The reliquary was silent when they arrived.
Kael stood at the threshold of what had once been the Order's sanctuary—a circular chamber deep beneath Solarae, lined with broken archways and cracked obsidian murals. Vines clung to every surface. Some bore blossoms shaped like open eyes; others bled silver when touched.
Eris stepped carefully over a shattered lectern. Her breath caught.
"I know this place," she whispered. "They used to say it was where the first Oaths were spoken."
She crouched, pressing her hand to the floor. "They built the Order over this… not to protect us. To keep it asleep."
Kael nodded slowly. "But it woke anyway."
The brand on Eris's chest twitched again—deep beneath her skin, not with pain, but with pull. Not a summons. A warning.
Veyra limped behind them, his left arm bound tightly in cloth soaked red to the elbow. His other hand trembled on his blade's hilt, but he didn't speak. His jaw had been torn open by a root hours earlier. The medics sealed it. He hadn't spoken since.
Some scars grow quiet.
The root-choked stairwell spiraled down and in.
They descended wordlessly, guided by the soft, awful pulse underfoot. Mercy didn't speak. But Kael could feel it warming. Not hungrily. Not eagerly. But solemn. Like a blade preparing for burial.
Halfway down, Eris paused.
"I used to train above this chamber," she said, her voice hushed. "I thought the whispers were just echoes."
Kael looked at her. "They weren't."
She nodded. "No. They were the Garden, waiting to be remembered."
Then they reached it.
The Rootmind.
It wasn't a creature, not really. It was a nest of veins the size of a cathedral—an underground bloom of thought and rot. Branches hung from the ceiling like chandeliers of bone and silver. The roots pulsed not just with light, but with something older—echoes. Emotions. Regrets.
And in the center, like a throne overturned and rotted hollow, sat a mass of ancient root and metal and memory.
Kael stepped forward.
And it spoke—not aloud, but inside.
"You are the final wound."
Kael didn't flinch.
"You severed the bloom before it bore fruit. You broke the King. You burned the children. And now you come to bury the seed."
A pulse struck him. He staggered.
And suddenly—he saw.
A vision not of rot. But of peace.
The world years from now. Green and soft. Cities swallowed by living stone, but not broken—balanced. No hunger. No blades. No fire. Just silence. Stillness. Roots wound around towers, sleeping children cradled in vine-webs. The sky the color of breath.
He saw himself.
Wearing the Bloomed Crown. Roots blooming from his back like wings. No sword. No enemies.
Order.
"Grow me," the Rootmind whispered, "or let all burn."
Kael dropped to one knee.
He could feel his veins pulsing again. Old scars stirring. He looked down at his hands—were they still his?
Then Eris was beside him, her fingers tight around his shoulder.
"Kael."
Her voice cut clean through the vision.
"That's not mercy. That's control."
He looked at her. She was pale, bleeding, shaking—but her eyes were hers.
He turned back to the Rootmind.
"I won't grow you."
"Then you'll kill the last root. The last memory. And nothing will remain."
Kael looked down at Mercy.
The blade, once loud with hunger, now hummed faintly in his palm.
"Then let memory rest."
He stepped forward.
And drove the sword into the core.
The Garden screamed.
Not a sound. Not a roar. But a thousand voices, cut short in unison. A chorus of silenced dreams. The vines writhed violently, lashing at the chamber walls, cracking stone, splitting pillars. One root snapped toward Kael—Eris stepped in and severed it midair.
Silver sap spilled across the reliquary floor.
The Rootmind pulsed once.
Then went still.
Kael stood in the aftermath, breathing hard. The chamber no longer pulsed. The roots didn't twitch.
Behind him, Veyra knelt, a faint trail of blood leaking from beneath his bandages. He looked up at Kael, and though he couldn't speak, his eyes said enough:
It's done.
Eris stepped to the core, wiping her blade on her cloak.
Kael withdrew Mercy.
The blade no longer glowed.
He turned it over in his hands, then knelt—and laid it down into the pulsing, hollow soil. Not to bury it in hate. But to plant it in memory.
As he let go, the sword whispered—quietly.
"Finally... rest."
Eris's brand faded as they watched. The scar drew inward, until only pale skin remained—no pulse, no fire.
She let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding.
Outside, the earth shook once. Not in anger. But in exhale.
They climbed in silence.
The reliquary above them no longer wept. The roots along the stairway were brittle now—flakes of silver-black drifting like old petals.
Veyra stopped once to rest, slumped against a pillar. Kael crouched beside him.
"I'll carry the story," Kael said.
Veyra nodded once, then touched his throat. No voice left.
Kael squeezed his shoulder. "You don't need words."
He looked back one last time. The chamber behind them no longer felt sacred. Or cursed. It just felt... still.
As the trio emerged into the ruined city, the sky above Solarae cracked with pale light. No fire. No rot.
Ash fell.
But nothing grew.
Not yet.
Eris leaned on Kael's shoulder.
"Some graves grow flowers," she murmured.
"This one grows silence."
Kael said nothing.
He just looked toward the rising sun—and the place where Mercy now slept.
That evening, the winds changed.
Kael sat on the scorched remains of a fountain near the reliquary's entrance, watching the last of the ash clouds drift west. For the first time in weeks, there was no hum beneath his feet. No pulse. The Garden, for all its haunting power, was truly gone.
Eris emerged from the shadows behind him, wrapped in a patched cloak taken from one of the fallen Bloomed. She carried a pouch filled with root fragments—some brittle, some strangely soft.
"They're dying," she said simply, pouring the contents into the fire. "Everywhere."
Kael nodded. "But something's going to try growing from it anyway."
Eris sank down beside him, brushing a strand of soot-streaked hair from her eyes. "You think that seed we left beneath Mercy will stay buried?"
"No." He didn't lie. "But maybe it'll grow differently this time."
A long silence stretched between them.
In the distance, birdsong. Thin. Fragile. Real.
Kael rose slowly, eyes fixed on the horizon where ruined towers still stood, reaching like broken fingers toward the sky.
"We should leave soon," he said.
Eris didn't argue.
And far beneath the reliquary floor, unseen and unspoken, something turned over in the ash again.