The Split-Skull Forest clung to the edge of a cliff like rain to a cheek. I stood in its shadow, distant birds cawing at their prey. When I touched the trees’ black bark, my hand came back ashen and throbbing, as if I’d grasped hot coal.

My steps echoed between the trees as my boots hit the ground, closer to broken glass than soil. I could understand why the seer chose this place: the foolish would rush in and be swallowed by the forest, never to return, and those who thought themselves conventionally wise wouldn’t enter at all.

My wisdom, however, was well beyond the conventional. I walked with my eyes up, searching for the tallest tree. But something was off about them. I thought I’d found the tallest one and bit into it with the axe I’d brought, but when I looked up at its peak, it was shorter than the rest of them – shorter than it was moments before.

The trees were changing heights. That was the game, and it was rigged by the seer. Cut down a tree, and, to your surprise, it wasn’t nearly the tallest when it hit the ground. You’d try and try and try again, until you exhausted yourself by cutting down one tree at a time.

Unfortunately for the seer, if I was going to play a rigged game, I’d be the one rigging it. One every hour would be too tiresome. One in an instant, however, might get her attention.

I drew the map from my satchel and unfurled it. It felt warmer in the forest, as if it was responding to it.

“I’ll give you a moment to show yourself, seer,” I shouted, “before I start supplying a local village with firewood to last generations.”

No one replied.

I put my left hand to a tree. The map only travelled what touched my skin. I pressed my finger to a nearby village displayed on the canvas.

The flash of blue light seemed more intense this time, as if I’d gone from gazing on the moon to staring at the sun. My skin shivered and my bones pulsed like I’d reached into the Eternal Blue Sky and pulled down a bolt of lightning. And my voice became, for a moment, the voice of thunder.

I landed in the middle of a flock of sheep, but when I hit the ground, three sheep flew back a little. When I looked at my feet, the tall grass had been blown away from me, and—

The tree I’d brought with me creaked and tipped – right for the shepherd of the flock. I held them back with my hand, and nodded at him to scoot to the right before I let them down.

The shepherd looked at me. Then at his flock. He broke into a sprint, fur hat barely hanging onto his head as he looked back at me with wide eyes. It looked like I’d interrupted his lunch, plums sprawled over the grass. His sheep chased after him.

One tree down. A thousand more to go.

I put my finger to the forest on the map. This journey wasn’t as intense as the last. I landed right where I’d uprooted the last, the gaping darkness threatening to swallow what remained of the forest’s light.

I inhaled deeply and cleared my throat as loudly as I could. “I won’t stop until you speak to me.”

Again, no one replied.

I made trees vanish, like a thief in the night stealing a mountain of treasure one coin at a time. I fell into a rhythm: left hand on the bark of a tree, right hand on the map. To the field. Back to the forest. Left hand, right hand, field, forest. After an hour, the forest had become a field of open graves. After two hours, the local villagers had noticed the pyramid of strange trees I’d built.

After the third hour, a hand grabbed my wrist as I was about to travel.

“You really are persistent.” A woman stood on her toes and peered at my forehead, as if to examine my mind. “That’ll land you in quite some trouble down the line.”

“It already has,” I said. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

She smiled. “No, no you wouldn’t.”

White flowers grew along her wild auburn hair, which reached down to her knees. The petals seemed to move with her green eyes – where she looked, they looked. Her hand, still warming my wrist, felt like soft summer grass. She wore a piece of cloth around her waist, almost a child’s tunic, stolen and reformed into a skirt.

“I’ve been expecting you,” she said, letting go of my wrist.

“You wouldn’t be much of a seer if you weren’t.”

“That’s just something I say,” she said. “People expect me to say it. I’m not one to disappoint.”

I smiled. “No, no you aren’t.”

A squirrel darted out from the wood, stopping at her leg. It chittered, as if in speaking to her.

She knelt down to it. “Fine, fine. A bet is a bet.” Her hand was empty when she closed it into a fist, but when she opened it, walnuts overflowed from her palm. “You win this one.”

The squirrel chittered again before filling its cheeks and scurrying off.

“A bet?” I said.

“We made a bet on how many trees you’d go through. I said twenty-five.”

“And him?”

“He didn’t think you’d ever stop. He fully expected that he’d die from old age before he saw you leave and got his nuts.”

“Maybe I should speak with him instead then,” I said. “He seems to be the wisest one in this forest. Well, second to me, of course.”

“But you didn’t come here for wisdom, did you?”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“No. I came here for you.”

She waved a hand. Roots crawled across the ground, writhing over themselves like worms in a bucket. They spun towards us and weaved themselves into chairs and a table.

“Please,” she said. “Have a seat. We have much to discuss.”

“Firstly,” I said, dropping onto my seat. “Who—”

“Am I?” She sat on the edge of her root chair. “My name is Erhi. I’m what you might call a seer, a shaman, a witch, a spell-weaver, a spirit-speaker, a spider’s consort.” She paused. “I forget the rest. I will answer your questions, if you ask the right ones. Most people don’t like the answers I give, though.”

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the makeshift table. “I’m not most people.” I pulled the map from my satchel. “Tell me what you know about this.”

“I confess I don’t know much.” She shrugged. “Your kind calls it a map, but it’s more like a key.” She placed a finger on the table, as if to draw. “Just as there are roots under the ground that men roam, there is a place... other than this place.” She drew a line, with little spikes meant to look like grass, and added a few stick figures with little swords. “What you have there is a key underneath it all. A key to the Spirit Realm. But you aren’t strong enough to stay there long, not yet, so it spits you out. The map just tells it where to spit you.”

“It?”

“The world. The…” She waved her hand in the air. “The universe? I can’t keep track of what people call it anymore. When they made that map, they called it the Eternal Red Sky, I think.”

“If the map was made,” I said, “it can be made again. Copied.”

“Well, if you can find a living dragon, I suppose you can. The map is a key to the door, but before there was a key, dragons controlled passage to the Spirit Realm. When men went to the Spirit Realm, they tried to remain, tried to take it from the spirits who had lived there for thousands of years, so the dragons stopped allowing them in.

“But the bell had already been rung. Men had already tasted the fruits of the Spirit Realm. They captured dragons and bent them to their will, but the dragons still didn’t open the doors for them. They settled for dominion on the land of men and built what you know as the First Empire. But the key to the Spirit Realm wasn’t in the dragons’ minds. It’s in their blood. And that’s what the map is. It isn’t drawn with ink. It’s drawn with dragons’ blood.”

“That’s what happened to them,” I said. “Men hunted them for their blood.”

“Not just men. Spiders used to be the size of fortresses, but they were shrunken by the spirits for stealing dragon eggs. The spirits struck the giants dumb, too.”

“The giants?”

“How did you think they got so big? They ate dragon meat. The first giants were men.”

“You said that men tasted the fruits of the Spirit Realm,” I said. “The blue lights. They made me… stronger. I hit the ground like a comet when I travelled from this place.”

“This forest.” She stuck her finger on the drawing on the table and scribbled over it. “It’s a messy place. I don’t know if it’s in the Spirit Realm or in the realm of men. No one does. Normally, I receive nourishment from the Spirit Realm, but not from this place. If men stay here, it twists them. It corrupts their minds. That’s what happened to… Sang-Hand?”

“Changhan.”

She nodded. “You’ve been spending fractions of a moment in the Spirit Realm every time you travel with that map. Enough to make you stronger. Much stronger. But if you were to stay here, it would ruin your mind, tearing you between this world and the other.”

“How much longer until it starts?”

“A day or two. Changhan was here for three weeks.”

“Good.” I stood.

“Good?”

“It’s an excuse to take you with me,” I said.

“I… I’m not… I can’t leave the forest. I’ve been here all my life. I have important work to do here.”

“Such as feeding squirrels?”

“What if someone else comes? Someone like you?”

“If you’ve been here all your life, if you’ve truly never left,” I said, “then you’re in prison. These trees are your jailers.” I unfurled the map. “And I thought I made this clear. There will never be anyone like me again. Men build the First Empire, but I will build the last one.”

She looked down. “Prison. You’re more right than you know.”

“Then come with me.”

“He will hunt me down if I leave. He won’t stand for—” She fell to her knees, her nails digging into her scalp. She clenched her jaw. “Aaah!”

“Who? Who’ll come for you?”

“I… I can’t say. He hears. He—” She coughed. Blood leaked from her nose. The flowers closed and their color faded, as if to hide. “I mustn’t speak of…”

If this continued, she’d be dead in minutes. The Spirit Realm, I realized. She said it nourished her. I grabbed her wrist and planted my finger on a nearby village.

The blue light enveloped us. It caressed her, healing what damage had been done. She fainted from the pain. I grabbed at the light, trying to remain in the Spirit Realm for longer, long enough to fully heal her, but it spat us out on a farm. We landed in a pile of hay.

I shook her awake. “Erhi!”

Her eyes shot open. She searched for the trees of the Split-Skull Forest, but there were none. “He will come for me. I can’t speak about it. My mind is open to…”

“Don’t say anything.” I put a finger on her lips. “If something comes for you, I’ll deal with it.”

“You don’t understand—”

“No, you don’t understand.” I helped her out of the hay. “If the Eternal Blue Sky falls down on us, I’ll hold it up myself if I have to.”

“You’ll hold up the sky?”

I smiled. “Or I’ll convince it to turn around.” I paused. “You said that if I stay in the Spirit Realm I’ll get stronger.”

She nodded. “If it doesn’t kill you.”

“Nothing has so far.”

She winced from the brightness of the afternoon sun. “I’ve never left the forest before.”

“Never?”

“Unless you count the Spirit Realm.” She shielded her eyes with her hand. “I don’t.”

I unfurled the map, and stuck out a hand.

Her soft palm held mine. “Where’re we going?”

“Everywhere,” I said. “Call it a brief tour of the known world.”

We shot from the farm to the edge of the Silver Desert, hopping from one foot to the other as we stood on hot ground. Vultures eyed us. In the distance, men sailed across the sunlit dunes like dolphins riding a sparkling wave. Next, we landed on the peak of a mountain range, the soft brush of sand exchanged for the hard crunch of snow that hadn’t been stepped on in centuries. The sun was just about to set here, the torches of a distant fishing village popping with light.

“C… Cold,” she chittered.

“Next it is.”

We landed at the edge of a waterfall. Of a dozen waterfalls, huddled around an infinite drop into the dark like men around a fire. They were uneven, as if put here by a clumsy child organizing his toys. The waterfall across from us was a flat plane tilted to the left. Below, the unseen depths growled as water fell into it.

I considered taking her to another forest, but I decided against it and planted my finger on Karakhorum instead.

We landed where I had before it was mine: on the high ground outside the city walls. I wanted her to see it from a height. The little white tents were mostly gone, just a few tarps collapsed around extinguished fire-pits and a handful of men scurrying into the city as if running from something. Chair-Wax peered off into the distance.

An army marched toward Karakhorum.

I glanced at Erhi. “Is that the army of the man who hunts you?”

“Doesn’t have one,” she said. “Not one with soldiers from this realm, at least.” She paused. “I take it that isn’t your army then?”

I looked her in the eye. “Not yet.”