“You spoke my release,” Dryas rumbled, vines twisting through his ribs. “Now you must pay the price: one memory for each syllable.”
Dryas smiled, planted a seed in Lbt’s open palm, and whispered: “Now you are Thmyl again. The soil remembers everything.”
The earth trembled. The sky turned the color of old bronze. And from the roots of the oldest oak, a figure rose — , the last tree-king, bound a thousand years ago for trying to turn men into forests.
One night, under a bleeding moon, Lbt whispered the full phrase: “Thmyl lbt salwn dryas.”