The thorns parted like ribs pulled open for autopsy.
Kael stepped through first, boots sinking into the pulsing floor. It wasn't stone anymore. It was something softer. Warmer. Veined with blacklight.
Kane followed, limping but upright. The bear, massive and silent, dragged its claws along the edge of the archway, leaving behind streaks of rust that bled upward instead of down.
The chamber beyond was cavernous cathedral-broad and womb-dark, lit only by the faint, bioluminescent pulse of roots curling along the ceiling like reversed lightning. In the center, cradled in a cage of bone-white vines, was the Heart.
It beat like it had teeth.
Every pulse sent ripples through the floor, echoing through Kael's chest like a second heartbeat. The flower in his palm shrieked in recognition. Kane gasped beside him, knees buckling as his ribs creaked open more petals unfurling where his breath should be.
[Root System Synchronization: 94%]
Something laughed in the walls.
Not Sarnel. Not the roots.
Something older.
Kael stepped closer.
The Heart was grotesque a mass of writhing roots and organ-flesh, petals blooming from its surface like tumors. It had no rhythm, no predictability. It beat to its own logic. Alien. Ancient. And yet, as Kael approached, it shuddered. Reacted.
Recognized him.
The roots beneath his feet retracted in reverence.
The flower in his hand bloomed wide, revealing a core of thorns and viscera. Kael dropped to one knee, instinct more than choice. His bones ached. His spine cracked like a wet branch.
Kane collapsed beside him, eyes rolling back as his throat split open and vines poured out not strangling, but anchoring. Feeding.
"This is it," Kane rasped, voice thin and strange. "This is where they built it. The first graft. The first bloom."
Kael swallowed the rising bile. "And we end it here."
The bear growled low, stepping forward. Its body shimmered briefly not with light, but with memory. A flickering afterimage: a knight once, a king perhaps, haloed not by rust but gold. Before the branding. Before the garden broke him.
The Heart responded.
Tendrils slithered out like antennae, brushing Kael's shoulder. He didn't flinch.
[Root System Synchronization: 97%]
A voice curled out of the pulsing vines. Not spoken. Not heard. Just known.
"You are not the first."
Kael clenched his jaw. "I'll be the last."
The Heart pulsed hard. A convulsion of bone and root. From the ceiling above, a body dropped.
It hit the floor with a wet snap.
A child.
Or what was once a child.
Now hollow. Bloomed. Its ribcage wide open, throat filled with moss. Tiny vines twitched where its tongue should be.
Kael felt his stomach churn. "They used them."
"Fed them," Kane said weakly, fingers clawing into the floor. "To keep it alive. We were the seeds. They were the soil."
Another body fell. Then another.
All children.
All bloomed.
The bear roared.
The Heart screamed.
And the vines moved.
From the walls. From the floor. From the ceiling. Twisting, writhing, a thousand wriggling memories dragged from the soil. They didn't just want to kill Kael.
They wanted to show him what he was made from.
Sarnel's voice slithered again, distant but thick in his blood.
"You misunderstand. The garden doesn't die. It molts. It blooms through blood. You're not destroying it. You're becoming it."
Kael snarled and rose to his feet.
The flower in his palm coiled like a serpent, its vines crackling with blacklight.
"No," he whispered. "Not this time."
He plunged his hand into the Heart.
The scream was instant.
So was the fire.
Not of flame but memory. Vision. Echo.
The garden before it was a prison. A temple. Worshippers in rust-colored robes bowing to a vine-crowned god. Children carved open beneath the roots, fed into the soil to summon the Heart.
And Kael no, someone like Kael standing in the center of it all. A Seedborn. The first bloom. The first rebellion.
He failed.
But the echo remained.
Kael tore his hand back, the flower now fully open its petals like razors, its center like an eye. Blood poured down his arm, but the roots around him shrieked in unison.
Kane screamed too, his body convulsing as vines burst from his spine like wings.
The bear collapsed, sobbing silently, steam rising from its back.
[Root System Synchronization: 99%]
Kael stepped forward. The flower in his palm turned black.
The Heart writhed. Tendrils whipped toward him.
Kael didn't dodge.
He let them wrap around him.
Embrace him.
And then
He whispered:
"Burn."
The flower bloomed one final time.
Its core shone gold.
A forgotten color.
The Heart convulsed. Roots snapped. The ground buckled.
And everything
burned.
Not with fire.
With memory.
Every echo that had ever been planted.
Every child that had ever bloomed.
Every rebellion crushed beneath roots.
Now roared to life.
[Root System Synchronization: 100%]
The flower burst.
And the prison
the garden
the god
Screamed.