The battlefield was silent again.
Kaelen stood among the broken corpses of the carrion hounds, breath ragged, eyes fixed on his palm. The faint sprout burned there like a brand, its green glow pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
It hadn't been a dream. He had seen a world inside it—a barren, lifeless place. And when the roots drank blood, that world had changed.
He forced himself to stand. His legs shook, but stubbornness dragged him upright. He couldn't stay here. Scavengers would come, and worse things than hounds prowled the smoke.
He stumbled forward, clutching his side.
With every step, the Seed pulsed. Sometimes it was faint warmth. Other times, sharp hunger. As though it was gnawing at his soul.
Kaelen's jaw tightened. I don't know what you are… but I'll be damned if I die without answers.
He reached the ruins of a collapsed watchtower by nightfall. Stone and splintered wood formed a crude shelter, enough to keep the wind at bay. He dropped there, exhausted, but sleep refused him.
The Seed kept tugging at his awareness. Whispering. Beckoning.
At last, he gave in. Closing his eyes, he focused on the strange brand in his palm.
His breath caught.
In an instant, he was inside it.
The barren world unfolded before him once again: a cracked sky above, ash-coated plains below, silence stretching to every horizon. Yet at its center was the change he had seen earlier—a patch of soil where a single green blade swayed gently.
It was tiny. Fragile. But alive.
Kaelen knelt, reaching out to touch it. The moment his hand brushed the grass, he felt a surge of memory—not his own, but the echo of the hound's death. The beast's last fear. Its pain. Its essence. All of it had been devoured and reshaped into this fragile sliver of life.
His stomach twisted.
The Seed didn't just feed. It consumed.
He snapped back into his body, gasping, sweat beading on his brow.
The corpses outside the tower had already begun to wither unnaturally, their flesh dry, their bones brittle. The Seed had taken more than blood—it had stolen everything worth taking.
Kaelen clenched his fist. "So that's your price…"
He looked at the sprout in his palm. Part of him wanted to cut it out, to tear it free before it hollowed him as it had the hounds. But another part—the louder part—remembered the roots that had saved him when nothing else could.
Without it, he would already be dead.
A sound echoed in the distance. Boots crunching across stone. Voices muttering.
Kaelen froze.
Bandits. Scavengers.
They came into view moments later—four men draped in ragged cloaks, blades glinting faintly in the dusk. Their eyes swept the battlefield, greedy and cruel.
Kaelen's breath caught. He had no weapon, no strength left. Only the Seed.
And the Seed was hungry.
He swallowed hard. "If I feed you… will you save me again?"
The sprout on his palm flared in response, roots twitching in the soil beneath his feet.
Kaelen's pulse thundered in his ears as the bandits drew closer, laughter rough and mocking. He had only a choice between terrors: death at their hands, or giving in to the Seed's hunger once more.
With shaking hands, he pressed his palm to the ground.
The roots surged.