Read Chapter 36: The Last Keeper

The dirk was cold in Callum’s grip, the blade’s edge catching the pale grey light that filtered through the thinning canopy. Around them, the forest groaned—not with wind, but with something deeper, something ancient and pained. The soil trembled beneath his boots, and the trees themselves seemed to lean inward, watching.

Ishbel stood before him, her breath a white mist in the chilled air. Her eyes, the colour of peat-smoke and old stone, held his with a steadiness that made his chest ache.

“You don’t get to choose this,” she said softly.

“It was always meant to be me.” Callum raised the dirk, its weight familiar now, the worn leather of the hilt pressing against his palm. “The MacRae debt. My family’s curse. You were never supposed to carry this.”

“And you were never supposed to die for it.” She stepped closer, close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her despite the cold. “You’ve already given enough. Your memories. Your solitude. Your entire life, tied to a forest that took everything from you.”

“It gave me you.”

The words came out raw, unbidden. Ishbel’s expression flickered—something caught between sorrow and a fierce, desperate love.

“Then let that be enough,” she whispered. “Let me be the one who ends it.”

Callum shook his head, tightening his grip on the dirk. The blade trembled. High above, a crow cried out, its call swallowed by the shuddering canopy.

“I won’t let you,” he said.

“You don’t have a choice.”

And then she moved.

It happened faster than thought—faster than the bond between them could warn him. Ishbel’s hand snapped forward, her fingers closing around his wrist. She twisted, not to disarm him, but to redirect. Callum felt the blade turn in his grip, felt the point swing toward her chest, and he tried to pull back, tried to stop it, but she was stronger than she should have been. The Ur’s power thrummed through her, lending her an impossible strength.

“No—!”

His cry tore through the forest as the blade sank home.

Ishbel gasped, her body arching against the steel. Her hands—still wrapped around his—pressed the dirk deeper, forcing it past the resistance of bone and sinew. Callum felt the warm wet rush of blood against his fingers, felt her pulse flutter beneath his palm like a trapped bird.

“Why,” he choked out, the word breaking apart.

She smiled—a small, fragile thing, blood already beading at the corner of her mouth.

“Because someone had to,” she said. “And because I couldn’t watch you die twice.”

Callum’s legs gave out. He fell to his knees, catching her as she crumpled forward, the dirk still embedded between them. Her weight was suddenly terrifyingly light, her breathing shallow and wet.

“No,” he said again, his voice a broken rasp. “No, no, no.”

“Listen to me.” Ishbel’s hand came up, trembling, and pressed against his cheek. Her fingers were cold now. So cold. “The Ur is almost free. It just needs a vessel that can let go. A soul willing to become the forest itself.”

“I can’t—I don’t know how to—”

“You don’t have to know.” Her thumb traced the line of his jaw. “You just have to remember. Remember me. Remember us. That’s all the forest needs from you now.”

Callum pressed his forehead to hers, feeling her breath saw through him. Around them, the groaning of the trees grew louder, the ground shaking with a rhythm that matched the fading beat of her heart.

“Ishbel, please.”

“I’m not afraid.” Her voice was barely a whisper now. “I was afraid before. When I was mortal. When I didn’t know what I was meant to become. But now…” She coughed, blood spattering across his lips. “Now I know. I was always meant to be the last keeper. Not the one who guards a prison. The one who becomes the home.”

The dirk shimmered. Light bled from the wound in her chest—green, gold, the colour of spring after a long winter. The Ur stirred inside her, not with anger, but with something like recognition. Like relief.

Ishbel’s eyes found his one last time.

“Let me go, Callum.”

He couldn’t. Every instinct screamed against it. But her hand tightened on his jaw, and her voice was a command even through the blood.

“Let me go.”

Callum released the dirk.

The blade fell, clattering against the roots, and with it, Ishbel’s body went still. For a single, terrible moment, there was nothing—just the silence of a forest holding its breath.

Then the light.

It poured from her chest like water from a broken dam, flooding through the trees, along the roots, up the trunks, into the branches. Callum felt it pass through him, felt the bond they had shared snap and reform a thousand times over, felt his own soul stretched thin and then released.

He stayed on his knees as the forest transformed. The dead leaves turned soft and green. The broken branches knitted themselves back together. The soil settled beneath him, steady and patient. The trees grew taller, their canopies unfolding like hands opening to the sky.

And when the light finally faded, Ishbel was gone.

Not a body. Not a trace. Only the dirk remained, lying in the moss where her heart had been, its blade clean and untarnished.

Callum reached out and picked it up.

The forest hummed around him—not with pain, but with peace. He could feel it now, the way he’d felt it when they were bound together. Every root, every leaf, every creature that scurried through the undergrowth. They were all part of him now. All part of her.

“You didn’t have to,” he whispered to the air.

The wind carried her answer, soft as a sigh through the pines: I know. But I wanted to.

Callum closed his eyes and let himself cry. Not for grief—though grief was there, tangled in every heartbeat. But for the sheer, overwhelming relief of it. For the knowledge that he would never forget her. That her sacrifice had made sure of that.

When he finally stood, the forest was bathed in late afternoon light, the kind of golden clarity that only came after a storm. The path back to the village was clear, winding through the trees like a promise.

He walked it slowly, the dirk at his belt.

At the edge of the wood, he paused and turned. The trees stood sentinel, their leaves rustling in a breeze that carried her presence—not as a spirit, not as a ghost, but as something woven into the very fabric of the land.

“I’ll keep your memory,” he said. “I’ll tell them about you. I’ll make sure they know what you did.”

The forest rustled, and he could have sworn he heard her laugh.

Callum MacRae walked out of the woods that day, and the forest followed him—not as a weight, but as a companion. The villagers would not believe him when he told them the curse was broken. They would whisper his name and cross themselves and speak of the strange man who talked to the wind.

But every spring, when the first green shoots broke through the thawing soil, Callum would stand at the edge of the wood and feel her there, watching with him.

And he would smile, and touch the dirk at his belt, and know that she had been right.

Some debts weren’t meant to be repaid. They were meant to be remembered.