Chương 134: The Brightest Little Light

Buzzydew wanted to be brave. He had spent many days watching the wardens from places no one thought to look. A curled leaf above the Ironbark Training Yard. The notch where a branch split over the practice racks. The shadow beneath the roof of the gear shed when the morning sun turned the yard bright and sharp. He knew where to hover so Rogan's eyes would pass over him, where Maude's staff would not strike by accident, where Kerrin would not bark at him for getting too close to men and women with real blades.

He watched because the wardens knew who they were. Rogan stood with quiet weight, saying little and seeing everything. Kerrin moved like a spear that had learned to think. Maude had become all iron lines and green cloak, while Havlik laughed sometimes, but when the gates opened his shoulders became part of the wall. Inna looked sleepy until something needed killing, and then she became the kind of story Buzzydew wanted to hear three times in a row. They were big. They were strong. They had purpose.

When danger came, people looked for them. Buzzydew wanted that so badly it hurt. He wanted someone to whisper his name with awe. He wanted to fly over the wall with a blade shining in his hand while goblins scattered below. He wanted to stand on Rogan's shoulder and point toward danger, and have everyone listen because Buzzydew had seen first, Buzzydew had warned first, Buzzydew had fought first. He wanted songs, though he would pretend he did not care for songs.

He wanted a scar that looked heroic and healed properly. He wanted to be called defender, warrior, anything except little one. His siblings played in the trees. They chased mana butterflies around Heartroot's branches. They made Dewpip shriek by hiding behind leaves and popping out with their cheeks full of berry juice. They tried to make the Harmony Bell Tree sing nonsense tunes and then blamed the wind.

They were happy with games, with warm light, with Mother's voice, with hiding under flower petals when it rained. Buzzydew loved them, but he wanted more for himself. The unfairness lived under his ribs, small and sharp. He understood roots. Every fairy child did. They understood bonds and trees and the places where memory became body. His roots were thin. Thin and brittle, he could feel it when he reached for Imperial Form.

The magic answered at first, bright and glorious, and then dropped away too fast, spilling from him like water through a cracked cup. For a few breaths he could be large. He could stand with long legs and strong hands, looking almost like the new Heartroot fairies when they walked beside Mother in their perfect golden-winged forms. Then the drain came, and the magic plummeted, and he shrank back into himself before anyone could believe the larger shape belonged to him. He could barely remember his father tree.

That was the worst part. Some of his siblings said they remembered leaves. Some remembered the place where Mother had first sung to them, even if the memory came crooked and blurred. Buzzydew remembered green light, a trunk too thin for the weight of so much need, and Mother's fear moving through everything. He remembered roots reaching for soil that did not hold deep enough.

He remembered confusion, the memories inside Mother tangled and frightened because she had been young when she bonded, too young to give them the clean pattern fairy children should have received. Then came the new ones. Mother's new children. Heartroot's children. They were beautiful in a way that made his chest hurt. Copper skin and metallic golden hair. Golden wings that caught sunlight and made even the old fairy children stare.

Many of them held Imperial Form as if it were nothing, walking beside Mother with calm faces and long limbs, speaking softly about silk, water, fire, leaves, roots, all the things they already understood. Some had skills. Some felt like magic simply arranged itself around them because Heartroot had made them from strength. Buzzydew wanted to welcome them. He did welcome them. Then envy twisted in him and whispered ugly things. Perfect children from the perfect tree. He hated that whisper.

He hated that it sounded like him. He told no one. He also told no one about his secret. The skill had appeared after days of practice in hiding. He had stolen a thorn from a bramble and used it like a sword until the thorn broke. He had shaped mana around a twig until his fingers ached. He had watched Maude strike, watched Tember slash, watched Rogan's eyes find openings before bodies moved. Then one evening, alone beneath a root near the grove, light had gathered in his hand. Green-pink and sharp. Small, yes.

Tiny, yes. But it was still a blade. Glimmerblade, his new skill called it. A short glowing blade made from compressed fairy mana. The blade was small, but it bit through weak points with frightening ease. Buzzydew had cut a dead beetle shell with it. He had sliced a falling leaf into three pieces before it touched the ground. He had touched the edge to a thorn and watched the thorn fall away as if ashamed. That skill meant something. The world had seen him. The system had seen him. He could become a warrior.

So when Rogan gathered a patrol and left through the western gate with Thrain, Garrick, Tember, and Lathen, Buzzydew followed. Mother was busy with the grove and the new mana trees. The Heartroot fairies walked around her in Imperial Form, asking soft questions and offering calm answers, perfect and tall and gold-winged. The old children were scattered, and Dewpip had fallen asleep inside a curled leaf after eating too many sunberries. No one looked for Buzzydew.

He told himself that this was the moment heroes found. He stayed high at first, moving from branch to branch, keeping far enough back that Rogan would not turn and send him home. The wardens moved through the forest below, their green cloaks brushing leaves. Thrain's axe rested over his shoulder. Tember walked with the stiff focus he wore in the training yard. Garrick kept one hand near his sword. Lathen watched the canopy so often that Buzzydew had to freeze against bark more than once. Buzzydew's heart raced.

He was scouting. That sounded proper. A scout followed. A scout watched. A scout saw danger before anyone else and returned with important news. If Rogan discovered him after Buzzydew had done something useful, the man might frown first, because Rogan always frowned first, then he would nod and say Buzzydew had courage. Maybe Maude would give him a little practice blade. Maybe Inna would ruffle his hair and say he was small enough to stab things where they least expected it. Then the animals attacked.

They were not even the greatest beasts of the forest. Buzzydew knew that after. At the time, they looked enormous. Moss-horn rabbits burst from brush with red eyes and sharp antlers. A thornback wolf charged with bark-like bristles raised along its spine. The wardens shouted, and steel flashed, and Thrain's axe came down with a sound that made Buzzydew's stomach twist. Blood hit leaves. Garrick's fire flared. Tember laughed once in the wild way he sometimes did when training became more than training.

Buzzydew fled. He did not think first. His wings beat hard, and branches whipped past him, and the patrol vanished behind trunks and noise. He flew until the shouts faded. He flew until the forest looked unfamiliar. He flew until his chest hurt and his glow flickered from fear and shame. Then he stopped. The world was quiet. Too quiet. Buzzydew clung to the underside of a broad leaf and tried to breathe without making noise. His hands shook. His Glimmerblade was gone because he had never even thought to summon it.

The shame came next, hotter than fear. Coward. He gritted his teeth.

"No," he whispered.

"Warriors make tactical retreats." The leaf shifted beneath him. He almost shrieked. Somewhere above, a branch creaked. Far away, something splashed in a hollow. Wings beat once overhead, slow and heavy. Leaves scraped together with a sound like claws thinking about him. The forest had grown darker while he flew. The spaces between trunks were deepening. His own glow, which had seemed bright near Heartroot, looked very small here. Buzzydew swallowed. He had to find Rogan. That was the plan. Find Rogan. Find Lathen.

Find Tember and Garrick. Tell them he had been scouting, maybe leave out the part where he had flown away because a rabbit with antlers looked at him. He would say he had spotted something strange and had been circling back. That was almost true, because he had spotted many strange things. Most of them might have been shadows. He pushed off the leaf.

"Man up," he told himself.

"Heroes do not cry because trees are tall." He flew straight into a web. It caught his wings first. The sticky strands seized the delicate edges and yanked him sideways. Buzzydew gasped and twisted, which pulled one arm into the web. He kicked, and his foot stuck. He beat his wings harder, and the web wrapped around them in tightening lines. Panic swallowed thought. He pulled with both hands. The web trembled and his wings stretched painfully. Sticky strands clung to his hair, his elbows, his knees.

He tried to bite through one and only got the bitter taste of old silk on his tongue. Something moved above him. Buzzydew froze. A spider descended on a single thread. It was bigger than him in fairy form, round-bodied and dark, with pale spots along its back and too many jointed legs. Its pincers clicked as it came lower, lower, lower, until they opened in front of his face. Buzzydew closed his eyes. For one breath, he was only small. Then he felt his magic.

His fairy magic waited under the fear, bright and familiar and always too little. He grabbed it with both hands inside himself. Imperial Form surged through him. His body grew. The web stretched and tore. His limbs lengthened, his hands became stronger, and the world dropped lower beneath his feet. The drain began at once. He felt his magic falling fast, frightening, the same terrible emptying that always came. This time he did not waste it.

Buzzydew ripped one arm free, flicked the spider from its thread, and watched it hit the ground beneath him. He brought his foot down hard. The spider burst under his heel with a wet crunch. He released Imperial Form before the drain emptied him completely. The world sprang large again. He hovered above the torn web, panting. His wings were sticky and sore. His whole body shook. A notification appeared. Level Up! You have reached Level 3. For a heartbeat, the forest stopped being frightening. He leveled.

He had actually leveled. Buzzydew flew in a circle and cheered so loudly that a sleeping bird exploded from a nearby branch, flapping away in offended terror. He laughed after it, dizzy with triumph, then clapped both hands over his mouth because noise was probably foolish in a dark forest full of things with teeth. Still. Level three. His chest swelled. The forest changed around him, or perhaps he changed while looking at it. The darkness still held danger. The trees still loomed.

The unknown still waited in every hollow and branch. But danger meant experience. Shadows meant places where enemies might hide, and enemies meant levels. Buzzydew summoned Glimmerblade. The green-pink blade formed in his hand with a sharp little hum. It was short, barely more than a knife by larger folk's reckoning, but in his hand it felt perfect. Light ran along the edge, compressed and eager. He held it up, and the blade painted his fingers in brave colors. He went hunting.

The first creature was a fat beetle with glowing eyes, chewing on fungus at the base of a tree. Buzzydew charged straight at its shell and bounced off so hard he spun backward through the air. The beetle turned slowly, offended by him.

"All right," Buzzydew muttered.

"Shell bad." He circled, watched the beetle move, and saw the soft joint beneath one wing case. The second strike slid into the gap. The beetle twitched and fell from the fungus. Buzzydew grinned. The next was a thorn-wing moth that snapped its wings like blades when he came too close. He learned to dart low and cut the wing hinge. The moth tumbled into moss, and he finished it before it could rise. A root grub with tiny jaws almost bit his leg. He stabbed its eye. A needle-legged tick tried to cling to his back.

He rolled in the air and scraped it against bark until its legs loosened, then cut through its soft underside. He learned quickly. Wings, eyes, joints, soft gaps. Buzzydew kept the lesson tight in his mind as he moved. The shell would turn a blade aside. The front would get him crushed. So he struck where bodies folded, vanished behind leaves before claws found him, and let larger threats waste strength turning after something too small to catch. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen.

Report the violation. His glow flashed once between branches, bright enough to pull an eye the wrong way. Then he slipped around a root, used the trunk like a wall, and came at the beast from the side. He was small. For the first time, he began to understand that small could be a weapon, if he stopped hating it long enough to use it. Another notification appeared after the root grub. Level Up! You have reached Level 4. He nearly shouted again, but he remembered the bird.

The points came with the level, and for once Buzzydew did not hesitate. Dexterity first. He wanted his wings to answer faster. Perception next, because the forest kept hiding things and he hated being surprised. Vitality, because the tick bite still stung. Strength, because Glimmerblade cut well, but his arm needed to drive it. The changes spread through him in small, glorious ways. His wings felt sharper. His eyes caught movement between leaves more easily. His body held pain instead of letting it shout.

His blade steadied in his grip. Buzzydew flew a loop around a branch, turned tighter than he expected, and laughed under his breath. He had been right. He could do this. Then he saw the hornet. It hovered in a shaft of moonlight, and for a moment Buzzydew forgot everything else. Its body was translucent, almost crystal-clear, with pale liquid moving inside tiny channels. Its wings shone like thin glass. Its stinger curved beneath it, long and clear, a drop of venom gleaming at the tip.

It looked dangerous and beautiful, and it was alone. A proper enemy. Buzzydew lifted Glimmerblade. He attacked with a triumphant yell. The hornet turned fast, but he was faster. He went for the wing. Glimmerblade cut through the glassy membrane where it joined the body, and the wing spun away in a flash of moonlight. The hornet fell to the ground with a tiny clink, legs scraping against a root. Buzzydew dove after it. The second strike drove the blade into the soft gap behind its head.

The hornet twitched once and went still. He laughed. He hovered above the body, chest heaving, and stared at the green-pink blade in wonder. It had done exactly what he wanted. It had cut where the enemy was weak. It had made him strong. A buzzing sound rose behind him. Buzzydew turned slowly. A nest hung under a crooked branch. Dozens of crystal hornets faced him. Their wings began to hum.

"Oh," Buzzydew whispered. They attacked. The first three came like glass arrows. Buzzydew dropped instead of flying back. One hornet shot over him and struck a leaf so hard the leaf tore free. He twisted under another, slashing upward, and Glimmerblade took the wing cleanly. The third came for his face. He flared his glow on instinct, bright enough to make its path wobble, then darted aside and stabbed the soft place beneath its head. The dead hornet fell. Two more replaced it.

Buzzydew's fear came back, but now it had teeth of its own. He moved before it could freeze him. A leaf became a wall. A twig became a perch. He kicked off bark, spun behind a hornet, and cut both wings near the root. It fell clinking through branches below. Another chased him around a hanging strand of moss. Buzzydew sliced the moss as he passed. The falling green curtain tangled the hornet's wings, and he drove Glimmerblade into its eye. The nest emptied further. The forest filled with buzzing.

Buzzydew flew low under a root arch, forcing two hornets to turn after him. One struck the root and shattered a wing. He killed it. The other came through cleanly, stinger forward. Buzzydew rolled, felt the stinger scrape his side, and answered with a cut across the wing joint. Pain burned along his ribs. He ignored it. A notification flashed after another kill. Level Up! You have reached Level 5. Dexterity. He chose it without thinking. His wings answered faster.

He shot upward between two hornets and sliced down at one as it passed beneath him. The blade cut through the translucent body, spilling pale fluid over a leaf. The smell was sharp, like bitter sap and rainwater left too long in stone. More came. They began to learn. The next wave spread out. Two drove him toward a branch while a third waited above. Buzzydew saw the trap a heartbeat before entering it because Perception sharpened his sight.

He cut sideways, scraped his shoulder against bark, and let the hornet above dive into its own kin. Their bodies struck with a brittle clink. He killed the tangled pair before they separated. Level Up! You have reached Level 6. Perception again. The world clarified in flashes. Wingbeats separated. The hornets no longer became one shining swarm. He could see the tiny shifts before they turned, the angle of stingers, the trembling line through their bodies when they prepared to lunge. Then one came from below.

The stinger pierced his thigh. Buzzydew cried out and slashed wildly. Glimmerblade took the hornet across the face, but venom entered him, cold and hot at once. It raced up his leg in a burning line. His wings faltered. Vitality. He threw the next point into it as soon as the level-settling warmth allowed him to think. His body steadied, though the poison kept crawling. He fought harder. A dew drop trembled at the end of a hanging vine. Buzzydew flew toward it with three hornets close behind.

At the last moment he flared his glow into the drop. Light burst back, scattered and bright. The hornets veered, blinded for a heartbeat. He spun and took the first in the eye, the second through the wing, the third across the soft belly. He laughed again, breathless and wild. Then another stinger grazed his shoulder. The poison stacked. His left hand trembled. His glow flickered. The forest began to smear at the edges. The buzzing grew too loud, pressing inside his skull until he could barely hear his own breath.

He kept fighting. Strength next. He needed the blade to go deeper. He needed every strike to finish what it started. The point settled into his arms and chest, tiny though they were, and Glimmerblade felt less like a bright needle and more like a weapon with weight. He cut through one hornet's head. Another through the wing and body together. He dropped behind a curled leaf, pressed his back to it, and listened. Buzzing above. Buzzing left. One behind, lower.

He burst from cover before the lower hornet struck, turned around its stinger, and drove his blade into the venom sac beneath its body. Pale liquid sprayed. The hornet thrashed and died. The nest had fewer defenders now. Still too many. They came in a tight knot. Buzzydew tried to rise, but his wing twitched. Poison stole half the movement. A hornet clipped him, sending him spinning. Another struck his side. A third came straight for his face, stinger drawn back. He would be too slow. He knew it. Imperial Form.

He reached for the magic with everything he had. The transformation surged. This time it felt deeper, larger somehow. The levels had changed something. The drain still came, fierce and immediate, but the reservoir did not vanish at once. His body grew, limbs lengthening, wings expanding, strength flooding through him. The hornets became smaller around him, still fast, still dangerous, but no longer monstrous. Glimmerblade grew with him. The tiny knife became a short luminous sword of green-pink light.

Buzzydew roared and cut downward. The blade tore through three hornets in one stroke, shattering crystal bodies and wings. He stepped forward, swept across, and crushed another beneath his heel as the blade took two more from the air. For those few breaths, he was everything he had wanted to be. Big and strong. Terrifying as his enemies broke before him. A notification flashed. Level Up! You have reached Level 8. The magic dropped hard. Too fast. Buzzydew released Imperial Form before it left him empty.

He shrank back to fairy size, dizzy, poisoned, and shaking. Only a few hornets remained. He killed them with stubbornness. One lost a wing. One took Glimmerblade through the eye. The last came at him while his vision blurred, and he let himself fall, then thrust upward as it followed. The blade slid into the soft gap beneath its head. The hornet struck the ground beside him and lay still. The buzzing ended. The forest breathed again. Buzzydew hovered above the broken nest for three heartbeats. Then the poison won.

He fell. His muscles spasmed when he hit a broad leaf below. Glimmerblade flickered and vanished. His wings twitched without lifting him. His hands curled into claws and then opened again. He tried to speak, but only a thin sound came out. The world tilted around him, branches bending where they should have stood still. He had won. He wanted someone to know. A shape moved in the brush below. Two huge yellow eyes reflected moonlight. Buzzydew's breath caught.

A rodent crept from beneath a root, massive from his place on the leaf, with hooked claws, long whiskers, and teeth sharp enough to split bone. It sniffed the air. Its nose twitched and soon its eyes found him. It snarled. Then it lunged. Buzzydew screamed. A dagger flashed through the dark. The rodent dropped in front of him, dead before its body finished sliding, the blade buried through its skull.

For one horrible moment, Buzzydew thought the forest had sent a worse monster, something that killed without even showing itself. Then he saw red hair. Inna stepped into view. Her face was fierce, eyes scanning the branches even as she moved toward him. She wrenched the dagger free and called over her shoulder.

"I found him." Buzzydew tried to lift one hand. He wanted to say he was fine. He wanted to tell her about the hornets. He wanted to ask if she had seen the big strike, because it had been a proper warrior strike and someone should know. His mouth would not work. Inna reached him and crouched, her expression tightening as she saw the wounds.

"You foolish little spark," she muttered, and the words shook more than anger should have allowed. More figures arrived through the brush. Havlik's voice came first, then another warden behind him. Boots crushed leaves. Glowstone light filled the space. Someone swore softly at the shattered hornets. Inna lifted Buzzydew with two careful fingers and placed him on her palm. She uncorked a potion with her teeth and touched the rim to his mouth.

"Drink." The liquid slid past his lips. Healing warmth moved through him, closing cuts, sealing torn skin, easing the bite in his wing. The poison remained, thinner now, but still crawling inside him. Havlik leaned close.

"His wounds are closing, but he still looks weak." Inna looked around properly. Her eyes found the crystal hornet bodies.

"Poison," she said, grim and certain.

"We take him to Irla." One of the wardens whistled softly.

"He killed these?"

"Collect them," Inna said.

"Glands, stingers, bodies if they stay together. Ilyndra will want them. Move." The words blurred after that. Inna tucked Buzzydew into a padded pocket inside her cloak, leaving space around his wings. The world became cloth, motion, warmth, and distant voices. Her heartbeat moved through him like a drum from far away. He heard Havlik say "careful" and someone else call for the path. Branches scraped fabric. Glowstones bobbed. Pain faded, returned, faded again. He did not know when they reached Hearthroot.

He remembered smoke. He remembered someone crying. He remembered his mother's voice breaking. Then light, warmth, and Irla. The healing room smelled of herbs, clean cloth, and the soft moss Irla used for tiny patients. Buzzydew lay on a little bed made from folded fabric, his wings spread carefully so they would not cramp. Irla's hands were gentle and steady, though her mouth tightened every time his muscles spasmed.

"Fairy bodies," she muttered, "are delicate in the most inconvenient ways." Something bitter touched his tongue. Antidote. He coughed weakly. Irla held him still with one finger and murmured until the potion went down. A pulse of healing followed, soft golden-white light moving through him in a wave. The poison thinned again. It still clung, stubborn and cold in his limbs. Mother arrived with Dewpip and two Heartroot fairies. Maerelith looked nothing like the queen who glided through the grove. Her hair was loose.

Her wings trembled. Fear had stripped every graceful line from her face.

"Buzzydew." He looked away. Dewpip cried out and tried to rush forward, but one of the Heartroot fairies held her gently back. Mother came to the bed.

"Why did you do this?" Buzzydew stared at the wall.

"Buzzydew." He said nothing. Mother's voice shook.

"Leave us." The Heartroot fairies obeyed at once. Dewpip hesitated, tears bright on her cheeks, then flew out after them when Maerelith turned her head. The door closed softly. Mother sat beside the bed. For a little while, she only breathed. When she spoke again, she tried to be gentle, which somehow made Buzzydew angrier.

"The forest is dangerous. You know this. You are precious to me. You cannot go out alone. You are not strong enough for such things yet." The words struck every sore place inside him. Buzzydew turned his head sharply.

"Whose fault is that?" Mother froze. He had not known the words were in him until they came out. Once they did, the rest followed, hot and bitter and impossible to stop.

"Look at them," he said. His voice cracked, and he hated that too.

"Your new children. They can transform whenever they wish. They are strong and beautiful and already have skills. They walk beside you like they were born ready. But what about me?"

"Buzzydew," Mother whispered.

"Because you chose poorly, I came from a weak bond. I have thin roots. I cannot hold Imperial Form. I cannot remember my father tree properly. I will stay weak forever because you were too young and afraid and you bonded with something that could not make us right." Mother looked wounded. He saw it and turned away because seeing it made his chest hurt. She tried to speak. He heard her voice, soft and broken, but refused to listen to the meaning.

He crossed his arms as much as his sore body allowed and stared at the wall. Exhaustion took him while she was still speaking. He woke to murmurs. Morning light lay soft across the healing room. His body felt heavy, as if someone had filled his limbs with damp moss. The poison had faded to a dull ache. His wings hurt, but they moved when he tried them.

He blinked slowly and realized his mother was asleep beside his bed, her face resting on folded arms, one hand close to him as though she had fallen asleep guarding his breath. Guilt moved through him. He pushed it away, though it stayed near. Across the room, the Lord of Hearthroot spoke quietly with Irla. Buzzydew had seen James many times from a distance. Everyone had. The human who built impossible things with mana. The one Heartroot listened to. The one Mother respected.

He rode the dragon horse, carried burdens no one else understood, and spoke to a glowing light that people could not hear. He had been funny once when welcoming Mother's new children, saying he was a lord but mostly carried things and asked questions. Buzzydew had liked that, though he would never say so. Now James stood in the healing room, looking tired, with stone dust still caught in the edges of his boots and a green cloak over clothes that seemed too fine for someone who worked in dirt every day.

Irla nodded toward Buzzydew. James noticed he was awake. He came closer.

"How are you?" he asked softly. He tried not to wake Mother, but she jolted awake anyway. She straightened so quickly her wings snapped open halfway.

"My lord. We are sorry we have disturbed you." James waved that away, but his eyes stayed on Buzzydew. Buzzydew stiffened when Mother spoke. James noticed. Of course he noticed. Important people always noticed the wrong things.

"Maerelith," James said, "would it be all right if I talked with Buzzydew privately?" Mother frowned. Worry gathered in her face again, but she nodded after a moment.

"Of course. Call me when you are done."

"Thank you." Mother touched Buzzydew's blanket once, hesitated, then transformed into fairy form and flew out of the room. The door closed behind her. For a long moment, no one spoke. Buzzydew did not know what to make of the Lord of Hearthroot. James was not his king. Mother was his queen. Still, Heartroot answered the man, and Mother respected him, and everyone moved when he asked something of them. Buzzydew felt small under his gaze in a way he did not like.

It felt as if the whole village had leaned close to see what he had done. James sat beside the little bed.

"What you did was stupid," he said, "and you will not do it again." Buzzydew froze. James's voice was calm. That made it worse.

"Am I clear?" Buzzydew stared at him. James leaned forward slightly.

"I want to hear the words. Swear to me that you will not go into the forest without telling someone." Buzzydew wet his lips. His throat felt dry.

"I won't." James nodded.

"Good." Buzzydew waited. More scolding would come. Rogan would have scolded. Maude would have made him drill until his wings fell off. Mother had cried and made him feel cruel and angry at once. James would probably say he was foolish, too small, too young, too weak, too much trouble. James rubbed both hands over his face and sighed.

"I get it," he said.

"I truly do." Buzzydew looked at him despite himself. James lowered his hands. His eyes were tired, but not cruel.

"You wanted to prove yourself. Do not think I have missed how you watch the wardens. You want to learn how to fight. You want people to see you as brave. There are easier ways to do that than throwing yourself headfirst into the forest." Buzzydew's anger weakened.

"I am sorry," he said in a small voice. James nodded, accepting it without making him repeat it.

"Last night, my wardens were put in danger because of you. Inna, Havlik, and the others had to search through dark forest because you wanted to prove something to yourself, and maybe to your mother." The words hurt. Buzzydew looked down at his blanket. James let the hurt settle, then spoke again.

"If you want to become a warden, you cannot think only about yourself. You think of the people you are bound to protect." Buzzydew's eyes went wide. His heart stumbled. Become a warden. James stood. The room changed. Buzzydew felt Heartroot before he understood what was happening. The great tree on the hill seemed to breathe through the walls. The Circle's flame, the stoneheart wall, the grove, the Hearth Hall, the distant mountain blueprint, all of it pressed close in a way that made the air feel full.

James lifted one hand, and his voice deepened. It became layered, as if roots, stone, water, and green light had found human words.

"Buzzydew Thornbloom, child of fairy root and Heartroot's shelter, hear the village that would claim you." Buzzydew could not move.

"You have flown alone and learned fear. You have drawn a blade and learned pain. You have fought for yourself and lived. Now learn to fight for others." Green-gold light gathered around James's hand.

"If you would bear the green light of this village, you will become more than a bright wing in the dark. You will become warning. You will become shield. You will become spear. You will become the small blade that finds the gap before greater hands can strike." The light brightened.

"By Heartroot's boughs, by the Circle's flame, by wall, grove, hall, and hearth, I name you Warden of Hearthroot." Mana leapt from James's hand into Buzzydew's core. Buzzydew gasped. His fairy magic opened. For all his life, that magic had felt too shallow when he reached deep. Bright, yes. Quick, yes. But thin. Now green-gold power moved through it, settling in layers, deepening the place where Imperial Form drew from him. Roots seemed to grow inside the reservoir.

The cracked cup became something larger, something held by hands beneath it. Buzzydew's eyes burned because for the first time, his magic did not feel ready to abandon him. A notification appeared. Profession Unlocked: Warden of Hearthroot Another followed. Racial Trait Evolution Imperial Form → Hearthroot Imperial Form Your Imperial Form has been reinforced by Hearthroot's domain and the Warden bond. Mana reserve while transformed greatly increased. Transformation stability improved.

Physical durability and weapon scaling improved while defending Hearthroot, its people, or sworn allies. Buzzydew could not breathe properly. The words blurred. Hearthroot Imperial Form. His form had changed. His roots had changed. He felt the difference beneath every ache and bandage. Then the next notification appeared. Class Unlocked: Glimmerwing Vanguard A rare fairy martial class for one who fights ahead of larger allies, marking danger, harrying weak points, and turning speed into command.

Class Skills: Brightmark Command You can lead a unit of up to 15 individuals, sensing their position within a limited range. Marked allies gain improved awareness of your light signals and danger warnings. Captain's Glow Allies near your light recover mana and stamina slightly faster. Effect improves when you remain calm and focused. Glimmerflash You and your unit can conjure brief synchronized illusions that hide small objects, misdirect attention, or veil people for a heartbeat when acting together.

Pixie Lance Condenses fairy mana into a tiny spear of bright force and launches you forward like a dart. Especially effective against weak points. Buzzydew stared through the notifications. The class took root in his core. Speed and light moved through him first, then command followed, steadier and larger than he expected. This class belonged to a unit. To allies. To signals passed through danger before larger feet could move.

It made him the front edge of a formation, small enough to find gaps, bright enough to guide others, fast enough to warn them before the forest closed its teeth. The lonely hero from his angry dreams felt very far away. What settled into him now was better, heavier, and wide enough to hold others beside him. James chuckled softly.

"I'm guessing you got something cool." Buzzydew nodded. His throat was dry, and his eyes still burned.

"I got my dream class."