They gathered at the edge of a dying season.

The air beneath the canopy had gone thin, as though the forest itself forgot how to breathe. Leaves hung brittle on their stems, their green faded to a faint gray that whispered instead of rustled. The scent of rot was everywhere—sweet, soft, and tired.

The bride stood among it all, barefoot on a carpet of spent petals that disintegrated beneath her weight. Once, she could walk anywhere and the ground would rise to greet her: buds would open, roots would shift to support her steps. Now, nothing answered. Her power—the same gentle current that once stitched broken stems and coaxed sap through wounded bark—had gone quiet in her blood.

She knelt beside a sapling, its leaves curled in upon themselves like clenched fists. When she touched its stem, she felt nothing—not the pulse of life, not the hum of magic, only a dull echo, as if her fingertips pressed against memory rather than matter.

“Grow,” she whispered. The word was prayer and command both, but the sapling only shuddered, then stilled.

Something inside her chest tightened, a root curling in reverse, pulling inward toward the hollow place where her heart once throbbed in tune with the soil. The silence of it terrified her more than death ever could.

Behind her, the shadows of the trees swayed. They did not move with the wind—there was none—but a heartbeat after she moved, they followed. A half-breath behind, as if the forest had forgotten how to keep time with itself.

Once, her court had been vast: a kingdom beneath the boughs, where dryads and moss-born knights sang to the rhythm of rivers. They had called her the Green Bride, Daughter of Root and Soil, healer of the deep. Now, she walked among ruins of her own kind.

The withering had begun seasons ago. First the fungi stopped glowing beneath the moon. Then the rivers slowed, turning viscous and amber, too heavy to flow. Even the worms began to surface and lie still, their bodies hardening to glass. The magic that fed them all—the Life Stream—was draining.

They said it was the cost of war.

Her mother’s throne sat at the center of the hollow hall, carved from the living heartwood of an ancient tree. Once it had pulsed faintly with each word spoken by the queen; now it sat dull, veins of rot spreading beneath its varnished surface. The queen herself was gone—she had given herself to the soil years before, returning her magic to the court in one last bloom that had long since faded.

Now the bride ruled in her place, though the crown felt foreign on her brow. Not a crown of metal, but a braid of ivy and thorn that no longer greened. When she removed it at night, small flakes of bark fell from it, collecting like dust on the floor beside her bed.

Tonight, the bed remained untouched. She did not sleep.

Tomorrow, she would wed.

Her attendant entered quietly—a thin creature with hollow eyes and hands stained dark with sap. “My lady,” it said, bowing so low its forehead brushed the wilted moss. “The emissaries from the Court of Flame approach. They bear the ring.”

The word hung heavy in the chamber. The ring. She had dreamed of it—an object neither made nor found, but waiting. In her dreams it pulsed, the sound of its hum imitating breath, slow and patient, as though alive.

“Bring it,” she said.

The attendant hesitated. “It breathes, my lady.”

The bride’s lips parted, but no sound emerged. Instead, she gestured. The creature obeyed.

When the box was set before her, she felt the hum before she saw it. A vibration in her bones, subtle as a pulse. She opened the lid.

Inside lay the band: not metal, not stone, but something caught between. Threads of light and shadow twined into a circle, the junctions too fine for mortal sight to follow. It shimmered faintly, though there was no light to catch it.

She stared. The hum seemed to match the rhythm of her heart—then, disturbingly, to lead it. Her pulse lagged half a beat behind.

The shadows in the room followed suit.

She rose, closing the box. Her roots—those subtle tendrils of magic that once extended from her feet into the soil—no longer reached far, but she could still feel the forest’s surface beneath her soles: dry, brittle, desperate.

“The Life Stream weakens,” she murmured, more to herself than to the attendant. “The soil hungers. The fire starves. Balance fails.”

Her voice broke. “And they think to bind it with a wedding.”

The attendant dared not respond.

After a moment, she said softly, “Leave me.”

When the door of woven bark shut behind it, she let herself sink to her knees. Her palms pressed into the cold floor. Beneath her, she could sense faint motion—the sluggish crawl of what little magic remained. It moved like blood through an old vein, thick and reluctant.

She whispered to it, a language older than speech. No answer. Only the echo of her own breath.

Then—so faint she thought she imagined it—came the sound of wings.

A single raven perched on the dead branch outside her window. Its feathers gleamed like oil. It did not move, did not caw, only watched her through the slit of the hollow wall.

Its presence felt deliberate.

When she looked away and back again, it was gone.

That night, she dreamed of green fire.

It licked at the edges of her vision, not burning but breathing. In its glow stood a figure—tall, limned with light, eyes like molten glass. The groom. She knew him though they had not yet spoken.

He was once a warrior of renown, they said. Defender of both Courts during the War of Sparks, when the sky itself bled smoke from the machines of humankind. He had driven the steel monsters back, wielding a sword of flame so bright it left ghosts of itself on the air.

But war had cost him. His fire, once endless, now consumed itself faster than it could renew. The Fire Court flickered. Their pyres grew cold.

Like her, he was fading.

The dream blurred. The fire around him turned green—her color, not his. His face wavered, stretched, distorted. She reached out, and her hand passed through him, leaving behind a trail of ash that clung to her skin.

When she woke, her room smelled faintly of smoke.

She rose before dawn, dressing herself in garments woven of the last living vines in her dominion. They brushed against her body like dying breath.

When she stepped outside, the air tasted of rust. The forest’s silhouettes stood against the pale horizon like ribs of a giant carcass.

Everywhere she looked, she saw signs of imbalance: mushrooms blooming black instead of white; dew that shimmered with the sheen of oil; small animals lying motionless, their eyes clouded but their bodies unspoiled, as if sleep had forgotten to end.

A murmur passed through the few attendants brave enough to stand near her. The wedding would be at dusk. Between now and then, she would meet her groom for the first and last time before the ceremony.

She wondered what words could possibly exist between them that would not sound like mourning.