argolaith turned. "What do you mean?"

Kaelred squinted at the horizon, shielding his eyes from the low-hanging haze. "Everything looks the same."

Malakar nodded, gaze sharpening. "We've doubled back. I traced a ward into the sand. We passed it again just now."

Argolaith narrowed his eyes.

The wind picked up—not warm like desert wind, but biting and dry, carrying whispers too quiet to catch. The sun remained locked at the same point in the sky, neither rising nor falling, and the air held a taste of iron.

"We're being led," Malakar muttered. "Or tested."

Thae'Zirak, gliding in small-dragon form beside them, grumbled low in his throat. "This land doesn't obey the world's laws. Something old lives beneath it. Or within it."

Kaelred kicked a rock in frustration. "Great. Another nightmare puzzle."

Argolaith stepped forward. "The rune still pulls. I can feel it, but it's… weak. Like something's smothering the signal."

He looked around.

"Keep your weapons ready. The test might not be magical."

New n𝙤vel chapters are published on freeweɓnøvel.com.

Hours passed.

The land didn't change. The sky didn't shift. Every direction looked like the same stretch of broken gray glass, and the horizon bent in strange, uneven angles, as if reality itself had been twisted.

Argolaith reached for a gnarled, half-buried stone to use as a marker. The moment he touched it, he felt a pulse beneath his fingers—like the stone was breathing.

He stepped back.

It exhaled a puff of dust.

Then stopped.

Kaelred blinked. "Did that rock just try to sigh?"

"Something's buried here," Argolaith muttered.

Malakar knelt by the stone, pressing his skeletal fingers to the brittle soil. After a moment, he looked up, voice heavy.

"This place is full of… remnants. Bone. Dust. Remains of beings not recorded in any history."

Kaelred exhaled slowly. "And we're walking on their graves."

The wind shifted again—harsher this time.

Thae'Zirak froze, nostrils flaring. "Something approaches."

Argolaith drew his sword. "From where?"

The dragon glanced in every direction. "Yes."

A faint whirr echoed from nowhere.

And then the sand exploded.

A shadow burst from beneath the cracked ground, rising high into the air—a creature made of tattered bone, shards of mirror, and flowing dust. It had no eyes, no face. Just a gaping void where a mouth should be.

It let out a shriek—not in sound, but in memory.

Argolaith staggered, gripping his head.

He saw flashes—fleeting images not his own:

A giant tree splintered by lightning.

A city of marble consumed by vines.

A woman with glowing eyes, screaming his name in a voice he didn't recognize.

Then it vanished.

The creature hovered, turning slowly, body flickering like a dying candle.

Kaelred drew his blades. "Please tell me this thing bleeds."

"It doesn't," Malakar said calmly, drawing his shadow-forged sword. "But it can be banished."

Argolaith readied his stance.

"Then let's make it forget us."