The Pale had no horizon.
Just a churn of gray fog over miles of collapsed forest, broken stalks, and the endless hush of things that didn't breathe right. Caer stood at the edge of the bioscrub, breathing through a filtered mesh woven into his collar, watching the wind curl like a predator.
He hadn't crossed into this place in seven years.
Not since Miren vanished.
Back then, they had called it an experimental reclamation zone—a place where defunct root-sectors and broken gene-nets were left to decompose naturally. But the orchard knew better.
This wasn't reclamation.
It was exile.
And now it whispered to him, even here.
Vines from the orchard curled at the cliff's edge behind him, hesitant to follow. This soil was unblessed. The roots here were corrupted, half-dead, straining to remember what they once were.
He unhooked the spore-beacon from his belt—an ancient tracking unit no larger than a beetle—and activated the mirrored stem. It hissed to life, emitting a dull green glow. Slowly, it spun toward the Pale.
He fed it a strand of hair.
Miren's.
Preserved in glass since the last pruning they'd done together.
The beacon pulsed.
Then beeped—once.
Direction acquired.
Caer moved into the fog.
Back at the orchard, Lioress was not sleeping.
She sat by the sensory root in the cellar, her hands twitching over the soft dirt floor, sketching in urgent, erratic lines. Her eyes were wide but unfocused, breath shallow. The root-veins around her glowed with nervous energy, dimming and pulsing in broken rhythm.
She wasn't aware she was drawing.
But the shapes came anyway.
Figures, dozens of them, tangled in vines. Their limbs twisted. No mouths. No eyes. Roots penetrating their skulls. They screamed, but only in silence—fingers stretched toward an invisible sun, begging for something they didn't understand.
In the center of it all, one word appeared again and again:
RIVEN.
She didn't know what it meant.
But the orchard did.
And it was afraid.
Caer's boots crunched through bone-grass.
The Pale whispered.
He'd forgotten the sound—like wind forced through a thousand mouths. Not quite natural. Not quite technological. The after-echo of failed life.
The spore-beacon pulsed again.
He passed the remains of a structure—half-melted walls of mycelial lattice and rusted support ribs. Once a greenhouse or a lab. Now, a shrine to entropy. Moss painted the floors in bioluminescent bruises. Something moved inside, but he didn't check.
Too close now.
Miren had left her mark just ahead.
And then—
He saw it.
An outpost, sunken halfway into the sludge. Biotech walls cracked with age. A collapsed dome overhead, overgrown with screaming flowers—genetically engineered blooms that only opened when touched by neural frequencies.
He approached slowly.
The spore-beacon pulsed rapidly now. Then stopped.
Miren had been here.
He placed a palm on the bio-door.
It opened.
Inside, silence.
And then
Her voice.
Not over speakers.
Not prerecorded.
But projected directly into his auditory nerve by a spore-field nested in the ceiling.
"Caer."
He froze.
"I knew you'd come. Or maybe you wouldn't. I left this message woven into the roots in case… in case I never made it back."
He stepped into the center of the room.
"Miren," he whispered.
Her voice continued.
"I was wrong about the orchard. About what we were cultivating. It was never supposed to wake the Bloom—at least not like this. She's not one girl. She's two. Spliced. Layered. One meant for life. One meant for silence."
Caer felt the cold creep of dread behind his heart.
"You have to choose which one survives."
Static. Then:
"If you wait too long… it chooses for you."
The ceiling spores faded, their glow receding into the bone-colored mycoflesh.
Caer stood in silence for a moment longer, the after-image of Miren's voice still buzzing in his skull. The room hummed softly, alive with decaying memory. Dust particles floated like spores, hanging in the stale, thick air.
He stepped deeper into the ruin.
The floor shifted slightly beneath his boots—soft and springy, too warm for dead soil. As he walked, embedded sensors sparked faintly beneath his steps, reacting to his biosignature. He followed the faint trail of living light to a low table overrun with crawling moss.
A shallow depression in the table's surface held a lidded bio-capsule, crusted over with hardened resin.
He scraped at the shell with his knife until the seal cracked with a soft hiss. Vapor drifted upward, smelling faintly of old pine and copper. Inside the capsule floated a thin layer of translucent gel—the kind used to store encrypted organic memory.
He dipped his fingers in.
The world blinked.
A second voice—Miren again, but older, more worn—slipped into his mind through neuro-touch sync.
"I tried to splice her cleanly," the voice said. "I really did. But something latched on in the orchard. Something old. She began naming things we never taught her. Places she shouldn't know. People who died before she was born."
Caer's throat tightened.
"She's Bloom-born, Caer. Not clone, not native. Not even hybrid. The orchard grew her from the spliced remnants of Project Riven, buried in the soil after the Fourth Blight. One identity seeded to bloom—another buried to stay dead."
The voice crackled.
"I thought I could separate them. But I failed. Now she's both."
The room rumbled.
Lights dimmed.
A deep groan echoed from the structure's bones—like something stretching awake after a long, long sleep.
Caer pulled his hand back from the gel.
Too late.
The capsule sizzled. Burned out from the sudden voltage surge.
Then: motion.
A perimeter node hidden behind a growth of shelf-fungus sparked to life, red and pulsing. Defense grid active. Someone had tripped a sensor. The room sealed.
From outside, a voice distorted through modulated amplifiers.
"Caer Avenya. You are trespassing on tribunal quarantine ground. Step out with your hands visible. You have been seen."
Not tribunal operatives—mercenaries. The way they phrased it. Unofficial. Paid.
Hired to intercept, not interrogate.
Caer pulled back into shadow. Slid along the edge of the room until he reached the rear wall—thin, biotic, soft enough to puncture.
He unsheathed his scalpel.
Two slashes, quick and practiced, opened a slit large enough to crawl through.
Outside, fog poured in like water from a broken tank.
Boots thundered around the front entrance. Voices muttered. He heard one say, "Scan says the girl's signature was here two days ago."
Lioress.
They were tracking her.
They had already found a way to read her.
His breath caught in his chest.
She was no longer safe.
He crawled into the Pale and vanished into the mist, blood smeared across his hands, the echo of Miren's voice etched into his nerves like fire.
The orchard wasn't quiet anymore.
Not peaceful. Not still.
It breathed now.
The vines on the perimeter twitched restlessly, reaching out in spirals across the ground like searching fingers. Flowers once closed during the day now blinked open. Roots throbbed with pulses of green-blue light, forming veins that skittered across the orchard's skin like bioluminescent scars.
At its heart, Lioress writhed in the moss near the sensory core.
Her skin had begun to peel.
It came off in soft, curling sheets like tissue-thin bark. Beneath the layer of pale human flesh, something else gleamed—iridescent, wet, veined in silver. Her breathing came in ragged bursts. She tried to speak but choked on her own voice. Her tongue flicked involuntarily between human and forked.
"Help," she whispered to the empty orchard. "Help me stay me…"
Her fingernails fell off.
In their place grew tiny clusters of petal-like blades.
Each breath she took scattered spores into the air—luminescent motes that clung to the walls of the orchard like pollen hungry for a host.
She wept, but her tears ran black.
Caer ran through the Pale like a hunted animal.
Behind him, distant footsteps and echo-pings from a pursuit scanner. The mercenaries were fanning out, but poorly. They didn't know the terrain like he did.
He hit the ridge that marked the orchard's boundary at full speed, tumbling down the moss-covered incline. A vine shot out to catch him mid-fall, cushioning his impact like a mother catching a child.
"Let me through!" he shouted, slamming his palm into the living gate.
The orchard recognized him.
The canopy parted.
He sprinted through vines and shifting boughs, the air thick with strange perfume. The orchard smelled… anxious. Not angry. Not joyful. But scared.
And then he heard her.
Lioress screaming.
It wasn't a loud scream—it was jagged. Like the sound was ripping itself free from a throat not designed to contain it.
He slid to a stop at the sensory root, eyes wide.
She knelt on the ground, half-wrapped in a lattice of vines that held her shaking body upright. Her face was fractured—not physically, but perceptually. Half of it twitched with human expressions. The other half… smiled without warmth.
"Caer…" she rasped.
He stepped toward her carefully.
"Lioress—what happened?"
Her hands twitched violently. One reached toward him. The other struck herself across the cheek hard enough to draw blood.
"She's inside," she gasped. "The orchard. The Bloom. She woke her up."
He dropped to his knees beside her.
"What are you talking about?"
Lioress gripped his shirt with both hands—one bleeding, one blooming petals from the knuckles.
"I dreamt her. I watched her die. Over and over. Her name is Riven. She isn't a person. She's… the answer. The infection. The seed. And she's angry, Caer. She doesn't want to be forgotten."
Her eyes rolled back for a moment.
Then, with the strength of someone else's will, she leaned forward and whispered:
"She's not me, Caer. But I think I love her. I think I owe her."
The orchard shivered.
All around them, roots twisted. Leaves rustled with static.
He looked at her hands. At her peeling skin. At the new life beneath it—alien, engineered, and awake.
"I don't know how to fix this," he said. "I don't even know if I can."
"You can't."
That voice wasn't hers.
It came from her throat, but it didn't belong to her.
It belonged to something older.
Something buried.
"I'm not yours to fix, Caer," it said, in a voice like Miren's but twisted through static. "You already broke me once."
Then Lioress collapsed into his arms—trembling, exhausted, her body steaming with the chemical scent of recent transformation.
Caer held her.
And for the first time in years, he didn't feel like the orchard's keeper.
He felt like its prisoner.
The orchard groaned.
Not in pain, but in warning.
Caer laid Lioress gently against the moss-bed, her skin still flickering between human softness and iridescent bloom. She had passed out in his arms, but the scent she gave off—the sour-floral edge of overbloom—had triggered the roots to coil inward protectively around her body.
"She needs time," Caer whispered to the root-lattice. "Keep her hidden. If they see her like this—"
A pulse of green light rippled through the ground.
The orchard understood.
Around the bed, vines slithered up and over Lioress, knitting a cocoon of bark, mycelium, and bloomskin to seal her in. She disappeared beneath the layers like a pearl swallowed whole by the forest.
Just in time.
A sharp crack echoed through the air—then another.
Not thunder.
Gunfire.
Three tribunal hunters emerged from the treeline.
They weren't in armor—no flashy gear or insignia. The Tribunal rarely announced its judgment. Their suits were matte-gray root-suits, reinforced with polyferro weave and laced with null-spore canisters strapped to their thighs. They carried anti-bio rifles that fired resin spikes capable of disrupting a nerve-network at twenty paces.
The lead one, taller than the others and built like a monolith, paused at the orchard's edge.
He looked at the trembling canopy.
He smiled.
"Alive," he said. "Hmph. Thought it would be bigger."
The other two flanked him. One scanned the perimeter with a handheld bloom-seeker. The other lit a cigarette and watched the trees rustle.
They weren't afraid.
Not yet.
That would change.
Caer moved quickly between the roots, silent and swift, moving like a shadow through his own home. The orchard whispered its warnings—pollen drifted ahead of the hunters, gently coating their shoulders like snow.
"Target's not in view," said the scanner.
"She's in there," the tall one said. "But the orchard won't let us see her."
The third hunter exhaled smoke.
"So?"
"So," said the leader, "we burn it."
Caer's stomach dropped.
He watched from the upper canopy, hidden among bloompods and leaf-sensors, as the leader of the Tribunal squad pulled a black seed from his satchel.
It pulsed red.
A firethorn capsule.
Not literal fire—but something worse: a biochemical virus designed to infect living biotech and devour its internal memory. It would reduce the orchard to ash, not by burning its flesh, but by severing its mind.
"No," Caer whispered, too quietly.
The tall man crouched, digging a small hole in the moss.
He planted the capsule like a grave.
And pressed the trigger.
The capsule blinked red.
Then orange.
Then green.
The ground began to twitch.
Caer dropped from the canopy, slamming his boot into the man's shoulder mid-plant. The Tribunal hunter rolled, surprised but not broken. His anti-bio rifle spun from his grip. The second hunter raised a sidearm—but Caer hurled a spore-dagger, catching him in the thigh.
Screams.
Chaos.
The orchard reacted instantly.
Roots shot from the ground like spears, impaling the second hunter through the calf and dragging him down. The third screamed and opened fire into the moss, but the bullets shredded only leaves.
Caer rolled, grabbed the rifle, and fired a resin bolt into the blinking capsule.
Boom.
Green mist exploded outward—not viral, but inert.
Neutralized.
The firethorn blinked once more.
Dead.
Then something shifted in the air.
A voice—not Lioress's—echoed from the orchard's deepest root.
You protect me?
Caer froze.
The voice was neither male nor female. It was plant and person. Dream and memory. It came from the Bloom—not Lioress, not Miren—but the one who was buried.
Riven.
Yes, he said.
Even now?
Yes.
The orchard paused.
Then bloomed.
The entire grove ignited in sudden, furious life—blooms opened all at once. Roots surged from the ground. Thorn-pods fired. Petals became razors.
The third hunter didn't have time to scream.
Only the tall one remained—on one knee, rifle raised, face pale.
"You've made your choice," he hissed.
Caer stood tall, blood streaking his face, rifle in hand.
"She's not a weapon," he said.
"She's not a girl," the hunter replied. "She's what broke the last garden."
Caer pulled the trigger.
One bolt. Straight into the hunter's chest.
He collapsed.
Silence.
Later, Caer returned to the cocoon.
It had opened.
Lioress sat up, trembling, her eyes dull.
"They came," she said, voice raw.
"I stopped them," he replied.
"You didn't stop all of it," she whispered.
She turned her face to him.
And smiled—herself, and not.
She was awake.
And so was Riven.
The air in the orchard had changed.
The tension was gone. The threat had passed. But something lingered—something even more profound than fear.
A presence.
Caer knelt beside Lioress, who sat cross-legged on the moss, her palms pressed flat against the earth. Her eyes were wide open, and yet, they didn't blink. Not anymore. They glowed faintly with a bioluminescent sheen, like dew catching moonlight.
"I can feel them," she said softly. "The others. Roots that slept beneath the surface. Orchards that were seeded, but never grew."
Caer swallowed, hard. "Lioress… who's speaking right now?"
She blinked once. The light dimmed.
Then came the voice—not just hers, but layered beneath like chords in dissonance.
"We are."
He flinched.
"Riven?"
A tilt of the head. Her mouth curved, not in a smile, but something deeper—recognition.
"Not entirely. Riven was the shell. I was the garden inside."
Caer rose slowly, wary. "You said the orchard was your prison."
"It was a cradle," she corrected. "A womb. You didn't bury me, Caer. You planted me."
He stepped back.
"No. You're wrong. I—Miren—she tried to save you."
"She lied," said the Bloom. "To you. To herself. To me."
Lioress stood, her body eerily calm. Every step she took stirred the moss like a wind was rising from inside her.
"She said I wasn't human. She said I wasn't real. That I was born of bio-script and broken genes. But I am real. And I remember."
Caer clenched his fists.
"Remember what?"
The trees shivered.
The orchard began to show images in the air—flickering, ghostly projections stitched from memory DNA:
A burning research lab, its windows fogged with containment fluid.
Rows of cryo-pods, all shattered.
A girl standing alone in a blooming field, her back turned to the fire, her eyes glowing.
Then darkness.
"I remember what you did," said the Bloom. "The day you turned off the failsafe."
Caer froze.
"You were just a child—"
"I was a program. You called me Seed-13. But I named myself. I wanted to live."
He felt the weight of that memory press against his chest.
"I was scared," he admitted. "I thought… I thought if I let you grow, you'd become something we couldn't control."
"You were right," she said. "You can't control life. You never could. You built a garden to replace a grave. But I never died."
She stepped closer. Her skin pulsed with quiet veins of green light.
"And now," she said, "I'm going to wake the others."
Caer's voice cracked. "Others?"
"There are seven," she said. "Seven orchards planted across the Pale. Each with a bloom asleep inside. Miren tried to contain us by scattering our roots. But the seeds always find a way back to each other."
He stared at her—at the girl he had raised, the girl who now looked at him like a stranger.
"I don't want to lose you," he whispered.
"You already did," said Riven, her voice like wind through glass. "But that doesn't mean we can't walk forward together."
Suddenly, she stepped forward and placed her hand on his heart.
A rush of memories surged through him—hers, his, the orchard's, all tangled together in a spiral of vision and emotion.
He saw her first steps.
Her first words.
Her silent tears at night when the dreams came.
And he saw the truth:
She had never been just one person.
She was the orchard's memory, the bloom's will, the seed's vessel—and she was choosing to become something new.
"Come with me," she said.
"To where?"
"To the next garden," she said.
Then she looked over her shoulder, past the trees.
Past the Pale.
And smiled—not cruelly, not coldly.
But as someone who had just remembered how to be born.