They moved in tight formation through the jungle, Isla and her crew weaving confidently between tangled roots and patches of bioluminescent moss. Aouli followed behind them, half walking, half drifting. The deeper they went, the more he noticed the ground itself breathing again—rhythms growing more frantic, less stable.
At the edge of a sunken clearing, they reached the stabilizer site.
It looked like a ruin—an ancient monolith of stone and steel entwined in vines, seated at the heart of a web-like root system that pulsed with intermittent light. Parts of it still hummed with a low current. Broken panels spilled old circuit boards. There were claw marks on the hull—deep gouges where nature had tried to reclaim the thing.
"This is what's left of Station K-13," Isla said. "Part of the original control grid. It was meant to harmonize the forest's neuro-systems with the terra grid. Instead, it caused a cascade loop."
"And you're turning it back on?" Aouli asked carefully.
"Not fully. Just enough to reestablish perimeter data. If we can force a phase sync between the canopy charge and the subsoil capacitor layer, we might reset the cycle."
"Or make it worse," came a voice from the treeline.
Kaero stepped into view like a shadow untangling itself from the jungle.
Isla stiffened. "You."
Kaero tipped a sarcastic salute. "Nice to see failure still brings us together."
Maelle scowled. "Why are you here?"
"Same as always," Kaero said. "To warn the well-meaning not to light the match in the oxygen room."
Isla marched toward him. "We've run the sequence six times. The margins are stable."
"Stable enough to collapse the eastern ridge," Kaero shot back. "The root systems are too sensitive. One misaligned voltage pulse and you trigger a sympathetic oscillation that fractures the entire canopy."
"We don't have a choice!" Isla snapped. "If we wait, the southern stabilizer decays completely. Then it doesn't matter what happens here. The valley dies anyway."
Kaero looked at Aouli. "You believe her? That you can fix this with a push of a button and good intentions?"
Aouli didn't answer. His gaze lingered on the tower—on its rusted seams, the vines trembling around its base. The forest remembered this structure. It hated it.
"You said I had to feel it," Aouli said, half to Elysia, though she wasn't there.
Kaero shrugged. "You've felt plenty. Maybe now you start thinking."
But Aouli couldn't separate the faces from the facts. Maelle, looking at him like he mattered. Isla, desperate but grounded, trying to protect her team. These people lived here. They'd fought to survive while others fled. They deserved a chance.
He looked at Isla.
"What do you need?"
Her face softened just slightly. "We can't activate the pulse with this much interference. We need someone to stabilize the harmonic buffer—keep the feedback from overloading the neural mesh. That's a precision task."
Aouli stepped forward.
"I'll do it."
Kaero's expression darkened. "You'll kill them."
Aouli turned. "Then stay and help."
Kaero shook his head slowly. "No. But I'll be nearby. When it breaks."
He vanished into the trees again, leaving only silence and tension behind.
Isla looked at Aouli.
"You sure?"
"No," he said. "But I'm not going to watch another world die without trying."
She nodded.
"Then let's begin."