The terrain blurred by—black on black.
He couldn't see a thing outside the cart.
Didn't need to.
He was safe here.
Safe from the ones up top.
The crazies in the manor. The iron-jawed certainty in the Citadel.
But for how long?
He exhaled, long and quiet.
This was going to take time.
Then he laughed under his breath.
Who was he kidding?
They were already too late.
The cable car hit the bottom with a soft metallic thunk.
Noah stepped off without hesitation. Gravel crunched beneath his boots, the texture familiar—almost comforting after so many trips between here and the surface. But something was off this time.
The ground felt colder.
The silence thicker.
Like the district itself was holding its breath, unsure whether to greet him or keep its distance.
Behind him, the cart groaned and lifted back up the line. Automatic. As always. He built it that way.
The lamps along the posts flickered a tired amber, casting uneven shadows across the path. Most of the wood looked ready to rot, but they still stood, still glowed, and that was enough. He'd replace them. Eventually.
He walked.
Step by step, boots dragging a little more than usual.
The town emerged as it always had—crooked buildings with rusted metal siding, planks barely holding their shape, patchwork roofs that never looked quite finished.
But the people were still there.
Huddled near fires. Talking in pairs. Sharing food, or gossip, or warnings.
Alive.
He let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding.
Maybe this place hadn't been touched yet.
Maybe—somehow—it had survived the purge above.
And maybe, just maybe, that was enough.
For now.
He climbed the hill slowly, hands in his pockets, the dirt path softer than usual beneath his boots. The house at the top still had its light on—dim but steady, pouring down from the lantern above the door like melted gold.
Of course she was awake.
Probably watching reruns. Probably waiting.
Probably furious.
Noah exhaled through his nose, already rehearsing what to say. There wasn't an excuse that would make it right. Not using her power. Not lying about it. But he'd still say it. Still take the fallout.
He pushed the door open.
It wasn't locked. It never was.
Warm air met him as he stepped inside. The scent of old tea leaves, hot metal, and whatever incense she used to keep the dust down. Still burning. Still recent.
But no voice greeted him.
No footsteps. No teasing.
Just the hum of a broken TV, quietly flickering in standby mode.
The living room hadn't changed.
Boxes lined one wall, dented and stacked like they'd been moved a dozen times and never unpacked. A few of them had split open, revealing metal parts—some jagged and oily, others finely carved but useless. He didn't recognize half of them, and he was supposed to be the smart one.
Wires ran like vines across the small table near the center, tangled up with a few books, an old wrench, and something that might've once been a toaster—or a bone saw.
The couch looked like it had lost a fight with a knife, patched with mismatched fabric. It sat under a wide flatscreen whose top corner still wore the crack from a fall Noah didn't ask about.
Two doors stood at the end of the room.
He already knew the one on the right led to the bathroom.
It was the other that made his stomach tighten.
Still no sound.
Still no sign of her.
"Ariela?" he called out, finally.
Silence.
His voice felt too loud in the small space.
She was probably outside, he told himself. Sitting out in the grass. She always did that when she needed space.
He backed out of the doorway, closing it softly behind him.
The old key turned in the lock with a faint clack. Normal. Human. Not a single rune or enchantment in sight. There was no need for that kind of security down here. Not in her space.
Not when everyone knew it was hers.
He stepped off the porch and looked around.
The hill was still.
But the air had changed.
Noah felt it in his chest, before he even saw it.
The pain flared behind his eyes again—sharper this time. A spike of pressure, like something pushing from the inside of his skull outward.
Noah winced, bringing a hand to his temple as he scanned the hill.
The trees swayed gently. The air was still.
But the grass…
It didn't match.
Out here, in the Underground District, things were always off—lightly glowing vines, bioluminescent petals, weeds that twitched when stepped on. They shimmered even in pitch black.
But now?
They looked… normal.
Too normal.
Like the rest of the world beyond Menystria.
He followed the dim trail of strange color, the faintest pulses of blue and violet threading through the darker underbrush. They weren't as bright as usual—but they were still there. Still leading.
So he walked.
Back toward the meadow.
The place where he first met her.
Where he'd nearly killed her by reflex—stabbing her hand out of panic before apologizing with the worst first-aid kit imaginable.
It hadn't changed much since then.
The trees grew thinner the farther he went. The grass barely reached his ankles now.
But in the center of it all, like a monument placed overnight, stood a tree.
It hadn't been there before.
He'd remember something that size. Anyone would.
It was massive—at least four times taller than anything else in the clearing. Its bark shimmered faintly under the low light, curved and twisted like roots had grown in reverse,
The ache returned with a vengeance.
Noah clenched his jaw, steadying himself with a hand on a tree trunk as the pain behind his eyes sharpened like a blade. It pulsed, timed to each beat of his heart—faster now.
Something was wrong.
The grass under his boots looked normal. Too normal. Flat green. Unremarkable. That never happened here.
Out in the open world, it might've passed for spring.
Here?
It was a warning.
The plants around Menystria always shimmered—dim violet stalks, soft blue leaves, weeds that twitched underfoot like half-sentient moss. The district was a place of half-grown magic and old mutation. Nothing here looked like the surface.
Except tonight.
He spotted a faint trail of glowing petals, barely visible, still leading eastward like memory refused to let them vanish entirely.
He followed.
The path bent gently downhill, toward the meadow.
Where they first met.
Where she screamed as he stabbed through her hand out of instinct, and where he panicked like a rookie trying to patch her up with a coat sleeve and a prayer.
He remembered how she didn't flinch the second time.
The trees grew thinner.
The grass pulled back.
And then he saw it.
In the middle of the clearing, where there had been nothing that morning—no roots, no saplings, no sign of growth—there now stood a tree.
Towering. Twisted. Unreal.
It looked like it had grown for centuries and simply decided to appear.
Its trunk spiraled upward like it had been spun, not grown. Its bark gleamed under the cavern light, not gray or brown, but a pale wood threaded with silver veins, like nerves or scars.
It was four times the size of any tree nearby. If he'd looked from the house with a telescope, he could've seen it.
And yet he hadn't.
"Ariela?" he called, louder now.
No answer.
He moved faster, circling the tree. The grass bent underfoot, soft and unresisting.
He checked the other side. Nothing.
Another lap.
Still nothing.
His throat tightened. He called again.
Still nothing.
Each footstep came heavier now, less from effort than the weight settling in his chest.
The meadow was silent.
And so was she.
Noah dropped down beside the tree.
His legs buckled easier than expected, the impact muted by soft grass and exhaustion. He leaned back against the bark and exhaled, slow and shaky.
The pain in his head had spread—no longer a migraine, not quite divine backlash. Something in between. Something worse.
Maybe she was just mad.
Maybe she needed time.
She did that sometimes—wandered into town, chatted with the locals, sat in a patch of flowers and hummed under her breath like nothing mattered. It wouldn't be the first time she ignored him for hours.
Still…
He looked toward the treeline again.
And blinked.
A faint glow. Just above the horizon of the meadow. Pale yellow, pulsing faintly.
Like a lure.
Like an anglerfish light.
It hovered there for a second. Maybe six feet off the ground. No form. No shadow. Just the glow.
Then it vanished.
Noah rubbed his eyes with his sleeve, groaning. The sweat on his forehead felt cold now. Clammy.
His body wasn't cooperating.
His brain even less so.
"Great," he muttered to himself. "Now I'm hallucinating bait."
He shifted his weight and pulled his knees up, arms crossed loosely over them as he leaned harder into the tree's base.
This was turning into the worst day in years.
And that was saying something.
If Ariela did come back, she'd probably yell at him. Probably lecture him. Probably demand to know what the hell he was thinking using her domain in that ritual without so much as a warning.
And he'd deserve it.
He always thought he could fix things.
Not like Evodil. Not through chaos. Not through gut-feeling instincts and dumb luck.
He wanted logic. Strategy. Quiet control.
But now?
All of it was slipping.
His judgment. His grip on the city. The trust of the only people left he could call family.
He glanced up the length of the tree.
Its bark shimmered again, that faint silver veining dancing between the ridges.
Ariela had once told him, half-laughing, that her original body wasn't human.
That she was a tree before anything else.
He always thought it was a joke.
Now?
He wasn't so sure.
Because for the first time since he walked down here…
He felt completely alone.
He glanced down.
The roots were massive—twisted ropes of wood thicker than his torso, crawling out from the tree like veins seeking air. They disappeared beneath rocks and gravel and came back up again, arching like ribs.
Menystrian flora had always been different. Especially down here.
Ariela had helped these trees grow in soil that shouldn't support life. She wove things into them—memories, songs, maybe even parts of herself. She always joked about that.
But the joke didn't feel like a joke anymore.
Noah's fingers twitched.
Because tucked beneath one of the roots… was something else.
Fabric.
Green.
The same shade as the dress Ariela wore when she walked through town. Homemade, stitched by hand—he'd seen her do it on the couch while old Earth movies played in the background.
He crouched lower, nausea crawling up his throat.
The cloth was wrapped tight around one of the roots.
Or maybe—
His breath hitched.
It wasn't wrapped around the root.
The root was shaped like a body.
Two thick limbs driven into the soil like legs.
A torso blooming up from the base of the tree itself.
The bark here… it wasn't bark.
It was smooth.
Too smooth.
His head pulsed again, a sharp, stabbing bolt behind the eyes. He staggered, catching himself against the trunk with one hand, the other gripping his own hair just to stay upright.
Too much.
Too many signs.
Too loud. Too clear.
He looked again.
And that was the last thing he saw before his body gave out.
The last thing—before the pain took him.
The shape in the tree that used to be Ariela.
And then—
Darkness.
When he opened his eyes—
It was still dark.
But not the kind of dark that choked.
This one breathed.
The ground beneath him rippled as he walked, soft and reflective, like water that didn't move. His footsteps didn't echo. His body didn't ache. The pain was just… gone.
And yet he knew.
He knew she wasn't.
He should've screamed.
Should've cried.
Should've done something.
But his lungs didn't ask for it.
His heart didn't ache the way it should.
Maybe because deep down, he already knew.
Maybe he knew long before she ever rooted into that tree.
Far ahead, a moon floated—
Half-sunken into the liquid earth, glowing just enough to light the way. Faint and solemn.
It wasn't his moon.
Not the one he prayed to. Not the one he studied.
But he still felt drawn to it.
A shape emerged.
A bench.
He didn't question it.
Just sat.
The seat didn't creak. The space didn't react. The moon didn't change.
He sat there, staring at it for what could've been minutes or hours.
No ticking clock.
No pulsing wound.
Just thought.
"If I hadn't spent so much time with her…"
His voice didn't echo either.
"She'd still be alive."
He closed his eyes, remembering the sound of her laugh. The way she tilted her head when confused. That stupid stitched dress.
The way she didn't scream when she met him for the first time.
"If I didn't need her powers… She wouldn't be a corpse right now. A shell. A root."
He clenched his fists.
But no tears came.
Just breath.
One more question remained, floating somewhere between the moon and the water.
"Is she still in there?"
He didn't say it out loud.
But it echoed anyway.
And the moon didn't answer.
He looked up again.
The moon hadn't changed shape—
But it felt like it had changed meaning.
It used to be a guide.
Now?
Just a witness.
He let out a slow breath, lips barely curled into a smirk. Not from amusement. Not from irony. Just the kind of expression you wear when you've finally figured out that the story doesn't have a happy ending—
and maybe never did.
"Evodil's gone in the head," he muttered.
"James kicked his soul out the door."
And him?
No more Ariela.
No one to pull him back from the ledge. No one to ask what he was doing or why it mattered. No one to slow his thoughts before they swallowed themselves whole.
He laughed, but it didn't sound like anything real.
More like the echo of a breath that didn't want to become a sob.
"I didn't even know what morality was before her."
It sounded pathetic now.
The man who called himself the God of Knowledge didn't understand basic empathy until someone sat beside him long enough to show him how it worked.
And now she was dead.
A tree.
Or something worse.
His voice fell quiet.
"…I don't even know why I'm here."
The air didn't shift.
But the moon did.
Slowly, like a god that no longer had time to pretend to be gentle—
it rose.
And with it, the water receded.
Not like a tide.
More like a curtain.
Below the liquid surface: jagged mountains of black.
A sea of spires.
Long, cruel, angled teeth carved from the bones of things that should've stayed buried.
He stared.
Realized—
If he stood from this bench, he'd fall.
Straight down.
Onto one of them.
Impaled.
Split open like the logic in his own mind.
His heart didn't race.
But he gripped the edge of the seat regardless.
"I see."
No other words came.
Just the sharp breath that came after them.
He opened his mouth—
but the words weren't his.
The sound didn't echo.
Didn't ripple.
Didn't even arrive.
It was just there.
Like the voice had already been spoken and was simply waiting to be heard.
"Is this it?"
Noah flinched.
His own tone.
His own cadence.
But it didn't feel like his throat had moved.
The sound hadn't come from the sky either.
It had come from everywhere. From him.
The moon didn't glow brighter.
But it felt heavier.
"Are you really going to sit there and do nothing?"
The question slammed into him like a verdict.
"You're not going to try? No plan, no adjustment, no trick, no angle? You're going to let him rot? Let the other one kill? Let the sun burn out without lifting a finger?"
He blinked, stunned.
For the first time since stepping into this space, he looked small.
Not god-small.
Just… helpless.
"I don't know what to do," he admitted.
His voice cracked more than he wanted it to.
"I never knew. I acted like I did, always did, but it was bluffing. Always bluffing. Dumb luck, maybe. Evodil levels of bluffing."
The moon laughed.
It wasn't cruel.
But it wasn't kind.
"And you call yourself the god of knowledge."
Noah winced.
It pressed further.
"Do you think she would've wanted this? Would she have wanted you to sit in silence? Or to act? To claw something out of the wreck and make meaning of it?"
His heart ached.
He didn't speak.
Because it was right.
And somehow… it knew it.
He swallowed, trying to steady his thoughts.
"What is this place?" he whispered.
"How did I even get here?"
The voice didn't hesitate.
"It's part of you."
"Part of what you left behind. Or maybe what you haven't met yet."
"I used to be you. Or I will be."
The moon tilted, impossibly, like a coin leaning against gravity.
"Or maybe I'm your reflection."
Noah stared.
"You can call me what I am," it continued.
"Your Vestige."
"I am New Moon."
The light above him didn't shimmer.
But it shifted.
Like it had more to say.
Like it had always been waiting.
"Before the world thought," the voice said,
"before stars breathed, before life took root…"
"There was me."
Noah's breath caught.
"I was Perceus. Thought incarnate. Memory in orbit. Moon of what could be."
"You called yourself Noah when you fell."
"But your first name was mine."
The words wrapped around him like gravity.
Like they'd always been there.
"And now we are together again."
The moon grew brighter.
"I was the bow you used. Formed from the first arc of divine thought. The first moon that dreamed of life."
"And now I am your Vestige. No longer just a shape of silver and aim."
"I can become anything you imagine—so long as it reaches."
"Throwing blades. Crossbows. A railgun built from moonlight. If you dream it, I become it."
Noah's mouth opened.
But he couldn't speak.
He could barely think.
The magnitude of what had been said churned in him like tidal weight.
He had once been a moon?
How?
Why didn't he remember?
That question alone should've shattered him.
Should've made him scream.
But he didn't.
Because—somewhere inside—it felt right.
The world had never made sense.
Not fully.
Not until now.
He rose from the bench.
He didn't fall.
The void beneath him rose—formed stone beneath his feet.
Pillars of gray rock.
Spirals of darkness weaving together into a narrow path.
He fixed his glasses with a practiced hand.
The headache was gone.
His heart, too, felt different.
Still wounded.
Still bleeding.
But it beat with purpose now.
"Thank you," he said aloud, not knowing if he was thanking the moon or himself.
"Because this… isn't over."
He looked ahead—where the path spiraled.
"And I'm not going to sit back and watch them fall."
"I'll bring them back."
"Both of them."