The pot of rage that Mythris held for its inhabitants finally boiled over. A massive white-out storm to smother those that lived upon the continent once and for all.

This was all it come to? The searching, the waiting, and the dreading? The spoiled earth, the parasitic pests? The dancing fires?

Juniper can only be grateful that the sundering Mythris arranged was not that star-pelting rocks that once destroyed its very face. In the grand scheme of all things, winter was the season of death. Death of cold, death of hunger, or death of illness. Each was a possibility, and death was always an eventuality.

A familiar voice pulled Juniper out of their thoughts.

Him. The Dream Visitor. The voice that spoke within their dreams. The one who spoke at the revelation of a rune.

He speaks once more. He speaks of betrayal, of disloyalty. He speaks of a man who shared his own blood that was left behind. A man who wasn't granted the peace of death.

There is hope that we can end this cycle at last.

It is with awe in which Juniper watched the doors form. Runes flitted through the air, pulled from various places across the continent. Was the one found beneath Southeast there too? Was he granted this choice too? Where was her boy?

The path of healing. The first door caught the druid's attention with only its name. Juniper would have loved nothing more than to bring peace to the earth beneath her feet. To return light and warmth to a land so cold and dark.

Their breath stills at the image held within the second door. The path of the warrior. The grandest, most majestic tree they could have imagine was under siege. Even more tucked within its roots was a plant more potent than the blue turtle head they had been tasked to cultivate.

The druid almost stepped into the second door, but the sight of the third and final door froze her in place.

A land mass stared back at her. The one that moved and loped across the world like any other wolf. One that ripped and tore and carved great blue canyons into the earth. The Isle roared in agony. A noise so pained it brought the druid to tears.

The path that may ask everything of her, one that didn't need her to heal or harm? What else could it need? What could she give?

She could never live with herself if she didn't learn what the last door required of her.

Stepping through the third door, they are almost suffocated by the foreboding atmosphere within the cave. The walls groaned with each shift of the stone. Metal chains clattered and clanked as the bindings were fought against by the captive wolf. The one who was left behind. He whose agony bled into the air and pulse through the stone floor.

He is all that Juniper could see in those first few seconds inside the door. He who was forgotten. He who was broken. He who was hurt. It is only when he eyes landed upon her that Juniper grew aware of others within the space.

The chained wolf roared and all present took action. Wolves ran for the chains, clamping teeth to metal the sizzled and hissed. Others ran past the chains, some even lifting their voices to discourage the chain breakers. They planned to grant the chained wolf death. Their teeth were bared and set upon bound flesh.

Juniper does not know everyone within this chamber, but she knows that they are all inhabitants of this world. There are strangers. There are neighbors from the Howff. Her friend and leader, Kirain, charged forward to free the wolf. Her fireside companion stood to wrench the wolf free of the chains.

The most important wolf in the world was there. A scruffy, willowy boy with sad brown eyes and one leg held high off the ground.

The druid remembered the day that they met.

We don’t have to lock anywolf away? Ever? I don’t want to do that.

Juniper's answer hadn't changed from that day. Not once. Nor would it ever.

Jaws parting wide, Juniper ran to Southeast's side and clasped her teeth around the chain. It bit back, searing her throat and singing her lips, but it did not dissuade her as she attempted to break the chains.