The sky was still deep indigo when Ikenna opened his eyes. Something stirred him awake—not a sound, but a sensation. The earth was uneasy, like a child turning in restless sleep. The moment his bare feet touched the floorboards, he knew the fields were trying to speak.
He threw on a robe and stepped outside.
A pale fog coiled low over the soil, dense only in one direction—the old irrigation furrows near the bamboo grove, an area they'd avoided since Amara's encounter with the silver-backed snake weeks ago.
Now, a strange bioluminescence pulsed from within the mist, green and gold like fireflies woven into fungus.
By the time Amara and Jalun joined him, the fog had thickened, and the scent of rotting leaves and something oddly sweet hung in the air.
"What's causing that glow?" Jalun whispered, clinging to a hoe.
Ikenna squatted, scooped some of the mist with his qi. It resisted—alive, reactive, but not violent. He spread his senses deeper, brushing against the roots… and then froze.
"This isn't natural. The spores… they're feeding on the farm's memory."
Amara's brow furrowed. "Is that possible?"
"Yes," came a calm voice behind them.
Nwachi stepped into the morning light, her eyes narrowed. "They're called Dreamspores. Rare fungal spirits that bloom near old traumas. They're feeding off the buried pain of this land—and someone planted them."
"Planted?" Amara echoed.
Nwachi knelt by the mist and pressed her hand into the soil. Threads of silk unraveled from her sleeves, sinking into the dirt. Her eyes clouded. "The Dreamspores were seeded three nights ago… by someone who passed through the outer boundary without triggering the Root Sense."
Jalun shivered. "They bypassed your warding?"
Ikenna clenched his jaw. "Which means they knew exactly what they were doing."
The mist suddenly curled upward, forming faint shapes—faces, dozens of them. Weeping children, starving mothers, burning granaries. Old pains—some Ikenna didn't recognize, but others were his.
The farm wasn't just absorbing his cultivation; it was mirroring his trauma.
"They'll burrow deeper if we don't stop them," Nwachi said. "And once they reach the Core Root..."
"Then we lose everything," Ikenna finished.
They began the Weaving Seal immediately.
Using thread soaked in spiritual dew and wormwood oil, Nwachi showed Ikenna how to bind a pattern around the fungal bloom. Amara controlled the qi flows, pushing mist back with steady pulses. Jalun traced the field's memory line, redrawing the runes etched during the first binding.
Each step felt like sewing through a living thing. The ground pulsed under their fingers. Ikenna could feel the soil remembering him, the way a page recalls ink long after it's faded.
When the final thread was tied, the mist recoiled with a shriek-like sound, and the spores withered into gray dust.
But as the group exhaled in relief, a distant horn echoed through the hills.
It wasn't musical—it was a signal.
Ikenna and Nwachi snapped upright.
"That's a territorial horn," she said. "Cultivators coming. Armed."
Sure enough, down the terraced path came five riders—robes dark green, trimmed in copper. Each bore the emblem of a crumbling shrine overgrown with vines—the mark of the Evergrowth Sect.
Amara's eyes widened. "A frontier sect? What are they doing here?"
The lead rider dismounted—a young man with sharp cheekbones and eyes that glowed faintly green. He carried a spade-shaped blade across his back and walked like a man used to being obeyed.
"Ikenna Oruta?" he asked.
Ikenna folded his arms. "That's me."
"I am Zureel, second blade of the Evergrowth Sect. This land was once under our protection—before the Great Blight. We've come to reclaim it."
Jalun took a step forward. "Reclaim it? He healed this place. The land chose him!"
Zureel's gaze didn't flicker. "And yet, the land was part of our sacred domain. That memory still lingers in its roots. Our elders say it must return."
"Your sect abandoned this region," Nwachi said coldly. "Ikenna bled into this soil. He woke its spirit. The law of cultivation holds—first to bind, first to claim."
Zureel's mouth curved into a thin smile. "We'll see what the Central Tribunal thinks of that."
He unfurled a scroll, driving it into the soil. A wave of emerald qi surged, summoning a spectral boundary line that shimmered across the eastern edge of the farmland.
"We'll stay outside your claimed core. For now. But from this point forward," Zureel said, "you're not the only farmer tending this land."
Then he turned and walked away, leaving behind the scroll and a silent warning.
That night, Ikenna couldn't sleep.
He stared out at the eastern fields, where the Evergrowth cultivators had erected tents and begun to test the soil with iron probes and qi-laced herbs.
It wasn't war. Not yet. But it was the first step in a territorial dispute, and in the world of cultivators, those rarely ended with handshakes.
Nwachi brought him a cup of millet tea. "They'll try to steal the land's memory next. Rewrite its history. Make it forget you ever existed."
"Can that be done?"
"Yes. Slowly. With enough rituals and enough pain, they can overwrite your bindings. But not if you stay ahead."
Ikenna looked at the glowing Core Root beneath the barn.
"Then I need to go deeper," he said. "I need to reach the Seed Soul of this land. Before they do."
Nwachi's eyes widened. "You'd risk the Root Descent?"
"If it means protecting this farm, yes."
She nodded slowly. "Then I'll prepare the Loom Circle. But be warned, Ikenna… once you descend into the soil's soul, you might not come back whole."
Ikenna stared at the darkened field, feeling the weight of generations pressing down like heavy rains. The spore-bloom. The encroaching sect. The awakening wyrm.
The farm was no longer just land.
It was war ground.
And he would not lose it again.