The horizon cracked.
Not like dawn. Not like light. Like a wound tearing the sky itself.
Spinedral pulsed outward, veins of black blood stretching past the city walls, swallowing forests, rivers, and plains in their viscous surge. Every root that erupted from Kael's chest thrummed with the heartbeat of a god. The world itself trembled beneath the Bloom.
Kael stood at the epicenter, chest rising and falling with impossible rhythm. Black fire flared along his roots, crawling over the land, pulling the dead from shallow graves, from cities untouched, from mountains that had slept for centuries.
Kane followed, spine-blade humming louder than thunder, carving through husks and stone alike. Each strike birthed chaos: entire forests bent and bled, rivers boiled into black ichor, and the air itself trembled with the resonance of his laughter.
"Brother," Kane shouted, voice carrying over the roar of the Bloom, "look at it! Look at everything! This… is power!"
Kael did not answer. His roots surged outward, splitting rivers into black veins, fusing fields and mountains into living marrow. The Bloom had no end, only expansion.
Above him, the Dark Tome spun like a furious star, pages whipping themselves into ribbons, each one carving new scripts into the skies. Words burned across the horizon:
"Consume. Conquer. Transform."
Thirn hovered at the heart of the Bloom, her naked body glowing faintly with black ink. Her arms moved in impossible rhythms, summoning words older than the world. Each letter struck the Bloom like lightning, expanding it, weaving the living city into the flesh of the world.
"The God hungers!" she screamed. "And through the Bloom… it will devour all creation!"
The ground ruptured violently. Mountains trembled. Plains fractured. Rivers of black blood erupted, carrying hundreds of husks, skeletal trees, and fragments of earth into the growing tide. Each wave of the Bloom devoured everything, binding it to Kael's will.
Kane danced atop the surging chaos, spine-blade cutting arcs of marrow-fire through titanic husks. "We bloom, brother! We cut! Nothing survives our touch!"
Kael raised his hands. Roots exploded outward like dark suns, swallowing entire valleys, twisting mountains into grotesque forms, and dragging forests into the marrowed earth. Black fire licked the sky. The Bloom had no limits.
Above, the god stirred. Its shadow stretched farther, wider, trying to reclaim the Bloom. It lashed at the roots, claws of darkness tearing at the veins of the world. But Kael's roots struck faster, thicker, swallowing the shadow like a mouth devouring itself.
Kael's black eyes burned brighter than the sunless sky. His voice carried over the lands, deep and eternal:
"Rise. Rise beyond the world. Rise beyond life."
Husks, beasts, and mountains of bone obeyed. Black fire erupted across continents. Forests rose, alive with marrowed roots. Rivers of blood carried corpses like drifting seeds. The land itself writhed beneath his command.
Kane roared, leaping into the chaos. Each swing of his spine-blade tore history from the earth, rewriting it in fire and shadow. "And I cut! I cut! I cut!"
The world trembled. Oceans roared. Mountains split. Skies wept ichor. The Bloom had no boundaries. Every living thing, every dead thing, every stone and root pulsed with Kael's heartbeat.
A silence fell. Not peace. Not calm. A silence so deep it pressed into the marrow of the world itself.
Kael's hand rose, black eyes fixed on the horizon.
"Feed," he whispered.
The continents obeyed. The Bloom obeyed. Even the god above recoiled, unable to resist the unstoppable expansion.
Kane's laughter cut the silence like a blade through flesh. "We bloom. We cut. And soon… nothing in the world will be untouched by us!"
Spinedral's veins pulsed with Kael's heart. The Bloom had become the world.
And Kael… was its pulse.