Magic Pot in the Cave of Priceless - Chapter 36: Chapter 36

Two seasons passed.
Eldermoor had never known peace so gentle. The skies cleared, crops flourished without rot, and even the animals of the Everdeep Forest came closer to the town’s edge, no longer bearing eyes of shadow. Festivals returned. Children no longer feared the wind’s whispers. The world was slowly mending.
But Arias knew — peace was never permanent. The bloom had awakened something deeper than hope. It had stirred old echoes — remnants of a power that didn’t want healing… it wanted control.
The Magic Pot had not spoken since they left the cave. It rested quietly in his home, placed on a stand of ashwood and whitestone. A single vine had grown from its base, green and glowing, curling into the floorboards. It pulsed once every few days — like a heartbeat.
And then, one night, the pulse changed.
It thrummed like a drumbeat — low, distant, and urgent.
Arias rose from his bed, heart racing. He touched the pot gently.
"The Root stirs beneath the waking world," it whispered. "An echo that never bloomed."
The words chilled him. He rushed to find Elira and Dren, both now quietly keeping watch over different regions of Eldermoor and the forests. They gathered in the old watchtower, now converted into a sanctuary for those sensitive to magic’s flow.
Elira was the first to speak. “The wind’s wrong. I heard it singing backwards last night. Trees don’t sleep like they used to.”
Dren added, “There are whispers in the wells. I thought I was losing my mind, but three others heard them too. They said a name: Valemorra.”
Arias stiffened.
He had seen that name — once — carved deep into a cracked wall inside the Cave of Priceless. The only word that resisted the bloom.
“Valemorra,” he said slowly, “was the Echo Root. The thirteenth bloom Solenya refused to plant.”
Dren leaned forward. “What does that mean?”
Arias replied, “It was a creation meant to grow alongside the Magic Pot — a twin. But instead of holding memory, it absorbed ambition. Solenya feared what it would become, so she sealed it… deep beneath a forgotten land called the Withering Reach.”
Elira sighed. “So now it’s waking. Just like the pot did.”
“No,” Arias said. “It’s not waking. It’s breaking free.”
The pot glowed faintly again — not red, not gold — but a dull green, pulsing in rhythm with something far away. And the vine growing from its base turned ever so slightly… toward the east.
Toward the Reach.
That night, a dream came to Arias.
He stood in a field of ash. The sky above was cracked like a mirror. In the center, a great tree grew upside down — its roots reaching toward the stars, its branches buried in the soil.
From its trunk dripped ink, not sap. And beneath it, sitting cross-legged and still, was a child. Pale, with hollow eyes and a crown of thorns fashioned from bone.
When the child looked up, he smiled.
“You carry the pot. I carry the root.”
Arias woke with a jolt.
The next morning, they made their decision.
Elira, Dren, and Arias would travel east — into lands no longer marked on maps — in search of Valemorra, the Echo Root. They would follow the pull of the vine and the pulse of the pot, hoping to reach the Withering Reach before the echo could bloom into something far worse than even the Hollow Kings.
Arias packed the pot carefully in its ashwood case, adding fresh rune salts and strands of blessed thread.
Before they left, Mistress Caelum met them at the edge of town.
“You’re not chasing a shadow,” she warned. “You’re chasing something created by fear itself. Valemorra was not just a seed. It was a curse wrapped in hope.”
Arias nodded. “But even curses have roots.”
As they stepped beyond Eldermoor and into the unknown, the world around them began to shift. Trees grew crooked. Flowers sang in silence. The sky darkened during daylight.
The path was no longer paved in stone or grass.
It was paved in memory — and shadow.
And deep below, in a place untouched by light, the Echo Root stirred… and remembered its name.