Born under the fallen apple
The boar was born in a bramble hollow below the west orchard, where the ground stayed soft and fallen apples drew beetles after the harvest. Its mother had made the nest beneath a root that arched above the mud like a low roof. The litter was small. Three piglets learned to push through grass; one, dark-coated and broad-headed, kept returning to the hollow whenever the wind changed. It knew the hollow by smell before it knew the open field, and it knew the warmth of its mother’s side before it knew the shape of the orchard.
The trees belonged to several families, though the boundary stones had been lost under years of leaf mold. Workers came in the morning with baskets, ladders, and hooks for fruit. The young boar watched their feet from the brambles. It did not understand ownership, but it learned which people threw away bruised apples and which ones chased it from the rows. The oldest picker, Hesta, never chased. She left a damaged apple on the outer path and walked away without looking back.
The boar learned that the offered fruit would remain there if it waited. It approached after the people had gone, nudged the apple until it rolled, and ate the soft side first. In later seasons, Hesta left fruit at the same place. She did not tame the animal or give it a name. The boar stayed wild, returning to the hollow when it wanted shelter and to the outer path when it wanted food. Its first trust was not obedience. It was a choice to come back.
The hollow between roots
The orchard was not one place to the boar. It was a series of routes: damp shade beneath the pear trees, a sunny bank behind the cider shed, the narrow passage between two old stone walls, and the open lane where carts rattled before dawn. It learned the routes by season. In spring, blossoms covered the ground and hid the old paths. In summer, the fruit drew wasps. In autumn, the workers moved quickly before rain. In winter, the boar followed root lines under snow and found the hollow by the smell of wet bark.
A girl named Nera
NeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → lived with her grandparents in the small house beside the cider shed. She was allowed to gather fallen fruit but not to climb the ladders. She saw the boar one evening when a basket tipped and apples rolled into the lane. The animal came close enough to take a bruised one. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → stayed still, not because she was fearless but because she did not want the boar to think she would trap it. She left a second apple in the grass and went inside.
NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → and the boar developed a quiet arrangement. She never offered food from her hand; it never crossed the house threshold. When she brought apples to the outer path, she set them down and sat against the wall while the boar ate. She told it about chores, family arguments, and how her grandmother hummed when she was worried. The animal did not answer. Its ears turned toward her voice, and sometimes it remained after the fruit was gone. The hollow between the roots became a place where neither of them had to explain themselves.
The first scar
The boar learned the danger of the orchard’s wire fence when a storm knocked a branch across it. It pushed under the branch, caught its shoulder on a broken wire, and tore the skin. The pain was sharp and immediate. It fled through the trees, leaving dark drops on fallen leaves. Hesta found the trail but did not follow it into the hollow. She placed clean cloth and a dish of water at the outer path. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → watched from the cider shed and waited until the adults had gone.
The boar returned at dusk. Its wound stung whenever a leaf brushed it. The copper-black skin around the cut opened in narrow lines, and a dim orange glow showed beneath the bristles. It was not flame. The light pulsed with the animal’s breath, faint enough to disappear when it curled beneath the root. The next day, the ground near the hollow felt warm. Fine roots had pushed through the damp soil, following the boar’s tracks and then sinking back when it moved away.
NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → saw the new roots and worried that the orchard was sick. Her grandmother said the trees often reached for water after a dry spell. Hesta guessed that old charcoal remained beneath the soil from an earlier burn. No one knew why the roots responded to the boar’s injury. The boar did not become a weapon or a creature that wanted pain. It avoided the wire after the wound closed. The glow faded to a dark seam beneath its brow, only brightening when it was hurt again.
Routes for the harvest
As the boar grew, it began traveling farther than the west orchard. It followed the family routes between the cider shed, the river steps, the seed store, and the low houses beyond the stone wall. Those routes were not formal roads. They were the paths people took when the main lane flooded or when a cart could not pass. The boar learned where the ground held weight and where a hidden ditch waited beneath the grass.
NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography →’s grandparents marked the routes with cloth tied to branches. When one marker fell, the boar nosed it back toward the path. It did not understand the mark as a message, but it recognized the familiar smell of the family’s wool. During harvest, the workers could tell that it had passed because the fruit baskets were nudged away from the mud and the fallen branches had been pushed aside. They did not call the animal a guardian. It was simply a neighbor whose habits had become part of theirs.
NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → kept a hand-drawn map in a wooden box. It showed the paths as she remembered them, with notes about soft ground, low branches, and which houses had a dog. The boar’s routes were drawn in charcoal. Her grandmother said a map needed more than lines; it needed the reason people used each path. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → added notes for the old woman who carried medicine to the river houses and the boy who took the longer road when he was afraid of the bridge. The boar could not read the map, but it kept walking the lines beneath it.
The orchard fire
The fire came from the cider shed’s kiln during a dry autumn. A spark crossed the roof and caught the paper packing stored under the eaves. The workers formed a line from the river, passing buckets until the flames reached the western rows. Hesta cut a path between the burning trees so the animals could escape. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → carried the route map and called to the people who lived along the outer lane. The boar ran through the smoke toward the familiar hollow, then doubled back when it heard a child crying near the wall.
Its shoulder struck a fallen fence post, reopening the old scar. The coal seams under its brow glowed brighter. Roots pushed through the burned soil, lifting a branch enough for the child to crawl free. The boar did not charge at the fire. It used its body to move the obstruction and then turned toward the river. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → followed at a distance with the child. When they reached the water, she found that her map was wet but still legible. The routes had led them out.
The west rows burned. The family homes survived, but the orchard could not be harvested that year. People stood among the charred trunks and tried to decide what could be saved. The boar returned to the hollow after the fire was controlled. Its bristles smelled of smoke; the glowing lines under its skin dimmed as the scar closed. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → left apples on the outer path, though none had grown nearby. Hesta left water. They did not thank the animal with a ceremony. They made room for it to come back.
Roots through ash
The orchard’s recovery took years. Families planted new trees between the blackened stumps and used the old boundary stones to mark the rows. The boar stayed near the burned ground. Its routes became more important because the ash hid holes and broken fence wire. It learned where young roots had taken hold and walked around them. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → added the new trees to her map, but left the burned trunks in place as landmarks. The orchard would not become what it had been, and pretending otherwise would have sent someone into a ditch.
A small circle of growers began sharing tools and labor. They called themselves Roots Through Ash after a phrase Hesta used while planting the first replacement pear. The boar was never a member in the way people were, but its habits shaped the circle’s routes. Workers put water at the outer path and left damaged fruit where the animal could reach it. Brann
BrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography →, a traveler who later joined the orchard circle, heard stories of the dark boar that followed the old family paths. He did not meet it during those first years.
NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → marked the fire’s path in red on her map. The red line ran between the houses and the orchard, showing where smoke had crossed. She copied the map for each family so no one needed to borrow the original. The boar’s routes were black lines; the fire was red. A child asked whether the boar had saved the orchard. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → answered that the fire had still taken most of it. The boar had helped one person reach the river. Both things were true, and neither erased the other.
A name from the children
The children called the boar Cinderroot after they noticed roots rising whenever the animal was hurt. The name traveled through the orchard faster than the grown workers could correct it. Some adults disliked it, believing it made a hard life sound like a legend. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → used the name only when she needed the animal’s attention from across the lane. It turned toward her voice. That was enough. The boar did not need a prophecy or title to become known among the people whose paths it shared.
Cinderroot was not gentle with every creature. It chased dogs that came too close to the hollow and rooted up a seed bed when hunger got ahead of caution. Hesta built a low fence around the young trees. The boar tested it once, found that it held, and stopped pushing there. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → apologized to the gardener after the seed bed was ruined. Cinderroot watched from the shade while the people repaired the rows. Its loyalty did not make it harmless, and the orchard’s affection did not require them to pretend it never caused damage.
The name also carried the memory of the fire. Cinderroot’s dark bristles and orange seams looked like a piece of the burn that had learned to walk. The children sometimes asked whether the roots made the glow. Hesta said no one knew. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → suggested the roots might be answering the boar, not commanding it. The explanation was a guess, and she kept it as one. Cinderroot could not tell them what the light meant. It could only return to the hollow and let the ground grow quiet around it.
The family map
NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography →’s map passed through the family as the children grew. She added a new route whenever someone found a safer crossing, and crossed out a shortcut when a bridge washed away. The boar followed the paths that remained. It learned the scent of each household and the sound of the doors that opened before dawn. When an older neighbor stopped walking to the river, Cinderroot kept visiting the low path for several weeks. No one knew whether it expected the person to return or simply remembered the route.
NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → left the orchard as a young adult to work in the city. She did not tell Cinderroot she was leaving; the animal would not understand the promise, and she did not want to make her departure into a ritual. She visited before the move and set a fresh apple on the outer path. The boar arrived late. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → sat beside the root hollow until sunset, then carried her map away. She left a copy with Hesta, including the black line that showed the route to the river.
The map became worn at the folds. The family used it to guide new workers, find the wells, and remember which trees had survived the burn. Cinderroot continued walking the old paths even as the people changed. It did not know that a line could outlive its maker. It knew only that familiar scents faded, gates moved, and new hands began leaving fruit. When the route changed, it tested the ground before following. The map helped the humans remember, but the boar carried the orchard as scent, pressure, and habit.
The wound that woke the roots
Years after the fire, a poacher set a snare near the old river path. The wire caught Cinderroot’s foreleg. The boar pulled hard enough to tear the skin, then stopped when the trap tightened. The coal seams under its brow brightened. Roots pushed through the ash, curling around the stake and splitting the ground beneath it. Cinderroot dragged its leg free, leaving blood on the wire and a broken stake in the dirt. It ran to the hollow and stayed there while the wound closed.
The roots did not make the animal fearless. For days it avoided the river path and flinched at the sound of wire. Hesta found the trap and removed it. The growers marked the place with a red cloth so no one would step into the hole. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → was away, but Hesta sent word to her that the boar had survived. The wound left a dark seam across Cinderroot’s leg. The glow faded; the memory of pain did not. When it returned to the route, it chose a wider path around the mark.
The children spoke of a charge sharpened by pain, but Hesta corrected them. Cinderroot did not become stronger because it was hurt; it chose to move when the danger reached its home. The roots answered the injury in a way no one could explain. The animal’s body still needed time to mend. The lesson entered the orchard’s stories as a warning against setting snares, not an invitation to wound the boar. Its power belonged to its life, and the life remained vulnerable.
Brann on the old road
BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → reached the orchard circle years later, after traveling through districts where the old roads had been swallowed by new walls. He knew how to carry weight and how to ask before taking fruit from a tree. The growers showed him the map and the places where the ground changed after rain. He heard about Cinderroot before he saw it. Hesta told him to leave the animal alone unless it approached. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → agreed. He had spent enough time being called a guardian to know how quickly a story could become a job someone never consented to.
They met on a late autumn morning. Cinderroot was rooting beneath a pear tree, turning the soil around a cluster of exposed roots. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → stopped several paces away and placed a bruised apple near a stone. The boar looked at him, then at the fruit, then returned to the earth. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → did not move closer. The meeting lasted only a few minutes. Later, the growers said BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → had been accepted by the boar. He said he had been tolerated while it finished digging.
BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → helped restore the orchard’s low stone wall. Cinderroot sometimes followed the work, carrying no tools and taking no instruction. If a stone blocked its familiar route, it pushed the smaller ones aside. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → repaired a gap after the boar passed. Their paths overlapped, but the boar was not BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography →’s animal and BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → did not cause its roots to glow. When he left for another season, Cinderroot continued walking the orchard without him. The circle remained a human promise to share labor, not a bond that could claim the boar.
The flood warning
The flood began upriver after three days of rain. The stream rose through the orchard, first covering the lowest roots and then reaching the stone wall. The growers moved tools to higher ground. Hesta’s house stood beside the cider shed, where the drainage ditch had clogged with fallen branches. The old family map showed a narrow route behind the pear rows, but the path was nearly hidden by grass. Cinderroot traveled it before dawn, following the scent of the river’s new edge.
The boar returned to the homes and pushed at the doors. One family thought it was trying to get inside. Another recognized the urgency and began moving their children uphill. The orange seams under Cinderroot’s brow glowed where a branch had struck its face. Roots rose through the mud, holding the bank for a few moments as people crossed. The animal charged through the water only when the current had begun to carry debris toward the houses. It was not a planned rescue. It was a sequence of choices made in a place it knew better than the people did.
By sunrise, the stream had broken through the lower wall. The flood took several rows of young trees and damaged the cider shed. Hesta was safe on the upper road. Cinderroot had returned to the root hollow, where water circled the trunk and pulled at the soil. The growers tried to move the animal, but it remained near the path. The roots held the bank until the last household crossed, then tore away in the current. Cinderroot was swept beneath a fallen tree beyond the bend.
The hollow after the water
The orchard searched for Cinderroot through the next day. Hesta found its tracks at the river bend, then lost them under silt and broken branches. The flood had changed the channel. The root hollow was gone, and the old paths no longer joined in the same places. The workers buried the damaged tools and counted the missing trees. They did not declare the boar dead until its body was found downstream, caught between two stones with the scarred foreleg turned toward the orchard.
NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → returned after receiving the message. She was older and carried the map she had taken away years before. The paper had been mended at the fold, but the route was still drawn in her charcoal lines. She set an apple beside the body. Hesta told her it was too late for the old offer. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → said she knew. She wanted to leave one there anyway. The orchard buried Cinderroot near the high wall, where the roots would not be washed out by the next flood.
BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → dug the grave with the growers and placed no weapon or collar beside the animal. The boar had not been anyone’s pet, and its life should not be reduced to a story of loyalty. They buried the map copy in a clay tube above the grave, because it marked the paths that had helped people escape. The original remained with NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography →. Hesta kept the red cloth that marked the snare site, a reminder of a danger they could have prevented. The orchard mourned both what it lost and what it had asked Cinderroot to carry.
The route marker in the roots
The flood exposed a section of old boundary stone beyond the new channel. It had once marked the route from the orchard to the river landing. A copper tag was fixed to one corner, stamped with the families’ first shared map symbol: a line branching into three smaller paths. Hesta recognized it from the old route notes. She brought the tag to the grave so it would not be lost in the mud. The copper had been bent by the current but not broken.
Near the grave, a thick root had grown around a small tusk shard that came from Cinderroot’s burial. No one knew whether the shard had broken before death or during the flood. Hesta placed the route tag beside it while deciding where to store the old marker. Rain started again. The water ran over the tag, the root, and the map tube. The soil settled, and the root tightened around the copper until the branching path mark pressed into the wood of the map case.
The spirit’s return happened without a witness who could explain it. The cold body remained in the grave. The root and route marker held a trace of the boar’s last passage: the familiar paths, the flood, and the final choice to turn toward the homes. When a later worker lifted the tag, a shadow moved in the orchard and the coal seams glowed beneath a dark brow. The spirit had been caught by the accidental joining of the tusk, root, and route mark. No deliberate binding had been performed, and the other people buried in the orchard were not drawn in.
The spirit walks the changed path
Cinderroot returned to a landscape that no longer matched its memory. The stream had moved. Several trees had been lost, and the old root hollow lay under silt. The spirit followed the surviving routes as if they were still visible beneath the earth. Its steps disturbed leaves but left no reliable tracks. The coal seams brightened whenever the spirit brushed a root or passed a place where the ground had been wounded. That light did not bring back the orchard as it had been.
NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → saw the boar near the high wall and did not run toward it. She was carrying the map, older now and marked with the flood’s new path. She set the paper on a stone and stepped back. Cinderroot approached, smelled the ink, and stood beside the map until the rain stopped. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → understood that the presence was not a return to ordinary life. The body remained buried; the spirit could move, but it was still bound to the mortal world. The old routes were both comfort and tether.
BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → and the orchard circle recorded what they knew for the Ledger Crow. They did not say that Cinderroot had become the guardian of every tree. The spirit could refuse a route, and sometimes it did. The growers kept the paths open where possible, but the animal’s binding was not a duty they could assign. Its past belonged to a wild creature that had accepted food, learned familiar people, and made its own decisions. The spirit remained because the accidental catch would not let it depart, not because the orchard had earned ownership.
The card and the orchard map
The Ledger Crow recorded Cinderroot’s life beside the map that NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → had carried away and the copper route tag recovered after the flood. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → described the small trust of the outer path, the boar’s dislike of wire, and the way it learned each season’s routes. Hesta described the last flood and the body found downstream. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → explained that he joined the orchard circle much later. They each kept their memories separate; no one claimed to have raised or commanded Cinderroot.
The card transfer held the one spirit that had been the boar. The official Mournhand card design was used; the art in the folio shows scenes from its life and never invents a new card face. Its printed strategy remained exact: a 3/5 creature for 3 energy that gains 2 attack only while attacking a creature if it was already damaged before the attack. The glow beneath its brow told a story, but it did not grant extra health or charge in play.
The card did not end the binding. Cinderroot remained trapped in the mortal world, carried now in the proper card vessel but not freed by it. The map and copper tag stayed in the archive. NeraNeraFirst-generation championNera is Mira's estranged twin sister.Read this biography → left an apple near the old high wall each autumn, not because she thought the spirit needed food, but because the gesture still belonged to their life together. The Crow noted April 10 as the boar’s birthday, Aries, chosen for its decisive nature and the way it acted when its home was threatened. The paths changed again, but the story kept their turns.
Orchard WretchC27 · 4 energy · 4/4Built from burned stakes and evacuation coats, it brings dark fruit to doorsteps and listens below the oldest tree for a name the roots will not return.Read this folio →
Last-Bolt GiantC24 · 5 energy · 4/6The giant once held the foundry roof above a hundred fleeing workers.Read this folio →
Copperseed NymphC26 · 2 energy · 1/3Found asleep in fruit that would not rot, she carries a seed in each palm and asks which wounded house needs a garden first.Read this folio →