The ash had stopped falling by morning.
Kael stood on the edge of the ruined fountain where he'd first seen the city bleeding. Now, it simply exhaled. No roots pulsed beneath the cobbled stone. No sap dripped from the eaves. Solarae was a corpse, but not a fresh one. Not screaming anymore. Just still.
Behind him, the reliquary entrance yawned like a sealed wound. Mercy lay buried beneath it—quiet, inert, and planted like a question none of them could yet answer.
Eris approached without a sound. Her boots, caked in soot, left no mark on the stone. She stood beside him a moment before rolling her shoulder slowly, testing something. When she flexed her hand, she stilled.
"It doesn't hurt," she said.
Kael turned.
She was staring at her fingers like they belonged to someone else. Her brand was gone—faded not just into skin, but into memory. No black veins, no burning pulses. No pull.
"Not even a twitch," she added. "I thought I'd forgotten how that felt."
Kael didn't answer. Not immediately. He looked down at his own hands. Calloused, blood-streaked. They'd shaken once. Now they were still.
"Maybe forgetting is part of healing," he said.
Eris looked away. "Or maybe we're just different now."
They returned to the surface camp as the first light of morning split the ash-heavy clouds. Survivors had begun emerging—stumbling, limping, gasping. Some came from crumbled buildings, others from tunnels below. Not all had survived untouched.
One man wept openly beside a shriveled root tendril, cradling it like a dead child. Another spat into the ashes, cursing the Garden's name with every breath. And one small girl, no more than seven, knelt beside a curled silver vine, poking it with the tip of a stick. She wasn't afraid. She was curious.
Eris watched them all with unreadable eyes.
"They're not going to agree," she muttered. "Some of them… they liked what the Garden gave. Or thought they did."
Kael nodded. "It's not our job to make them see the same thing."
She glanced sideways. "Then what is our job now?"
He didn't answer.
Veyra was already gone.
His cot, near the fire circle, was empty. A half-filled water flask and a folded scrap of cloth lay neatly where his head had rested.
Kael found his answer just beyond the reliquary's gate—driven into the ash-dusted soil, blade-first, was Veyra's insignia. The crest of the Rootless: a black eye pierced by a vine, carved into a dull steel plate.
Beside it, a short knife. Clean. Left like a grave marker.
Kael crouched. He pressed two fingers to the insignia and bowed his head—not for blessing, but for thanks.
Later, he returned to the site.
The place where Mercy slept.
The crater had sealed slightly, the earth pulled tight by cooling sap and blackened root. Kael knelt and rested his hand against the surface. It was still warm. Not alive. Not dead. Something between.
For a moment, just a breath, he thought he felt a pulse.
Not Mercy's voice. Not hunger.
Just... a hum. Like memory vibrating in his bones.
Then it faded.
He opened his eyes.
There, poking through the soot-cracked soil, was a single sprout.
No taller than his thumb. Black as ash, but tipped with green.
Its stem curved—not toward the sun, but toward the reliquary. Toward where Mercy lay.
It did not pulse.
It did not breathe.
But it moved. Barely. As if listening.
Eris crouched beside him.
"It's from the Garden?" she asked.
"No." Kael shook his head. "It's not the Garden anymore."
She studied it. "Should we burn it?"
Kael thought for a long moment. "Maybe one day. But not today."
He touched the sprout gently with one finger. It bent, then sprang back.
"Let it grow," he said. "Let's see what it becomes."
That night, the campfire crackled low, its smoke rising into a sky no longer laced with silver tendrils. The stars returned—dim, uncertain. But present.
Kael and Eris sat together. Not side by side, but close enough.
"I don't want to be anyone's scythe," Kael said, without looking at her.
"You never were," Eris replied.
"I thought I was." He looked down at his palms again. "All that time… I thought I was just what Mercy made me."
"You were." She shrugged. "But you're also what you chose afterward."
She poked the fire with a blackened stick. Sparks danced.
"That matters more."
By the second day, they helped bury the dead.
Not all had names. Not all had faces left.
Some were bloom-touched. Others had burned from the inside out. A few had weapons still clutched in their hands.
They dug shallow graves and laid the bodies in silence. For the first time in days, no one wept. They just worked. Because the work had to be done.
At the last grave, Kael stood longer than the others. He dropped in a fragment of Mercy's old hilt—the one he'd broken before reforging. Just a shard.
Let memory rest.
On the third day, a scout returned with news.
"The Syndicate's fractured," the young man said. "The ones who tried to regrow the Garden are gone. The rest are just…" He shook his head. "Scared."
"Of us?" someone asked.
"No," the scout said. "Of what's left."
Kael knew what that meant.
The absence.
The hole left behind.
They stayed one more night.
That evening, Eris wandered back to the reliquary alone. Kael followed—not closely, just enough to keep her in sight.
She stood at the sprout for a long time.
When she turned back, he saw tears on her cheeks.
"I thought it would be gone," she whispered.
"But it's not."
"No," she said. "And that scares me more."
Kael nodded. "Same."
Before dawn, they prepared to leave.
No farewell speeches. No promises. Just quiet nods and supplies packed.
Kael walked to the edge of the city—what had once been a proud wall, now broken stone and ash-choked rubble.
He looked back only once.
Eris was already walking.
He caught up to her as the sun broke through the clouds.
The world was still broken.
The land cracked. The rivers still ran silver in places. The old roads were half-swallowed by vine and dust.
But the silence no longer felt hollow.
It felt… clean.
As they walked, Kael turned to her.
"If it grows back," he said, "we stop it again."
Eris didn't hesitate. "Of course."
They said nothing more.
Behind them, the city burned low and quiet.
Ahead, the road forked.
The sprout in the soil trembled once in the wind. Not pulsing. Not beckoning.
Just being.