The forest smelled wrong.
Lin Moyan moved through the unnatural silence, every breath tasting of spoiled fruit and wet iron. The trees here didn't sway—they twitched, their branches jerking at odd intervals like puppets on tangled strings. Even the golden roots beneath his skin had gone still, coiled tight in warning.
Jian Luo sniffed the air, his amber eyes narrowing. "They're herding us." His claws clicked against each other in a nervous rhythm. "Can't you hear it?"
At first, Moyan heard nothing. Then—
A child's whimper.
Faint. Distant. But unmistakably Fen's.
Haiyu's vines lashed out before Moyan could stop her, slicing through the undergrowth toward the sound. The moment her emerald tendrils touched the blackened leaves, the forest shuddered.
The path behind them sealed shut.
---
Kainan's laughter echoed from everywhere and nowhere.
"Took you long enough."
The voice came from above. The false Warden perched on a dead oak, his limbs bent at unnatural angles, roots bursting through his skin like grotesque armor. His mouth stretched too wide when he grinned, revealing rows of needle-thin teeth.
"Where are the children?" Moyan's voice came out rougher than he intended, the roots in his chest pulsing with restrained fury.
Kainan tilted his head. "At the banquet, of course."
He dropped from the branch—not falling, but unraveling, his body dissolving into a swarm of rootlets that reformed five paces ahead.
"Follow or don't." His voice now came from the trees themselves. "But the first course is about to be served."
The forest parted before him, revealing a tunnel of pulsating flesh.
---
The heartroot wasn't a tree.
It was a thing—a grotesque fusion of wood and meat, its massive trunk split open to reveal a hollow cavity lined with throbbing veins. Dozens of silver-robed figures knelt around it, their mouths sewn shut with glowing roots.
And hanging from the branches like rotten fruit—
The children.
Fen dangled at the center, his small body encased in a cocoon of translucent roots. His eyes were open but unseeing, his lips moving soundlessly.
Moyan lunged forward.
Kainan materialized in his path, blackened roots erupting from his palms. "Ah-ah. First, let's talk."
Jian Luo moved faster. His claws found Kainan's throat—and passed straight through.
"Clever," Kainan chuckled, his form rippling like disturbed water. "But I'm not really here."
A whimper came from the heartroot. Fen's cocoon pulsed, fresh roots threading through his arms.
Moyan's golden scars blazed. "What do you want?"
Kainan's smile stretched ear to ear. "Why, we're feeding the future." He gestured to the hollow trunk. "The first Gardener was born from sacrifice. The last shall be too."
Haiyu's hands moved rapidly: "They're trying to grow something."
"Not something," Kainan corrected. "Someone."
The heartroot groaned.
Something moved inside its hollow trunk.
---
The attack came from the roots beneath their feet.
Black tendrils erupted from the soil, wrapping around Jian Luo's legs with terrifying speed. He severed them with a snarl, but for every root he cut, two more took its place.
Haiyu fared better—her wrist vines lashed out in a defensive web, slicing through the attacking roots with precision. But even she couldn't stop them all.
Moyan fought differently.
Where his hands touched the corrupted roots, golden light flared. The tendrils withered instantly, their blackened forms crumbling to ash. But each purification sent jagged pain through his chest—the Gardener's seed protesting the strain.
Kainan watched from a distance, his form flickering between solid and root-smoke. "You can't save them," he called. "The song's already in their blood!"
Fen's cocoon pulsed in time with his words.
Moyan understood suddenly.
They weren't just hostages.
They were ingredients.
---
The heartroot's cavity split wider.
A small, root-woven hand emerged from the darkness.
Then another.
Jian Luo cursed. "They're growing a fucking kid in there?"
Haiyu's vines went rigid. "Not a child. A vessel."
Kainan's laughter shook the trees. "The first pure Warden! Born from the heartroot, fed by the first song's memories!" His eyes—too bright, too hungry—locked on Moyan. "And you brought the final ingredient."
Moyan barely dodged in time.
The roots that had been feigning attack suddenly changed direction, converging on him with terrifying precision. Not to kill—to capture.
Jian Luo intercepted, his claws a blur. "Run, you idiot!"
But Moyan wasn't running.
He was listening.
Beneath the heartroot's groans, beneath the Wardens' chanting—
A faint, familiar melody.
The first song.
And it was coming from Fen.
---
Moyan moved without thinking.
He let the roots take him.
Black tendrils wrapped around his arms, his legs, his throat—dragging him toward the heartroot's gaping maw. Jian Luo's shout of protest faded as the pulsating cavity swallowed him whole.
Darkness.
Then—
Gold.
The Gardener's seed in his chest bloomed, its light piercing the heartroot's fleshy walls. In that blinding illumination, Moyan saw:
Fen's small form suspended in a web of roots, his lips still moving in that silent song.
The other children floating around him, their memories draining into the central cavity where that half-formed vessel waited.
And deeper—
Nyxara's ghost, her root-bound hands clutching at the children's ankles, feeding them into the heartroot's maw.
"I tried to stop it," her voice whispered through the roots. "But the song was too strong."
Moyan reached for Fen.
The moment their hands connected, the vision struck:
A silver seed bursting in a child's palm.
A forest screaming as the first Warden took root.
The original sin—not theft, but gifting.
The truth unfolded like a poisonous flower:
The Wardens had never stolen the Gardener's power.
They'd been invited.
---
Outside, the world exploded.
Jian Luo's roar of fury shook the heartroot as his claws found its pulsing core. Haiyu's vines sliced through child-cocoons with desperate precision.
And Moyan—
Moyan sang.
Not the first song.
Not the last.
Something older.
The roots in his chest unraveled, golden threads piercing the heartroot's walls, stitching themselves into Fen's small body. The boy gasped as the stolen memories flooded back—not just his own, but all of them, every child who'd ever fed the heartroot's hunger.
The half-formed vessel screamed.
Kainan's form flickered wildly. "No! You'll ruin everything!"
Moyan barely heard him.
The Gardener's voice filled his skull:
"Break the cycle."
He reached into his own chest—
And tore the seed free.
---
Light.
Blinding, purifying light.
It erupted from Moyan's hands, from Fen's eyes, from every crack in the heartroot's shuddering form. The Wardens' chanting turned to screams as their sewn-shut mouths burst open.
Kainan's root-smoke body disintegrated mid-snarl.
The child-vessel collapsed into a tangle of lifeless roots.
And Nyxara's ghost—
She smiled as the light consumed her.
"Finally," she whispered.
"Rest."
---
Dawn found them in the ruins of the heartroot.
Fen slept peacefully in Haiyu's arms, his skin clear of corruption. The other children stirred around them, confused but unharmed.
Jian Luo wiped black ichor from his claws. "So. That happened."
Moyan said nothing.
The golden roots were gone—torn out with the seed. Only jagged scars remained, tracing the paths they'd once taken beneath his skin.
Haiyu touched his wrist. "You're still here," she signed.
Moyan looked east, where the first true rays of sunlight painted the trees in gold.
Somewhere, deep below—
The Gardener waited.
And the roots, even now, remembered.