Adventure of Tuiwen 2

Eldred steps forward, amber eyes fixed on the loosened binding at the forest warden’s wrist. His voice is calm, almost clinical. This knot is not wild rot. It is a Dol Guldur binding, woven to tighten when tugged.

Radagast stills, staring at Eldred as if seeing him for the first time. The hedge leaves tremble inward. The pale grit at the roots flares faintly beside the warden’s arm.

The question hangs in the wet air. Eldred’s jaw tightens, but his grip stays steady on the snapped strand. The warden breathes shallowly, the dark threads now peeled back and vulnerable.

Tuiwen acts at once on Eldred’s warning, guiding the loosened binding free while the others watch for the final give.

Tuiwen follows Eldred’s guidance without hesitation. Her blade gleams once in the dim hedge-light as she lifts the loosened outer loop, careful not to drag the knot tighter.

The binding gives with a dry, hateful crack. Glossy strands split apart, and the dark spine beneath them breaks under her steady hand.

A shudder runs through the forest warden’s arm. The pale grit by the hedge flares, then gutters, as if something far away has lost its grip.

Radagast’s wary stare does not leave Eldred, even as the last twisting thread falls away from the warden’s wrist.

The hedge leans inward in a soft rustle, and the cleared wrist shows raw, darkened skin where the burden was bound. Eldred says nothing.

Tuiwen lays her palm near the warden’s wound and gathers light again. The glow comes softer this time, but it trembles at the edge of the raw skin.

The brightness catches on the darkened flesh and skitters away. What remains is a ring of pale warmth, then a quick fading, like sunlight failing under deep water.

The warden inhales sharply and pulls his arm back half a handspan. The relief is real, but the hurt is not gone, only exposed.

The hedge shivers in a low hush. Eldred’s face remains turned toward the wounded arm, yet his silence feels less like evasion than old knowledge turning heavy in his chest.

Tuiwen lets the light in her palm ebb, and the hard edge of her focus softens into honest weariness. The wound does not close. It only quiets, as if it has heard enough for now.

The Forest Warden dips his chin, accepting the failure without shame. The pale warmth on his arm lingers, and beneath it the dark stain shows itself more clearly, like roots under thin ice.

Radagast’s eyes narrow at the exposed mark, then ease by a fraction. He does not lower his suspicion of Eldred, but he studies the wound as though it has begun to speak.

The hedge gives a faint shiver, and the bark sample in Radagast’s hand gives one dim pulse, as if answering the thought of a path still to be read.

Tuiwen lays both hands over the wound and speaks the shape of her spell into the skin. Pale sight gathers under her palms, thin as morning mist.

The flesh turns clear in a narrow band, not torn, only made transparent. Beneath it, a dark thread lies coiled in the arm like a buried root.

The thread answers her light by branching once, then twice, and the pattern shows itself, hooked deep and clever beneath the wound.

The hedge trembles harder, as if the house itself is listening. Radagast tightens his grip on the pulsing bark sample, and its glow points faintly toward the traced wound.