The morning sun didn't wake them this time. A summons did.
A soft, rhythmic chiming sound echoed through the translucent amber walls of their suite, vibrating the air like a plucked harp string.
Nyx opened his eyes. He wasn't in the bed. He was still sitting against the massive tree trunk on the balcony of the Guest Branch, where they had fallen asleep watching the artificial stars. His arms felt heavy and numb, pinned down by the weight of two sleeping princesses.
Briar was curled into his left side, her head resting on his chest, drooling slightly on his expensive Elven robes. Her hand was gripping his tunic, as if even in sleep, she was ready to drag him out of danger.
Lyra was slumped against his right, her silver hair fanned out over his shoulder like a veil. She was clutching his sleeve with one hand and her grimoire with the other, muttering something unintelligible about "mana coefficients" in her sleep.
Nyx didn't move immediately. He sat there, listening to the chime, and allowed himself a moment to feel the warmth of their bodies against his. For a being who remembered nothing but cold chains and endless void, this human warmth was a drug more potent than any elixir.
"Wake up," Nyx finally whispered, nudging them gently. "The vacation is over."
Briar groaned, scrunching her nose. She slapped his chest blindly, her eyes still squeezed shut. "Five more minutes. The Void can wait. The Empire can wait. Everything can wait."
"The Void can wait," Nyx agreed, his voice amused, "but the King cannot. Captain Thalor is at the door."
Briar's eyes snapped open. She realized where she was, and who she was using as a pillow. She scrambled backward, her face turning the color of her hair.
"I wasn't drooling," Briar announced defensively, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "That was... condensation."
"Highly unlikely given the ambient humidity," Lyra yawned, sitting up and stretching her arms. She blinked at Nyx, then blushed, quickly smoothing down her wrinkled dress. "Good morning. I trust your circulation hasn't been cut off?"
"My extremities are functioning," Nyx said, standing up and shaking out his stiff limbs. "Get dressed. We leave in ten minutes."
The awkwardness of the previous night had evaporated, replaced by a comfortable, lived-in intimacy. They moved around the suite with practiced ease. Briar tossed Lyra a waterskin; Lyra used a quick wind spell to dry Briar's boots. They were a unit now.
They changed back into their travel gear. Briar donned her armor, the familiar weight of the steel plates settling on her shoulders like a second skin. Lyra picked up her satchel and wand, her expression shifting from sleepy to analytical. Nyx strapped Requiem to his back, the massive sword humming as it touched his spine.
When they opened the door, Captain Thalor was waiting. The Elf looked grim. His armor was polished, but his hands were gripping his spear tightly.
"The King awaits," Thalor said, bowing low. "The Deep Root has been unsealed."
The journey to the meeting place was a descent into the underworld.
They didn't go up to the throne room this time. Instead, Thalor led them to a hidden lift in the center of the city, a platform of woven wood that descended through the hollow trunk of Yggdrasil
As they went down, the light faded. The beautiful, luminescent city of Sylaphu disappeared above them. The air grew colder, heavier, and smelled of damp earth and old iron.
"The atmosphere," Lyra whispered, rubbing her arms. "The mana density is dropping. It's supposed to get higher the deeper we go, closer to the planet's core. But it's getting thinner."
"Something is drinking it," Nyx said, his eyes scanning the darkness of the shaft. with narrowed eyes.
The lift stopped with a heavy thud.
They stepped out into a cavern that was vast enough to swallow the Human Palace whole. This was the base of the World Tree. The roots here weren't like the elegant bridges above, they were titanic, gnarled muscles of wood that twisted into the bedrock of the continent.
But they looked sick.
Patches of gray mold clung to the bark. Black sludge dripped from fissures in the wood, pooling on the stone floor. The vibrant green light of the Elves was gone, replaced by a flickering, sickly yellow glow from dying moss.
In the center of the cavern stood a heavy iron gate, set directly into the largest root. It was covered in warning runes that pulsed with a desperate red light.
King Aerion stood by the gate, looking small against the backdrop of the dying tree. Beside him sat Ancestor Gaia in her vine-wheelchair.
In the harsh light of the cavern, Gaia looked worse. Her skin was flaking off like dead bark. The black veins on her neck had spread to her jawline, pulsating with a dark, alien rhythm.
"You slept well?" Gaia asked, her voice sounding like dry leaves being crushed underfoot.
"We did," Nyx said, stepping forward. He didn't bow. He looked at the iron gate, then at the black sludge. "Is this it?"
"The entrance to the Deep Root," Aerion nodded, his voice hollow. "No Elf has entered in fifty years. Not since the last expedition... failed."
"You said the Rot started fifty years ago," Nyx recalled their previous conversation.
"No," Gaia corrected him. She lifted her head, her milky, blind eyes staring into a past only she could see. "That is when it became critical. That is when we noticed the tree was dying. But the infection... the infection began five thousand years ago."
Lyra gasped. "Five thousand? That predates the Human Empire. That predates the Age of Kings!"
"Sit, children," Gaia wheezed. "Before you descend into the dark, you must understand what is waiting for you. You must understand the enemy for we cannot accompany you, we are helpless."
Briar and Lyra exchanged a glance, then sat on a protruding root. Nyx remained standing, leaning on the hilt of his sword, his golden eyes fixed on the Ancestor.
"Five millennia ago," Gaia began, her voice gaining a storytelling cadence, "Myriad was different. The mana was thicker. The stars were brighter. The connection between the World Tree and the earth was absolute. I was a child then. I am the only one left who remembers the sky before the star fell."
She closed her eyes, shivering.
"It was the Night of the Falling Star. It didn't burn orange or red like a rock entering the atmosphere. It burned with a cold, pale light. It didn't crash, it burrowed."
Gaia gripped the armrests of her chair.
"It landed right here. At the base of the World Tree. We thought it was a gift from the Heavens. We went to inspect it."
"What was it?" Briar asked, leaning forward.
"It was a seed," Gaia whispered. "But not of wood or flesh. It was a seed made of metal and light. It was geometric. Perfect. Cold. It was humming a song that hurt our ears."
Nyx's grip on Requiem tightened until the leather creaked.
Geometric. Perfect. Cold.
It sounded like the chains in his dream. It sounded like the white staves of the Purifiers. It sounded like Order.
"We tried to move it," Gaia continued. "My father, the First King, touched it. But the moment his hand made contact, the object liquefied. It didn't shatter; it melted like mercury. It sank into the ground, bypassing the bark, diving straight for the Heart Root of Yggdrasil."
"And then?" Nyx asked.
"Then... nothing," Gaia said. "For four thousand, five hundred years, nothing happened. We thought the earth had swallowed it. But we were wrong. It wasn't dormant. It was germinating."
She pointed to her own gray arm, to the rot eating her alive.
"It didn't attack the tree physically. It parasitized it. It latched onto the core of the planet's mana stream, the Ley Line that Yggdrasil sits upon, and began to divert the flow. It wasn't taking energy to feed itself. It was sending it somewhere else."
"Sending it where?" Lyra asked, her pen hovering over her notebook, her mind racing with the implications.
Gaia pointed a shaking finger upward. Toward the rock ceiling. Toward the sky.
"Up," Gaia whispered. "To the stars that shouldn't be there."
Silence descended on the group, heavy and suffocating.
Nyx looked up at the stone ceiling, imagining the fake sky of Myriad above it.
"It's a Siphon," Nyx realized, his voice cold and flat. "The 12 Parasites. They aren't just ruling the universe. They are harvesting it. This 'Seed' is a pump. It's sucking the life out of this planet and beaming it to their home world, It has been draining you for five thousand years."
"That explains why the Ancients were so much stronger than us," Lyra muttered, scribbling furiously. "The ambient mana has been dropping for millennia. We are living in a drought and we didn't even know it."
"Why didn't you ask help from the others?" Nyx asked in confusion.
"We did.....neither Ryze nor Lilith agreed to help my husband when he requested." Gaia shook her head with a bitter smle.
"And the Rot?" Briar asked, looking at the black sludge. "What is the Rot?"
"Waste," Nyx said grimly. "When you burn fuel, you get exhaust. The black veins... the sickness... it's the toxic byproduct of their alien machinery processing our mana. It's pollution."
He looked at Gaia.
"You aren't fighting a disease, Ancestor. You are fighting industrial waste."
Gaia nodded, tears leaking from her blind eyes. "We tried to cut it out. My husband... the previous King... he led the expedition fifty years ago. They went down to the Heart-Root to destroy the Seed. They were the strongest warriors Sylaphu had ever known."
She looked at the iron gate with a look of utter despair.
"They never came back. And since that day, the Rot has spread upward. If it reaches the canopy... Yggdrasil dies. And if the Tree dies, the barrier falls, and the Elves die with it."
Nyx walked to the gate. He placed his hand on the cold iron.
The Second Shackle in his chest was vibrating. It wasn't a happy hum anymore. It was a growl. It sensed the intruder. It sensed the thief that had been stealing from its domain for five thousand years. The Nature Shackle wasn't just about growing flowers; it was about the balance of the ecosystem. And this alien machine was a violation of that balance.
"The Seed," Nyx said. "It is guarded?"
"By the twisted remnants of those who went down before," Aerion said softly, his voice trembling. "The mana down there... it changes things. It twists flesh and mind. My father... his knights... they are likely still down there. But they are not Elves anymore."
Nyx turned to Briar and Lyra.
"This isn't a hike," Nyx warned, his golden eyes serious. "We are going into the belly of the machine. It will be toxic. It will be dangerous. And we will likely have to kill things that used to be heroes."
Briar stood up. She drew Ignis, the flames reflecting in her determined eyes. She looked at the gate, then at the frail form of Gaia.
"We promised to help you break chains," Briar said firmly. "This sounds like a big one. Besides, I hate parasites."
Lyra closed her grimoire and pulled out her wand. She looked terrified, but her jaw was set. "Statistically, if we don't stop this, the planet dies anyway. If the tree dies, the mana collapses, and civilization follows. I choose to fight."
Nyx smiled, a small, sharp thing.
"Good."
He turned back to the gate. He grabbed the iron bars.
Clang.
He didn't need a key. He didn't pick the lock. He pulled.
The iron groaned and bent. The runes flashed red, trying to repel him, but the Void aura around his hands swallowed the magic instantly. With a screech of tearing metal, Nyx ripped the heavy lock mechanism out of the stone wall and tossed it aside.
The gate swung open with a shriek.
A blast of cold, stale air rushed out. It smelled of ozone, copper, and rotting flowers. It was the scent of a grave.
"Wait," Gaia called out.
She reached into her robes and pulled out a small, glowing seed. It was pure white, pulsing with a faint, frantic heartbeat.
"Take this," Gaia said, tossing it to Nyx.
Nyx caught it. It felt warm against his palm, like holding a small bird.
"What is it?"
"The last pure seed of Yggdrasil," Gaia whispered. "If... if you cannot save the Tree... if the Rot is too deep... plant this. Somewhere safe. Somewhere far away from the sickness. So that my people may begin again."
Nyx looked at the seed. Then he looked at the dying Ancestor, and the tired King. He saw their resignation. They expected him to fail. They expected their home to die.
He tucked the seed into his tunic, right over his heart, next to the chains.
"I won't need it," Nyx vowed. His voice was low, but it carried the weight of a promise that shook the cavern. "I don't plant replacements. I save what is mine."
He drew Requiem.
The black blade ignited with a hungry, dark gold light, illuminating the darkness of the tunnel. The shadows recoiled from the weapon.
"Let's go," Nyx commanded. "I have a weed to kill."
They stepped into the dark. Behind them, the gate creaked shut, sealing them in the roots of the world. The only way out now was through the rot.