Chapter 92: Echoes Beneath the Bloom
The stranger's eyes fluttered open beneath the dappled sunlight. He blinked, confused, as a vine crept subtly across the ground near him, curling toward his hand like it recognized him. Ariella froze, noticing the shift in the earth's rhythm. Even the breeze seemed to quiet in anticipation.
He sat up slowly, hands trembling, and flinched when Elara offered water. When she spoke the word "Master," a violent tremor passed through him, and his face twisted in agony.
"No—no, don't say that again!" he shouted, clutching his head as if the name itself had burned through his skull. His voice cracked like splintering glass, eyes wild and dilated. For a heartbeat, the ground beneath him heaved—as if the land itself recoiled at the memory embedded in the name.
The villagers who had gathered took a collective step back. Elara's hand tightened around the flask. Ariella exchanged a tense glance with her, reading the question in her eyes: Was he really just a man—or something left behind?
They called him Lorne, though no one could say why. It had slipped from his lips once in a half-conscious state, but when asked again, he looked blank. The name hovered over him like a veil—familiar yet unclaimed, like a borrowed shadow.
Lorne had no memory. And yet, the plants responded to him. Flowers that had once bloomed shyly now turned their heads as he passed. Birds followed him. But so did unease.
And still, the land trembled.
It began subtly. Blossoms erupting from stone. Moss carpeting rooftops overnight. Trees whispering to one another in rustling voices when no wind blew. A snake curled itself around a doorway and hissed the name "Ariella" before slithering away, its eyes glowing faintly gold.
The dreams returned, too. Shared visions among the villagers—visions they whispered about with fearful glances: dark soil writhing with roots, and voices beneath the earth chanting, "The roots are not severed."
Ariella stared at the villagers, who now muttered behind her back. Suspicion had bloomed faster than the vines. Had they forgotten so quickly? Forgotten the fire, the blood, the sacrifice? She had left once, thinking she'd finally found peace. Coming back had felt right… but now?
"Maybe I was wrong," Ariella thought bitterly, eyes fixed on the horizon. "Maybe peace isn't something you find. Maybe it's something that dies the moment you turn your back on it."
Her fingers curled into fists.
"Why did I return?" Her heart ached. "To help them again? To suffer their doubt? Was I foolish to believe they'd remember? How fragile is human gratitude? How fleeting is memory when fear takes root again?"
Then came the prophecy.
An old man named Yiren—mute for years—screamed when Lorne fell unconscious after another symbol-triggered fit. The scream had been inhuman, almost guttural, as though something inside him had broken through to speak.
His voice, gravelly and half-forgotten, returned only to whisper riddles.
"He walks with a borrowed name. He is the Keeper of the Root. Guard him, or all will return to ash."
No one dared ask what he meant by "return." But the weight of the word ash hung in the air like smoke.
Ariella and Elara were still trying to make sense of the phrase when, later that night, Ariella's fingers moved of their own accord in her journal, sketching a symbol from her dream: an entwined root and flame. Her eyes widened as the lines formed, drawn from a memory that wasn't hers.
She showed it to Lorne—and he recoiled.
"I've seen that… somewhere. I don't know how. I just… know it matters." His voice trembled, his eyes unfocused. "It's in the dark. Behind something… waiting."
The Queens had warned them of echoes and threads not yet cut. The roots were not severed.
And still, not everyone believed.
A group of villagers, led by the stoic woman , began gathering nightly, calling the healing unnatural.
"The land was broken for a while. You expect us to believe it mended itself in a day with just simple magic?" she said to the villagers who had gathered, her voice like steel. "Magic like this doesn't come without a price. And it's clear someone's hiding what that price is."
They thought of Lorne, and the girls.
"Maybe the danger never left. Maybe it just changed faces."
A seed of division took root.
Tensions festered like rot beneath the bloom. Children were warned not to approach Lorne. Salt was thrown at his path. At night, the girls heard whispers from behind closed doors—prayers meant to keep evil from their thresholds. And still, the land grew too fast, too wildly. Roots burst through floorboards, vines curled through chimney stones.
Far from the village, in the murky plane where light feared to tread, a thick dark smoke drifted like fog. It hissed—not in anger, but amusement. It remembered the girls. Remembered the shabby pot. Remembered that they would seek to undo all it had built.
So it had prepared.
Before his name had been spoken, before his vessel burned, he had sent a thread of himself forward—into the land, into someone unseen. Someone forgotten. Not the obvious. Not the strong.
He whispered now through that thread. And somewhere—among the children laughing by the stream, among the elders tending herbs, among the new faces brought by peace—someone shivered without knowing why.
That soul, once innocent, now housed a splinter—buried so deep it felt like its own thought.
That night, as the wind howled and the roots writhed just below the earth's crust, Elara stood staring at the patch of ground where Lorne had collapsed earlier.
"Something doesn't feel right," she whispered. "The land—it's trying to tell us something."
Ariella stood beside her, pale. "He knew that symbol. The one from my dream. He doesn't remember anything else. The villagers are turning. The prophecy's changing. And now…"
Her voice trailed off as her fingers traced the bark of a nearby tree—bark pulsing faintly, as if alive. Then she gasped.
"Ariella… I think the shadow knew we'd discover his name. He knew we'd destroy his vessel. So he made another . He's been playing us this whole time."
They both turned toward the village.
"He's already among us, and we need to find him before it's too late."