The clearing felt thick with shock, like the air itself was holding its breath. Dawn crept through the edges of Thornkin Forest, turning the Verdant Heart's brilliant emerald glow into something softer, more like a whisper of light. Minutes earlier, that ancient tree had lit up the moment they'd placed the Ashari message capsule at its roots. But the real pulse—the one that hit both the physical world and Micah's device—wasn't any message from Thornkin at all. It was Lio Venn's device screaming their location to anyone listening.
Micah stood off to the side, feeling the familiar weight of his Ashari tech in his palm. This wasn't just his tool anymore—it was proof. He scrolled through the beacon data again, watching the readouts spell out what he already knew. No glitch, no accident. Someone had sent that signal on purpose. The forest around them seemed to lean in, listening. Even the usual sounds—rustling leaves, the barely-there hum of hidden Ashari tech—felt muted. This wasn't like the raw, wind-carved silence of the mountains. This silence had teeth.
A few steps away, Lio couldn't keep still. His whole body screamed guilt, and that laser focus he usually brought to fixing things had scattered into pure nervous energy. Kaelin watched them both, rifle down but every muscle coiled tight. You could see him trying to make sense of it all—the soldier in him wanting action, but not knowing who to point his weapon at anymore.
That's when Sera came back into the clearing. She moved like she belonged here, like the forest itself had taught her how to walk. Her voice carried that gentle strength she always had, but instead of jumping straight into the betrayal hanging over them, she talked about the Verdant Heart. Said the old tree "will judge intent, not rumors." The forest remembers everything, she reminded them, and it knows truth from lies. This wasn't going to be settled with Ashari efficiency and data streams—this was Thornkin justice, slow and deep and rooted in something older than any of their tech. Her quiet words cut through the lies like a blade.
Sera led them deeper into Thornkin land, past where the Verdant Heart's roots reached. The trees opened up into this hidden spot where pools of bioluminescent water caught the early light. The air was thick with the smell of growing things and hummed with energy you could feel in your bones. It's a Sacred ground.
She knelt by a cluster of glowing orchids, their petals lit from within like tiny stars. With careful fingers, she gathered dewdrops from the flowers—such a simple thing, but watching her do it felt like witnessing something ancient and important. Pure Thornkin ritual, the kind that reminded you what really mattered.
"Drink," she said, holding out her cupped hands with the glowing dew pooled inside. She offered it to Micah first. "Let it wash you clean so you can really see each other."
Micah only paused for a heartbeat. His whole world ran on tech and data, the cold logic that made the Ashari tick. Magic was Thornkin territory—he respected it, sure, but it might as well have been written in a language he'd never learned. Still, he trusted Sera, even with that voice in his head that every Ashari carried, the one that whispered warnings about getting too close to other factions. He tilted his head back and let the dew slide down his throat. It didn't taste like water—more like drinking starlight, leaving this warm buzz behind his eyes. All those sleepless nights wrestling with what their tech could do versus what it should do, and this felt like the opposite of all that weight. Clean. Old. Right.
Lio's turn came next, his hands shaking just enough to notice. Kaelin went after him, face giving nothing away, but he drank too. While they shared the ritual, Sera's voice filled the space between them. "In the forest, our bonds are tested by sin and reforged by truth." Pure Thornkin wisdom—trust could shatter, but honesty could rebuild it, piece by careful piece. Nothing like the Ashari way of thinking, where "Efficiency is love" meant keeping people safe by keeping them from getting hurt in the first place. Here, truth was the hammer and the anvil both.
When real dawn finally broke, they'd made their way to this encampment tucked inside a hollowed-out root chamber. Torchlight danced on the curved walls, and the air felt thick and warm, heavy with earth-smell and wood smoke. Sera had slipped away, giving the three of them room to deal with whatever was about to happen. They ate in near-silence—steamed roots and some kind of spiced broth that actually tasted pretty good for wilderness food.
The quiet stretched between them again, but this time it wasn't the forest passing judgment. This was anticipation, like the moment before lightning strikes. That Thornkin ritual had stripped everything bare, left the betrayal sitting right there in the open where they couldn't ignore it anymore.
Finally, Micah looked straight at Lio. When he spoke, his voice came out soft but steady, no anger in it—just the need to know. "Who were you talking to, Lio?"
Lio flinched and ran his fingers through his hair, his eyes darting away from Micah's stare. He watched the torchlight dance across the root-carved walls instead. "A secure channel," he muttered, then caught himself. The words tumbled out faster now. "I mean, a back channel. To one of the secret Ashari research stations. Sector Gamma."
Kaelin's head jerked up, his whole body going rigid with fury. "You contacted Gamma? Have you lost your damn mind? You could've gotten us all killed!" He started to push himself up, his hand already moving toward his rifle.
Micah threw up a hand. "Easy," he said, though his own gut was twisting into knots. That flicker he'd caught in the distance when they'd left Elora—had Lio's signal drawn something out there? A drone, maybe? Or worse? This whole mission already felt like walking a tightrope, and now it was starting to feel like they were walking straight into a trap. Just what he'd been afraid of.
He looked back at Lio. "Why?"
Lio finally forced himself to meet Micah's eyes. The guilt was written all over his face, but there was something else too—fear, and the kind of desperate hope that made people do stupid things. "I was worried Elora's communications weren't safe anymore," he admitted. "When that Myrvane scout showed up and the Council started dragging their feet, I figured if the Core Nexus was really on the move..." He couldn't finish the sentence. Nobody wanted to think about the Omniraith's nightmare of a central brain actually waking up and deciding to stretch its legs.
"I needed the advanced schematics," Lio went on, his voice dropping to almost nothing. "Gamma's been working on some prototype defense tech. If the Omniraith really are coming, we're going to need every edge we can get. I figured... I figured I could get it faster, skip all the red tape, maybe save some lives."
Micah took it all in. Hell, Lio's fears weren't that different from his own—the way Ashari leadership kept stumbling around, how their whole communication setup was basically held together with prayer and analog scraps because the Omniraith had locked down everything wireless. Lio was brilliant with tech, always had been, and he'd done what came naturally—tried to solve the problem the fastest way possible. But damn, it was stupid. The kind of cowboy move that made the old-school Traditionalists shake their heads and mutter about kids these days.
"That was reckless, Lio," Micah said, keeping his voice quiet but letting the weight of it come through. "Dangerous for all of us."
Lio's eyes were getting watery now, and he nodded hard. "I know. It's just... I keep running the numbers, looking at the projections, and I built this stuff... I thought maybe if I could just..."
Kaelin was still wound tight, but some of the fight had gone out of him. "Kid, you almost got us all killed," he muttered, though the edge in his voice had dulled.
The tension in the cramped space started to ease up. Getting the truth out there hurt, but it helped too. Micah felt that familiar knot in his stomach—the one that came from too many friends lost, too many times wondering who he could actually trust. But looking at Lio now, he could see the kid wasn't a traitor. Just scared out of his mind and trying to help the only way he knew how.
They ended up talking until way too late, all of them crammed together in that root-walled hideout. Micah found himself admitting what really kept him up at night—the fear that one day he'd get so focused on payback that he'd turn into something as cold and empty as the things they were fighting. Kaelin opened up about how tired he was of always playing defense, always being the guy with the gun watching everyone's back when what he really wanted was to hit these bastards where it hurt. And Lio talked more about the guilt eating at him, but also about this stubborn hope he had that maybe his tech skills could actually make a difference, actually save people.
Three screwed-up people thrown together by bad luck and worse circumstances, all carrying the weight of what it meant to be Ashari in a world trying to erase them. But somehow, sitting there sharing their fears and failures, they felt stronger. More real.
"No more secrets," Micah said when the talking finally wound down. "No more going off on your own. If we think the channels are compromised, if there's a big call to make... we make it together. All of us."
Lio and Kaelin both nodded, and something settled between the three of them. Not much, maybe, but enough. A promise that meant something. The friction that had been building—Micah and Kaelin butting heads over tactics, Lio's tech-obsessed optimism running up against Micah's harder edge—it was still there, but at least now they'd put it on the table.
They met at the root gate before sunrise, right where Thornkin territory ended. Sera Lin was waiting for them, standing like a guardian against the twisted wood and metal that formed the entrance.
She opened her hand, showing them three small seeds that looked like tiny sleeping emeralds. Dark and smooth, they sat quietly in her palm. "These are from the Heart," she said. "They've got a piece of its magic in them. They'll glow as long as you keep your word to us. Break that promise, and they'll die."
Micah felt the seeds' gentle thrum as he took them. They weren't weapons or some piece of high-tech gear—they were something much more delicate. Trust, made real. He passed one to Lio and one to Kaelin. Both men took theirs carefully, tucking them close to their hearts inside their gear.
Before they left the forest behind and headed back to their brutal world, Micah brought them to the Root Gate. "Touch it," he said quietly.
All three pressed their hands against the massive root, feeling its slow heartbeat under their palms. One last moment with the ancient life of this place before they went back to the cold calculations of their mountain stronghold.
Then they stepped through, one after another, leaving the glowing grove behind them. As they walked away, the seeds hidden in their clothes pulsed together—three small green lights pushing back against the gray dawn creeping in.
It meant something. Even when everything went dark, trust could grow again. They'd gotten through the betrayal, and somehow it had made them stronger. But they still had a long road ahead, enemies that wouldn't quit, and an alliance that could snap at any moment. The seeds kept glowing—a careful kind of hope when the odds were stacked against them.