Druun Kaelmar: The Path that Chose
The path whispered his name the moment Druun Kaelmar stepped off the road. He had been walking under a waning moon, dust on his boots, the smell of summer fields still clinging to the hem of his cloak, when the ground itself exhaled. It was not a sound so much as a sensation: a dry rustle against the skin inside his chest, a tug at the back of his teeth. The stones of the familiar trading route he’d followed since childhood trembled, not with the weight of distant wagons but with anticipation. “Druun,” the earth said, not through vibrations or voice but through a sudden certainty that settled into the marrow of his bones. He stopped mid-step, leaning on his staff, and the world held its breath. The hedgerows beside him became a wall of waiting eyes. The wind knotted itself around his ankles as if curious. In the east, a line of cold blue light slid up between the horizon and the dark, a seam opening where there had never been a path before. Its glow was pale and tempting, the color of frost on steel under starlight, and it cut through the waving grasses as if the land itself had been folded wrong and was trying to correct itself.
No one had warned him that a path might choose him. His grandmother had muttered stories on winter nights of roads that walked themselves, of trails that led to old gods, of forest tracks that looped back through time. Those tales were caution and comfort in equal measure; they told of people who had been led astray but also of those who had returned with songs never before sung. Druun had laughed then, with his friends around a peat fire, the air thick with peat smoke and stew, calling the storytellers fools or mystics, depending on the mood. He had imagined the roads in those tales as threads in the loom of fate, and he, young, strong, restive, believed himself the weaver, not the thread. Now he stood alone, tools on his belt and a satchel of goods meant for the next village across the hills, feeling like string being gently tugged by unseen fingers. He looked down at his palm, at the calluses earned from years of working the Kaelmar farm and of delivering messages for neighbors; lines crisscrossed his skin, a network of choices traced in flesh. The blue seam in the grass widened. He could smell it: a metallic tang like air after lightning, mingled with the dampness of a cellar, a scent of stone long hidden. Behind him, the road home was a straight ribbon of dust stretching toward the forest’s edge. Ahead, the new path pulsed as if alive, as if waiting for his breath to align with its rhythm.
Curiosity and caution battled in his chest. The cautious voice reminded him of obligations, the herd to mend, the sick neighbor expecting herbs, the cart that must be repaired before harvest. But curiosity… curiosity was a hungry animal, and Druun had always been too willing to feed it. There was something in the way the path shimmered, how it seemed both invitation and challenge, that reminded him of standing before the old limestone caves with his brother as children. “Don’t,” his brother had said that day, fear in his eyes. “Things live in there that remember when we were nothing but clay.” Druun had gone in anyway. He had come back breathless, hands smeared with ochre, carrying a fossilized shell older than any story he knew. His brother had scolded him, then marveled, then asked to go next time. This felt like that same impulse writ large, the cave had not been dangerous because it was dark; it had been dangerous because it had been unknown. He took a deep breath, letting the dampness of the night and the musty smell of cut hay fill his lungs, and stepped onto the glowing line.
The ground shifted. It was not that the earth moved but that Druun’s perception of it did, as if the path turned the world around him rather than carrying him forward. The hedge dissolved into a curtain of light, and then he was moving through a corridor made of translucent walls. He could still see through them: flickering glimpses of the familiar world on either side, his neighbor Jorla hanging laundry, the mill wheel turning, the curve of the hill he had just walked down. But superimposed on these images were other scenes he did not recognize, forests where leaves sang in voices of bells, deserts where the sand gleamed black under two moons, and vast libraries with corridors that stretched into stars. The path beneath his feet felt soft, almost spongy, like moss after rain, and his boots left no print. The air was warm now, carrying the scent of pine resin and distant smoke. He reached out to touch the nearest wall, and it rippled under his fingers like water, showing his own face multiplied in a thousand different ways. In one, he was older, hair streaked with silver, carrying a child on his shoulders. In another, he was covered in scales like a fish, blinking large translucent lids. In a third, he was neither man nor woman but a flicker of light moving between tree roots. Each reflection smiled back with a secret he did not yet know. Somewhere above him, unseen by his eyes yet sensed by something behind his ears, bells chimed, small and high.
At the first bend, the corridor opened into a grove of trees Druun had never seen before. Their trunks were wide and low, gnarled like knotted fists, with leaves like elongated teardrops that shimmered between green and gold depending on how he tilted his head. Each leaf hummed at the edge of hearing, a susurration that made his molars itch. The ground was carpeted with a thick layer of pale petals that stuck to his boots, leaving luminous prints that gradually faded. Beyond the grove, a stream cut across the path, its water as clear as glass but filled with slow-moving shapes, slabs of light that seemed both solid and fluid. On the bank sat a figure wrapped in layers of cloth, their face obscured. In their hands, they held a bundle of sticks shaped into a circle, and they were methodically breaking each stick and tossing it into the water. Druun approached cautiously, his hand instinctively going to the small knife at his belt.
“You are late,” the figure said without looking up. Their voice was neither male nor female, neither old nor young. It carried the same weight as the path’s whisper, a voice that seemed to come from the ground and not the throat. “Though this path is never early and never late, so in truth, you are exactly when you need to be.” The figure laughed softly at their own words, a laugh like dry leaves scraping across stone. They gestured to the water. “These are the broken promises. We send them downstream.”
Druun frowned. “Broken promises?”
“Yes,” the figure said simply. They lifted another stick, placed it in the circle, and snapped it with a decisive motion. The crack echoed like thunder in the still grove. “Every person who travels here sheds what they cannot keep. Otherwise, it drags behind you and tangles your steps. What will you give to the current?”
Druun looked at the water. The shapes drifting within caught the light in facets that made his eyes water. He thought of the promises he had made: to his parents on their deathbed to keep the farm, to Jorla that he would bring medicine, to his brother to never risk himself out of curiosity again. He felt each as a weight pressing between his shoulders. The figure turned toward him then, and Druun saw that where a face should have been was a smooth plane of stone polished to mirror brightness. In it, his own expression stared back, a mix of fear, confusion, and something like eagerness. “I cannot break them,” he whispered, more to his reflection than to the stranger. “They are part of me.”
“Then carry them,” the figure replied without judgment. “But know that the path you walk did not begin when you stepped onto light tonight. It began the moment you made the first promise you did not understand.” They placed the broken circle into the water, and it glided away, leaving tiny ripples of light. “Choose your burdens carefully, Druun Kaelmar. This path chooses in return.”
He moved on, stepping across the stream on smooth stones that sent little bursts of warmth up his legs. The grove faded behind him with the soft sigh of falling leaves. The path narrowed, the light darkened to a cool slate blue, and the air thickened with moisture. The smell of wet stone grew strong; the hair on his forearms prickled as if the air itself were charged. Ahead, the corridor opened into a cavern. Stalactites hung from the ceiling like rows of teeth, dripping steadily into pools that glowed from within. On the far side of the cavern, the path continued as a narrow bridge over one of these luminous pools. But between Druun and the bridge curled a creature as long as two oxcarts, coiled in lazy spirals. Its body was translucent, bands of color shifting like oil on water, and within its coils swam tiny fish made of light. Its head, if it could be called that, rose and unfurled like a banner, showing a face that was both human and utterly alien. It had eyes, five of them arranged in a circle, and each eye contained a different sky: one a sunrise, one a storm, one a night glittering with unfamiliar constellations, one a hole of darkness, and one filled with an endless green field.
It spoke into his mind, not with words but with images that slammed into him like waves: a woman kneeling by a grave, a child reaching for bread, a ship cracking in ice. Druun clutched his head, dizzy. “Who are you?” he managed to gasp aloud, his voice echoing strangely around the cavern.
Its mouth did not move, but he felt the answer like a flavor. I am the Memory of Water, and I ask you: which of your memories is worth drowning to move forward?
He did not understand, but his mind conjured scenes unbidden, playing in spring puddles, laughing as he and his brother soaked each other; watching his father pull a net out of the river with trembling hands; the smell of his mother’s hair as she hugged him goodnight. He knew that if he offered one of these, the creature would swallow it, and that moment would be gone forever from his mind. Panic tightened his throat. Memories were what tethered him to himself, anchors in the current of becoming. How could he let any go? Yet a deeper part of him, the part that had stepped onto the path because he could not ignore the call, recognized the necessity of shedding something to receive something else. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift back further, to something he’d never let himself linger on: the day he had watched neighbors drive away a woman accused of witchcraft. He had been fifteen, and he had said nothing as she begged for someone to speak for her. Guilt had knotted around that memory for years. “Take this,” he whispered into the cavern. “Take my memory of my silence. I do not need to remember being a coward.”
The creature’s coils tightened. One of its eyes blinked, the one with the dark hole. Druun’s stomach lurched as if he were falling. Then the sensation eased, and he felt something unspool inside him. The memory of that day blurred and softened until it was like looking at a painting through rain. Relief followed, a loosening of shame’s grip. The creature uncoiled slightly, opening the way across the bridge. Do not fear forgetting, it seemed to say as its body sank beneath the glowing water. Forget to fear.
The bridge swayed as Druun crossed. Below him, light fish swam in lazy spirals, their luminescence painting the underside of his jaw blue. Once across, the tunnel narrowed again, but this time, the walls were not solid. They were composed of strands of woven metal and vine, like a great nest. Through gaps, he caught glimpses of sky, but not the night outside, it was full daylight in those glimpses, or a swirling aurora. He understood then that the path did not travel across his world but across many, or perhaps between moments. He began to lose sense of time. Hunger gnawed at him, though he had only eaten a few hours before, and then vanished. Thirst was a sudden gust, then gone. Sometimes he felt as though he had been walking for years, and sometimes as though he had not taken more than ten steps. Words he had learned as a child drifted up unbidden and disappeared before fully formed. At one point, he passed a door hung in midair with no walls around it. It was made of dark wood carved with unfamiliar symbols and bound with braided rope. He reached for the latch, and his hand passed through air, there was no resistance because there was no door, only the idea of one. He laughed, the sound startling him by how raw it was. Somewhere far behind him, he could hear a voice shouting his name, thin as if carried on wind through a canyon. He did not turn.
Eventually, the path brought him to a clearing unlike any he had seen in the glimpses. It was ringed by standing stones, each taller than a person and carved with glyphs that seemed to shift when he wasn’t looking. At the center of the ring grew a tree unlike any he had seen. Its trunk was black as soot but streaked with veins of phosphorescence, and its branches held leaves shaped like hands. Hanging from the lowest branch by a braided rope was a mask. It was simple, made of wood polished smooth, with two holes for eyes and none for a mouth. The grain formed the suggestion of a smile. Beneath it, in the roots of the tree, sat a small child, playing with stones. Druun approached cautiously, the hair on his arms standing up as an electric charge prickled the back of his neck.
The child looked up. Their eyes were old, far older than the child’s round cheeks and small fingers suggested. “You took a path you did not see,” they said in a voice like autumn wind through dry corn, impossible for the size of their body. “Few do.”
“I didn’t choose it,” Druun said, feeling suddenly defensive. “It called me.”
“It always does,” the child replied, and reached out with a hand too steady. “The path called me too, long ago. Now I am here, waiting.” They pointed up at the mask. “If you wear that, you will see as the tree does. Every root, every branch, every leaf, every time. The path will no longer choose for you. You will choose for the path.”
Druun stared at the mask. His fingers twitched. There was a heaviness in the air, as if the moment had become thick. He thought of the path so far: the whispers, the grove, the memory he had given to the water, the creature’s eyes, the shifting corridors. He thought of the promises he still carried. He thought of his brother’s face when they had argued years ago about leaving home. He thought of Jorla waiting with her herbs. He imagined reaching out, fitting the mask over his own, seeing all possibilities at once. Would he still be Druun? Or would he become something else, still of himself but stretched over centuries, bark thickening, sap rising?
“Why are you waiting?” he asked the child, stalling.
“Because I did not put on the mask,” they said simply. “I sat here and thought of all the paths. I watched the leaves. I listened to the roots. I chose to wait. Maybe one day I will choose differently. Maybe I am waiting to become the one who waits so another does not have to.”
Druun looked at his hands. There were stains in the creases from years of work, thin scars from sharp knives, small crescents of dirt under his nails. They were very human hands, good for holding, for building, for pulling weeds and skinning rabbits and touching the foreheads of feverish friends. He thought of them turning into bark, into roots, reaching through soil. He lowered them. “I cannot,” he said softly, not knowing if he was speaking to the child, the tree, or the path itself. “Not now.”
The child nodded as if he had confirmed something they had always known. “Then you will continue walking. The path will still choose you, and you will still choose how to walk it.” They picked up one of their stones and tossed it in the air, catching it with ease. “Maybe one day you will come back, older or younger, and you will choose differently. Maybe you will find the path again and not even know it’s the same path. Maybe you never left.”
The next stretch of the path was quiet, almost gentle. It wound through meadows filled with knee-high grass and flowers that smelled of honey and pepper. Small insects flitted from bloom to bloom, leaving trails of light. Druun’s mind drifted, and memories floated up like minnows. He saw his grandfather teaching him to carve, his brother teaching him to throw stones to scare off wolves, the first time he had kissed someone under the apple tree by the barn. Each memory was crisp and vivid. He felt gratitude and sorrow and joy weave together. A realization grew in him slowly, like dawn: that the path was not taking things from him out of spite. It was shaping him to be lighter, more attuned, more himself. The weight of his promises did not lessen, but he understood them differently. They were not iron chains; they were cords tying him to the world. He could see their fibers now, some frayed, some taut, some warm, some cold. He could see how choosing to walk this path would affect those cords, and he felt a sadness for the pain his absence might cause. He also felt a strange, deep trust that the world and he were both larger than this moment.
As he walked, he began to sing. It was a song without words, a melody he did not know he knew, rising and falling with the contours of the landscape. It echoed softly around him, and the grass seemed to sway in time. His voice cracked on some notes and rang clear on others. He sang to fill the air, to keep fear at bay, to offer something to the silence. The path thrummed beneath his feet in rhythm. When his voice tired, he hummed. When he could not hum, he breathed, letting the sound of his breath be the song. He lost track of where the melody ended and his steps began. Eventually, the meadows fell away, and he was walking along a cliff edge. Far below, a sea crashed against black rocks, sending up spray that glittered like thrown gems. He could taste salt on his tongue and feel the grit of it on his lips. Ahead, the path narrowed to a ribbon no wider than his foot, curving along the cliff like a painted line. To one side, the drop was sheer and terrifying; to the other, the rock face pressed close, rough and warm from the sun.
He paused. Vertigo rose up in him, a dizzying fear of falling, of failing. His hands shook. He remembered a story his grandmother had told about a man who had walked out over a canyon on a path made of spiderweb. “He held his fear like a bird,” she had said, “cupping it gently so it did not flutter and throw him off balance.” Druun tried to imagine his fear as a small creature in his hands, wings beating. He whispered to it, “It’s all right. You are supposed to warn me, not stop me.” The beating slowed. He placed his foot on the narrow path. The rock was warm. He shifted his weight. For a moment, he wavered between sea and stone. Then he stepped again, then again. Each step was an act of trust not just in the path but in his own balance, in his muscles remembering how to adjust. He kept his eyes on the rock in front of him, but he felt the expanse to his right, felt the wind push and pull. He thought of the promises behind him and the mask he had not taken, and he realized that each step was not only chosen by the path, it was chosen by him.
When he finally reached the broader section on the other side, sweat slicked his face, his jaw ached from clenching it, but exhilaration coursed through him. He laughed aloud, the sound carried away by the wind to break on waves. A voice answered his laughter, not in words but in the caw of a bird overhead. He looked up to see a raven perched on a twisted branch jutting out of the cliff. Its feathers were the richest black he had ever seen, iridescent with hints of midnight blue. It tilted its head, regarding him with one bright eye. “You’re far from any tree,” he remarked, surprised to hear his own voice again.
“So are you,” the raven replied without moving its beak. Its voice was the dry rasp of dead leaves. It hopped closer, the branch swaying under its weight. “Most who walk here do so without noticing the birds.”
“I notice,” Druun said. “Are you another test? Will you ask me to give something up?”
The raven laughed, a sound like stones clacking together. “No. I am only here to remind you that paths have watchers. I am one of them. We watch and we remember. When you go back to your world, you will forget much of this. Your days will fill with other sounds and scents. But somewhere, when you see a path split or a raven perched where ravens do not usually perch, you will feel this moment shiver through you, and perhaps you will step differently. Or perhaps you will not.” The bird shook its feathers, and tiny droplets of rain fell though the sky was clear. “Either way, we will still be watching.” It lifted its wings and with a powerful thrust took off, disappearing into the glare of the sun.
Druun walked on. He lost count of how many landscapes he traversed. At times, the path was wide and easy, lined with ferns and lit by fireflies the size of fists. At other times, it narrowed to threads of stone over chasms. He climbed a staircase carved into the spine of a whale long since turned to fossil, each vertebra a step. He waded through a marsh where the reeds whispered secrets of the creatures beneath. He crawled through a tunnel of thorns that tore at his clothes but left his skin unscathed. He slept when he was tired, curling up against warm rocks or under wide leaves. Sometimes he dreamed, and sometimes the path filled his dreams with footsteps, but he never woke in the same place he had slept. The air tasted of smoke, of cold iron, of apple blossom, of ozone before a storm. Seasons shifted around him without warning, snow flurries melting as they touched his hair, summer heat pressing like a hand on his back, the musty smell of fallen leaves, the sharpness of spring mud. Once, he walked through a city deserted except for statues that turned their heads to follow him. Another time, he found himself in a field of glass towers with creatures made of light moving within, oblivious to his presence.
He began to sense when the path was about to shift. There was a tightening of air, a prickling at the base of his skull, a slight change in the taste of his saliva. He learned to recognize the signs and to ready himself, not by bracing but by loosening. The more he tried to control the path, the more unpredictable it became. When he surrendered to its rhythm, his steps fell into place. There were moments of utter despair, times when he felt utterly alone, when the weight of promises behind him and possibilities ahead of him crushed his ribs and made it hard to breathe. In those moments, he would press his palm to the earth or the wood or the stone and feel a pulse. Not his own, not the path’s, but something larger that held them both. He would breathe with that pulse until the despair lessened. There were moments of profound joy, watching a flower open to reveal a star inside, feeling the sudden warmth of sunlight after hours of cold, hearing a melody in the wind that echoed the one he had sung earlier. He began to understand that the path was a teacher not because it punished or rewarded but because it offered experiences and left it to him to find meaning.
Eventually, without a clear sign, the path began to feel… familiar. The landscapes it offered were not those of far-off worlds but echoes of ones he knew. A field of wheat like the one behind his family’s barn. A river bend matching the one where he used to fish. The air took on the scent of his home valley, damp earth, crushed mint, smoke from peat fires. He realized he had begun to walk downhill. The path’s light dimmed from glowing blue to the dull gleam of moonlit cobblestones. The hedge appeared again, the same one he had stepped through what felt like lifetimes ago. He emerged not into another corridor but onto the same road he had left. The moon had shifted in the sky but had not set. A night bird sang in the distance. The coolness of night had settled deeper, dampness clinging to his hair. For a heartbeat, he wondered if none of it had happened. But his boots were scuffed and stained in ways that could not be explained by a simple walk to the next village. His hands bore smears of sap, of glistening light. He could feel a space inside his memory where a shame had once been and was now only soft.
In the distance, he saw a lantern bobbing, his brother, perhaps, or Jorla, searching for him. He took a step toward it, then paused. The road beneath his feet was just a road, packed earth with stones and wheel ruts. But he felt it hum very faintly, as if it, too, was connected to paths beyond this one. He smiled, a small smile that warmed his chest, and whispered, “I will not forget to listen.” Then he started walking toward the light, each footfall chosen, each promise a thread weaving him back into the world he came from. The path did not speak again, not aloud, but he felt it like a companion at his side, not guiding, not pushing, simply present, an awareness that every step in every life was both chosen and choosing, both thread and weaver.
