Chapter 5: Echoes of the Fifth
They didn't run far.
The undercity beneath Veylith was a labyrinth of forgotten tunnels, flooded chambers, and collapsed shrines. Faith and Kael moved through it like ghosts, guided only by the flickering light of Faith's palm — his fire now controllable, now quiet.
Above them, the city roared.
The Archive breach had triggered a lockdown. Fruit users were mobilized. Drones scanned the streets. The empire wasn't just searching — they were hunting.
Kael stopped at a rusted gate. "We need allies."
Faith nodded. "I know where to find them."
They traveled south, toward the Verdant Expanse — a jungle empire untouched by industrialization, ruled by the Sovereign of Roots, a monarch who claimed descent from the original fruit-bearers.
Faith had never been there.
But the seal's energy pulled him like a tide.
Kael was skeptical. "The Verdant don't trust outsiders. Especially ones who glow."
Faith didn't argue. He was glowing now — his veins lit with power, his eyes flickering with symbols. The fruit fragments had changed him. He wasn't just absorbing energy anymore. He was becoming a conduit.
The Verdant Expanse was alive.
Trees taller than towers. Rivers that whispered. Animals that watched with human eyes. Faith felt everything. The jungle spoke in pulses, in rhythms, in memories. He saw flashes — wars fought in silence, seals buried beneath roots, thrones carved from bone.
They were intercepted at the border.
A woman stepped from the trees, her skin bark-like, her hair a canopy of leaves. She didn't speak. She simply raised a hand, and the jungle responded — vines curled, branches shifted, the ground opened.
Kael reached for her blade.
Faith stopped her.
"I'm here for the seal."
The woman studied him. Then turned.
"Follow."
They were brought to the Sanctum of Bloom, a temple grown from living wood, its walls breathing, its halls humming with fruit energy. The Sovereign sat on a throne of petals, eyes closed, surrounded by floating seeds.
Faith bowed.
The Sovereign opened his eyes. "You are the Fifth."
Faith nodded.
"You are the echo of imbalance."
Faith stepped forward. "I broke the first seal. I need to break the second."
The Sovereign stood. "You do not break seals. You awaken them."
Faith hesitated. "Then awaken it."
The Sovereign raised a hand.
The temple shook.
The seal emerged from the roots.
Green. Vibrant. Etched with the symbol of growth — a spiral of leaves surrounding a single eye.
Faith touched it.
This time, there was no explosion.
There was silence.
Then a voice.
You are not the first to try. But you are the first to survive.
Faith saw visions — others who had reached the seal, touched it, and been consumed. He saw their faces. Their screams. Their failures.
He saw one who looked like him.
A twin?
No. A mirror.
The seal pulsed.
He lives. He hunts. He hates.
Faith fell to his knees.
Kael rushed to him. "What did you see?"
Faith looked up.
"My opposite."
They stayed in the Sanctum for three days.
Faith didn't sleep. He meditated beneath the seal's roots, trying to understand the vision. The mirror figure haunted him — same eyes, same powers, but twisted. Where Faith felt balance, the other radiated hunger.
Kael watched him from afar.
She spoke to the Sovereign in whispers. "He's changing. Faster than he should."
The Sovereign nodded. "The Fifth is not meant to be stable. He is meant to be tested."
Kael frowned. "And if he fails?"
The Sovereign's petals wilted slightly. "Then the world breaks."
On the fourth day, Faith emerged.
He held a seed.
The Sovereign had given it to him. "Plant this when the time comes. It will grow into what you need."
Faith didn't ask what that meant.
Kael was quiet.
"You saw someone," she said. "Someone like you."
Faith nodded. "He's ahead of me. He's breaking seals too."
Kael frowned. "Then we're not just racing the empires. We're racing him."
Faith clenched the seed.
"I won't lose."
They traveled north.
The third seal waited in the Frozen Reach, a land of ice and silence. But Faith wasn't the same boy who entered the Temple of First Light.
He was the Fifth.
And the world was beginning to remember what that meant.