The darkness in the maintenance shaft was absolute, a thick, suffocating blanket. The only realities were the grit-covered floor beneath Li Wei's hands and Old Man Huang's ragged breathing beside him.
"We… we need light," Huang whispered, his voice trembling with more than fear. It was awe. "The Vessel should be able to…"
"Don't call me that," Li Wei snapped, the title feeling like a chain. "I'm a man who got stabbed by a piece of junk."
But he felt the lie. The "junk" was a warm, living coal in his core—alien yet intimately part of him. It had saved them. It had doomed them.
He fumbled in his coat pocket, his fingers closing around a short candle and a match. The sudden flare of light was blinding, carving a tiny sphere of reality from the black.
They were in a narrow utility tunnel, pipes and conduits lining the walls, all coated in grey dust. The air was still, tasting of long-stagnant water.
Huang's eyes were wide, fixed on Li Wei. "You commanded the spirit energy. It answered you. That is a miracle."
"It was an accident," Li Wei muttered, shielding the flame. The skittering beyond the hatch had ceased. For now. "Which way?"
The old man peered into the swallowing darkness. "I… I do not know. These maps were lost."
Li Wei closed his eyes, ignoring him. He focused inward on the warm knot of the Seed. He didn't know how to "command" it. He could only listen.
Beneath his own panic, he felt it. A steady, gentle thrum. A rhythm of life in a place of death.
And it was pulling him.
It was an inclination, a deep, intuitive knowing, like a plant leaning for the sun. The feeling tugged him to the right.
"This way," Li Wei said, his voice low. He didn't wait. He began to move, candle held high.
Huang followed without question, a disciple to his unlikely prophet. "The Seed guides you. It remembers the paths its kind built."
They walked for hours. The tunnel was a monotonous, dusty grave. Despair crept in. They would die down here, and the Last Seed would die with them.
As if sensing his despair, the Seed pulsed softly. Warmth spread from his core, easing his muscle aches and sharpening his mind. The exhaustion remained, but became a manageable burden.
He glanced back at Huang, who was lagging, breathing labored. The old man wouldn't last.
Help him. The thought came not in words, but as a simple, compelling urge. The Seed's energy stirred, not to push out, but to share.
Hesitantly, Li Wei reached out and placed a hand on the old man's shoulder.
"What are you—?" Huang began, then stopped. His eyes widened. A faint sigh of relief escaped his lips. The trembling in his hands stilled. "You… you share your vitality? Such a thing is…"
Li Wei pulled his hand away, as if burned. He hadn't done it; the Seed had. He felt a tiny, imperceptible dip in his own energy, like a cup of water that had given up a single drop.
It could be transferred. It could be spent.
The implications terrified him.
Suddenly, the Seed's gentle pull intensified into a demand. Up ahead, the tunnel was blocked by a cave-in, a mound of rubble and twisted metal.
"A dead end," Huang sighed, his brief energy fading.
But the Seed insisted. Here.
Li Wei moved forward, brushing dust from the wall beside the rubble. Beneath the grime was another door, marked with the same circle-and-seed symbol. A personnel hatch.
He pressed the artifact against it. The symbol glowed dully. Nothing.
"The mechanism is broken," Huang said, pointing to a crack in the wall where the controls should have been. "Sealed by the collapse."
Frustration surged through Li Wei. They were so close. To what, he didn't know. The Seed thrummed with urgency.
He slammed his palm against the cold metal. "Open!"
As his hand made contact, the Seed in his core flared. Heat flooded down his arm, not into the artifact, but directly into the door. He was feeding it.
Green lines, like awakening vines, spread from his fingertips across the metal, tracing the ancient symbol. It grew warm, then hot. With a shudder and a screech of metal that hadn't moved in millennia, the hatch groaned inwards, sliding open just enough to squeeze through.
Beyond was not another tunnel.
Li Wei held up his candle, its light struggling to fill the space.
It was a garden.
Or what was left of one.
The room was vast, a subterranean greenhouse. All around them were the skeletal remains of trees and the dusty, fossilized shapes of plants turned to stone. A profound silence hung over it all, the silence of a place that had held its breath for eons.
In the center was a dry, cracked stone basin. And in its very center, a single, foot-wide circle of soil was not dust.
It was dark, rich, and moist.
From that tiny plot of living earth, a single, fragile green shoot reached for the stagnant air. It was no taller than his finger, with two tiny, perfect leaves.
It was the first living plant Li Wei had ever seen that wasn't algae or synthetic.
The warmth in his core blossomed into a joyous, radiant heat. The Seed wasn't just pulling him anymore.
It was home.
He stumbled forward, falling to his knees before the tiny sprout. This was what it had guided him to. Not an exit. Not a weapon.
A sibling.
As he knelt, the candlelight flickered over the walls, revealing faded murals of a world of impossible green and soaring towers. A shrine from the time before the Great Dying.
The Seed within him pulsed, and the tiny sprout seemed to shiver in response.
He understood. His purpose wasn't just to run. It was to find these remnants. To make them grow.
The sound of metal groaning echoed from the tunnel behind them. It wasn't the hatch they'd come through.
It was the sound of the main door being forced open.
A voice, sharp and arrogant, laced with a power that made the dust motes tremble, rang through the ancient garden.
"Scan the area. The resonance came from here. Find it."
The hunt had already begun.