It took several grueling weeks for the dust to settle, but eventually, Isis and the man—whose name she learned was Malakor—established a fragile, quiet cohabitation within the cathedral-like hollows of the Mother Tree.
After the terrifying realization that the raw, acoustic vibration of her voice caused his fragile human body intense physical agony, Isis ceased speaking aloud altogether. Instead, she turned to the silent, ancient language of the forest. She began projecting her thoughts telepathically, weaving her mind into his the exact same way she communed with the towering trees and the earth itself. At first, the sheer, unadulterated weight of her consciousness pressing against Malakor's mind was incredibly painful, forcing a sharp, throbbing pressure behind his eyes. But humans are nothing if not adaptable; as the days bled into weeks, he grew to tolerate the ethereal presence in his head, eventually welcoming the smooth, wordless flow of her thoughts.
With the communication barrier broken, Malakor became her window into the cosmos. He sat upon the velvet moss and taught her things about the universe she was profoundly, blissfully ignorant of. He told her that across the vast, uncharted oceans and beyond the mountain ranges, there were entire civilizations—millions of people just like him who built cities, sailed ships, and wrote histories. He spun mesmerizing, vivid tales of his travels through distant kingdoms and recounted the thunderous clashing of grand battles.
Yet, there was a dark, unyielding boundary to his stories. Whenever Isis's curious thoughts drifted toward his past, gently asking how he had ended up so gravely wounded and broken on her doorstep, Malakor's expression would harden. He would neatly pivot the conversation, completely avoiding the topic with a practiced, seamless deflection.
To Isis, he was the epitome of sweetness. He treated her with a gentle, reverent awe, moving around her with the careful, delicate touch one would reserve for a sacred saintess.
But for some inexplicable reason, her living, forest-green hair absolutely refused to trust him.
The vibrant vines were completely immune to his charms. Whenever Malakor stepped within a certain proximity of Isis, her hair would instantly enter a state of hyper-vigilant defense, the tips of the vines coiling tightly, hissing silently like a nest of disturbed vipers tracking his every movement. They were always on a constant, lethal alert whenever he was near.
Weeks stretched lazily into months, and months eventually bled into a handful of quiet, peaceful years. Then, the day arrived when the illusion of their isolated paradise had to end.
Standing at the threshold of the Mother Tree, Malakor looked at her with a somber, determined expression and bade her goodbye. He explained that he needed to venture back out into the brutal world, back to his homeland—the very place he had fled from. Isis was, of course, profoundly worried. The only reference she had of his homeland was the image of him crawling through her grass, battered, bleeding, and dying from artificial iron fangs. But Malakor was patient; after a couple of soft, fierce reassurances and making her explicitly promise that she would not follow him into the unknown, she finally, reluctantly agreed.
She could not let him leave empty-handed, however.
Before he stepped away, Isis approached him, her heart heavy with an emotion she still didn't fully understand. Closing her eyes, she reached deep within the primordial well of her soul and bestowed a mystical blessing upon him. She herself didn't comprehend the terrifying magnitude of what she was granting—she didn't understand the concepts of divine protection or reality-warping energy. In her innocent mind, she simply thought of it as a beautiful, heartfelt gift to keep him safe throughout his long travels.
After exchanging their final, quiet farewells, Malakor turned his back to the Mother Tree and walked away, his figure slowly shrinking against the vast emerald horizon as he parted for the wider world, leaving the lonely girl of the forest behind once more.
"Of course not," Isis said with a soft, melodic laugh, reaching up to gently stroke the restlessly swaying vines of her forest-green hair. "What could possibly be so bad about him? He didn't try to harm me, not even once, during his entire stay."
She was sitting high up on a massive, mossy branch of the Mother Tree, happily swinging her bare legs back and forth over the dizzying height, entirely unbothered by the heavy, ominous rustle passing through the canopy. The surrounding forest hummed with a deep, collective vibration of unease—a wordless warning traveling from root to leaf.
"You all should really be more trusting," she muttered toward the ancient trees, tilting her head as the living vines of her hair braided themselves defensively around her arms. "He's just like me. I really don't get what you're all so worried about." She leaned back against the bark, a pure, boundless optimism shining in her ruby-red pupils. "He'll be back, don't worry. And when he does, I'll finally ask him all about his home."
But Malakor did not return.
Isis waited. She spent days perched on the highest boughs, her green gaze anchored to the farthest edge of the horizon, searching for any familiar silhouette breaking against the golden skyline. But none ever came. Days spun effortlessly into weeks, weeks bled into months, and months dissolved into years. The seasons painted the valley in shades of vibrant emerald, decaying gold, and pristine white, over and over again. Years stretched into decades, and decades slowly accumulated into a full, solitary century.
Still, she sat on the massive root, her chin resting in her hands, her unchanging, immortal eyes staring into the empty distance.
"He'll be back, you unfaithful lot," she laughed softly into the quiet wilderness, though the sound was a little more fragile now. Her living hair lashed restlessly against the wood. "I know he will."
More centuries rolled over the earth like waves on a shore, leaving no trace of Malakor. But just as the crushing weight of the passage of time began to settle over the valley, something strange happened.
She was performing her daily, centuries-old ritual—staring blankly into the shimmering horizon—when a sudden, erratic kinetic energy disrupted the peaceful frequency of the grasslands. Far in the distance, a figure appeared. The creature was running frantically, its movements panicked and jagged, lunging through the high grass as if being hunted by a thousand invisible vipers.
Desperate for it to be him, Isis didn't wait for the figure to reach the sanctuary of the Mother Tree. In a literal blink of an eye, she vanished from the branch and materialized directly in front of the runner, the space around her humming with latent divine force.
Her heart soared—and then instantly plummeted.
It wasn't Malakor. It was an entirely different person. He was desperately short of breath, his chest heaving violently, and his body was so severely emaciated that his skin clung tightly to the hollow contours of his bones. He looked like a skeleton dragging itself through the dirt. Sensing his profound exhaustion, Isis's forest-green hair automatically shot forward, weaving itself into a thick, protective canopy over the stranger, casting a cool, refreshing shade to shield his frail skin from the blazing sun.
The dying man collapsed to his knees in the grass. He slowly lifted his hollow face, staring up into the pitch-black sclera and ruby pupils of the beautiful, green-skinned entity before him. Tears welled in his sunken eyes, spilling down his dust-covered cheeks.
"Mother's story... it was true after all," he muttered, his voice a raspy, awe-struck whisper as he stared at her divine form. "God... God really does exist."
With that final, breathless realization, his strength completely gave out, and he collapsed prone into the dirt.
Isis stood over him, her vibrant gaze tracking over his unmoving form before shooting out toward the empty horizon. She scanned the plains for miles, but nothing was chasing him. The wilderness was completely, deceptively still.
Letting out a soft sigh, her living vines carefully scooped up the skeletal stranger, hoisting him gently into the air. He wasn't her lost Malakor, but he was nonetheless a precious, two-legged creature just like her. And so, carrying him back toward the towering roots of her home, she prepared to treat him with the exact same boundless, grace she had given the man who broke her paradise.
At first, the patterns were too subtle for her innocent mind to trace, but history has a cruel way of repeating itself until the truth becomes impossible to ignore.
She helped the skeletal man, nursed him back to health, and watched him leave after a few years. Just like Malakor, she gave him a divine blessing, and just like Malakor, he vanished into the horizon and never returned. Then came another. And another. The cycle turned into an unyielding, grinding wheel that spun for thousands upon thousands of years.
Slowly, the desolate grasslands began to change. The descendants of the people she saved kept returning, bringing others with them. A civilization began to sprout like weeds around the colossal roots of the Mother Tree. At first, Isis was vehemently against them cutting into the bark or clearing the surrounding forest; her living vine-hair would hiss and lash out at the sound of an axe. But humanity quickly learned how to handle a god who possessed the heart of a child. Through constant, desperate pleading and an endless showering of glittering gifts, pretty trinkets, and sweet fruits, they wore down her resolve.
I can always just grow the trees back anyway, she thought naively, yielding to their requests .
The civilization exploded in size, a sprawling empire of stone and wood entirely centered around her and the Mother Tree. They built temples at her feet, treating her like a supreme, untouchable deity. Isis, of course, didn't understand the complex mechanics of religion; she simply sat on her high branches, her ruby-red pupils watching with detached curiosity as thousands of fragile, short-lived people bowed in unison, sending a constant, suffocating wave of prayers up into the canopy.
Eventually, the weight of the eons caught up to her. After another millennium passed without a single sign of Malakor—realizing that the man who had promised to return was long dead and buried beneath the dirt—a deep, ancient exhaustion settled into her bones. She retreated from the surface world, sinking into the dark, womb-like depths of the Mother Tree's core, intending to sleep away the centuries where the prayers of humans couldn't reach her.
And then, the silence of her sanctuary was broken.
He didn't crawl in bleeding, nor did he come to pray. He simply walked.
He was the first Dragon King of that era, and he carried himself with the absolute, crushing gravity of an apex predator. He was a man of striking, otherworldly features, possessing a thick mane of lush, crimson hair that was so incredibly long it literally trailed against the wooden floor behind him like a river of blood. His gaze was vibrant and piercing, and a faint, undulating aura of pure, kinetic flaming energy shimmered around his silhouette, distorting the cool air of the tree's depths. He had entered the sanctuary not as a worshiper, but as an ancient being seeking council with an equal.
"For someone as profoundly unique as yourself... don't you think you're letting them use you way too much?"
The Dragon King's voice boomed softly, echoing through the hollow chamber as he spotted Isis. She was curled up tightly between two massive roots, folded seamlessly like a cat preparing for a long winter sleep.
She raised her head slowly, the forest-green vines of her hair uncoiling with a heavy, deliberate rustle. Over the millennia of watching humans, she had finally developed a basic sense of privacy and boundaries. Her pitch-black sclera focused on the fiery intruder.
"What are you doing in here? Who are you?" she asked, her telepathic voice echoing directly inside his mind, carrying a cool, defensive edge.
The crimson-haired man stopped, tilting his head as he felt the immense mental pressure of her thoughts. "I'm terribly sorry for barging in here unannounced," he replied, offering a small, respectful bow that caused his long hair to shift over his shoulders. "You can call me Doo. I am the Dragon King. Though I am not truly immortal like you, I do possess an exceedingly long lifespan. If you continue staying awake like this, I suspect we might meet a few more times before I eventually pass away."
Isis blinked her ruby pupils, processing the title. Her mind dug through her thousands of years of memories, trying to match the word to the animals she knew.
"Dragon?" she asked softly, her vines tilting along with her head. "Like... the small, scaled lizards that crawl on the rocks?"
Doo's fiery aura flickered for a fraction of a second. A pained, deeply amused expression crossed his handsome features, and he let out a soft, defeated sigh before answering.
"Yes," the Dragon King smiled bitterly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Exactly like the lizard."
"Then why are you here?" she asked curiously, her curiosity getting the better of her as she shifted her weight and sat upright, her massive, cascading curtain of green vine-hair parting around her.
"Well, first, let's just talk," Doo said, a gentle, easygoing smile breaking across his sharp features. He walked forward with effortless grace, completely unbothered by the tense, warning hiss of her hair, and casually took a seat on the mossy root right beside her. "What do you think of the humans gathered around you?" he asked softly, his vibrant eyes looking out toward the cavern walls as if he could see right through the stone to the bustling empire outside.
"They're... incredibly kind," Isis muttered.
She clamped her hands over her mouth instantly, her ruby-red pupils widening in absolute horror. She had spoken out loud. She had forgotten herself for a fraction of a second, and the raw, acoustic resonance of her voice vibrated through the hollow chamber like a localized earthquake, threatening to rupture the eardrums of any mortal creature.
But Doo didn't bleed. He didn't even flinch. He just chuckled softly and waved a dismissive hand down between them.
"Don't worry," he smiled, his fiery aura pulsing with a warm, comforting light. "I wouldn't die just from hearing you speak. I promise you, it doesn't affect me in the slightest. Feel free to yell at the top of your lungs if you like."
A profound, overwhelming sense of warmth rushed over her at his words. For thousands of years, she had been a walking cataclysm to anyone who dared get close—a creature who had to choke back her own voice just to keep the people around her from turning inside out. To hear someone say I can handle you was a luxury she had never once experienced. She opened her mouth again to reply, but the sudden rush of emotion caught in her chest, and no words came out.
Doo stared at her curiously, waiting patiently. Desperate to break the sudden clog in her throat, she simply uttered the very first thing that had been anchored to her mind for centuries.
"Malakor," she said softly.
Doo's smile didn't falter, though a flicker of ancient understanding crossed his eyes. "Now, about the question I asked... what do you think of the humans?"
Isis lowered her hands from her face, her vine-hair relaxing slightly as she looked down at her pale green skin. "They're... kind. And loud," she muttered, her voice sending a low hum through the wood. "They don't live very long. And... they don't keep their promises."
"Then why do you let them stay so close to you? Why do you let them use you so?" Doo asked, his voice entirely devoid of judgment. He reached out, his hand entirely unaffected by the latent divinity rolling off her, and gently patted the top of Isis's head, smoothing down a stray vine as if she were a wild creature he was trying to tame.
"Don't make it sound like I'm a tool or something," she sighed, a small pout forming on her lips as she swung her legs over the root, trying to regain her usual bright demeanor. "They needed help. They came to me bleeding and broken, and... of course I'd help them," she said brightly, her innocent logic completely unshakable.
Doo stared at her silently for a long, heavy moment, his hand resting lightly on her forest-green hair.
Just like a child, he thought, a deep, sorrowful pity twisting in his chest. I guess it'll be for the best if I don't tell her what the vast majority of those people did with the blessings she granted them. And it certainly won't be good to mention that her precious Malakor... is actually still alive out there, walking the earth on stolen time.
"I don't think you should be giving help to anyone who asks," Doo said simply. His words were entirely devoid of malice or anger, but they were spoken with a heavy, deliberate care, each syllable weighted with the wisdom of the world.
"Why?" she asked, her tilted head reflecting her complete lack of comprehension.
"Well, I'm not entirely sure you realize this yet, but you are not normal," Doo said, his smile turning bright and reassuring once more as he looked her in the eyes. "I, too, am the same. And there are two others out there just like us. But out of all of us... you are by far the most unique." He paused, letting his hand drop from her head as he stood up, looking around the ancient sanctuary. "What I'm trying to say is that... your actions might alter the fabric of this world far more than you could ever possibly know."
"How so? Is it bad that I give gifts to the humans?" Isis asked, her tilted head sending a gentle rustle through her massive curtain of forest-green hair as she watched him intensely.
"It's... incredibly complicated," Doo laughed softly, a deeply nuanced amusement dancing in his vibrant eyes. He pushed himself off the mossy wooden root and stood up, his long, trailing crimson hair shifting like fluid fire across the floor.
Seeing him move to leave, Isis instantly scrambled to her feet, jumping down from the root right after him. The sheer thought of the heavy, crushing silence returning to the depths of the tree made her chest tighten with sudden panic.
"Where do you think you're going?" Doo smiled, turning his head back to look at her. "You don't have to follow me, little one. I have urgent business to attend to across the realms. I simply came here today to check on the little mistress who has been unknowingly causing trouble for the rest of us."
Her hair wavered slightly in the stagnant air of the cavern, the living forest-green vines stretching forward of their own volition, slowly and gently clinging to the edges of his fiery aura. For some inexplicable reason, she felt a profound, magnetic attachment to this strange crimson-haired man—a deep, cellular resonance that was far stronger and more comforting than anything she had ever felt toward Malakor.
"Are you... are you going to come back?" she asked softly, her ruby pupils dilating within the pitch-black voids of her eyes. "I get so terribly bored when I have no one to talk to."
Doo looked down at her for a long, quiet interval, his expression softening as if he were pondering whether to tease her a little. Slowly, he bent down to her eye level, entirely unfazed by the immense divine pressure radiating off her skin, and gently patted the top of her head.
"I'll be sure to drop by every single week," he smiled, his voice a warm, anchoring melody. "I'm a busy man, but I'm not that busy." He paused suddenly, his eyes clouding over with a fleeting, unreadable shadow as a solemn thought struck him. "But... in the incident that I eventually stop showing up... promise me you won't come looking for me, alright?" He offered her another bright, reassuring smile.
Isis stared deeply into his vibrant gaze for a while, her entire being suddenly lighting up with an overwhelming surge of pure, unadulterated joy.
"I know it's strange, Dragon... but for some reason, I can tell you aren't lying to me," she smiled brightly, a beautiful, delicate flush creeping over her slightly green skin.
Doo burst into a loud, boisterous laugh that echoed magnificently off the wooden walls of the sanctuary. "Why on earth would I lie to you about something like that?" He stopped laughing, his gaze dropping to take in her ethereal form as a thought occurred to him. "Say... do you actually have a name?" he asked curiously.
"Is a name really necessary?" she replied, tilting her head innocently. "The humans outside all call me a god. Isn't that a name?"
"They call absolutely anyone who is significantly stronger than them a god," Doo smiled, shaking his head with an amused sigh. "Well, let's do something to fix that right now, shall we? The elders of the dragon clan always said I'm pretty exceptional at giving names, so let's see..."
The Dragon King went entirely silent for a while. He stood there in the golden, dim light of the tree's depths, completely taking in her unique appearance—the cosmic void of her eyes, the brilliant ruby of her pupils, the living forest of her hair, and the pure, untouched innocence of her soul. Finally, he opened his mouth, the syllable rolling off his tongue like a sacred melody.
"ISIS."
He looked back into her twin starlight eyes, his sharp features softening into a warm, gentle expression. "How's that sound to you?" he smiled.