Ashroot: A myth of grief, grace, and the limits of light.

The Hollowbone Speaks

They never saw her weep.
Not when the fires came.
Not when the girl grew cruel.
She is known as the Hollowbone—
not hollow from grief, but from the refusal to carry what is not hers.

Some say she was born with light in her marrow—
not to shine, but to witness.

And now, she watches.
Silent. Steady.
As the boy she raised in love and clarity is drawn into a shadow
she cannot unmake.

But the Hollowbone—
who once raised the Kindroot with hands both gentle and firm—
watched now, from the edge of the fire.

Watched as the shadow closed around him.
As the girl called Ashroot pulled him inward, toward a hunger not his own.

It ached in her—
a place she thought long sealed.
Not grief, but recognition.
The ache of knowing she could not intervene.

This was not her burden. Not her path. Still—
to witness it, to feel the shadow reach for him was a silent fire she had no choice but to stand inside.

She did not curse. She did not rage. Each morning, she released her—
not to save, not to condemn, but simply to let go.

Because the Hollowbone knew: Some souls must burn before they remember the light.

The Tale Begins
There was a time when Ashroot was only a girl with a wound.

The world had been cruel to her—
and in time, she became cruel in return.
Not all at once. Just a little each day.
Until her shadow became more familiar than her skin.

The universe, in its quiet mercy, offered her a chance:
not family by blood, but one born of love.
She was welcomed. Given kindness she had never known.
She spit it out. She did not want love.
She wanted control. She did not want healing.
She wanted power over pain.

Enter Kindroot

Kindroot was not made of softness.
He was made of strength that did not shout.
Of patience, of earth, of the deep steadiness that love requires.

He had been raised in light, taught by the Hollowbone to listen to trees,
to speak with silence, to give freely, but not foolishly.

He met Ashroot in her shadow—
not knowing it would try to swallow him.

But he believed.
That love could soften the sharp edges.
That tenderness could reach her.
That presence could be enough.

The Turning

And for a moment, it almost was. There were flickers of warmth.
Moments where Ashroot seemed to remember what it was to feel joy without needing to destroy it.

But a soul unused to love can mistake it for danger.
And so she fought him. Tried to bend him. Tested every truth he held.

She cast her sorrow like spells.
She poisoned joy at the root.
She tried to sever the thread between him and the family he came from.

But what she didn’t know—
what she couldn’t touch—
was that the bond between Kindroot and Hollowbone
was made of something eternal.
Threaded not by words, but by soul.

Kindroot’s Awakening
There comes a moment in every tender heart when it must choose itself.

For Kindroot, it was not a thunderclap. Not a betrayal. Not even her worst cruelty.

It was the absence of return.
The silence that followed his offerings.
The emptiness that met his light day after day.

It was realizing that love poured into a sealed vessel is not love lost— but love misplaced.

And so,
he began to step back.
Not in anger. Not in bitterness. But in clarity

He no longer begged her to soften.

He no longer bent himself to reach where she refused to rise.

He remembered who he was before the ache. Before the fight.

Ashroot’s Descent
But Ashroot did not feel his stillness as peace.
She felt it as threat.
She could not tell the difference between being held and being mirrored.

The more he rooted in truth, the more she spiraled.
As if his calm was a curse. As if his refusal to suffer was a sin.

She struck harder. Accused. Manipulated.
Tried to undo the threads that bound Kindroot to the Hollowbone.

But she was too late. Those threads were not just memory—
they were song, and breath, and soul-deep knowing older than she could ever reach.

She did not fall because he left.
She fell because she never chose to rise.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai