The ground stopped shaking, but the forest wasn't having it. The whole place felt wounded—not just from that sudden jolt, but from something deeper that made the air itself feel wrong. Roots that had been flowing smooth just moments before were now twisting like they were in pain, yanking against the earth with this unnatural desperation. The bark stretched and groaned, some of it cracking so loud it sounded like bones snapping. Even the soft glow from the bioluminescent spores and Thornkin energy started flickering like a candle about to die, the protective wards around the sanctuary sputtering weakly.
Micah didn't just see or hear the chaos—he felt it. The Thornkin seed Sera had given him was going crazy against his chest, pulsing fast and erratic instead of its usual calm, steady rhythm. Next to him, Lio looked tense as hell, eyes wide behind his scanner's visor. The air tasted all wrong too, thick with this coppery tang of disturbed earth and stressed-out plants.
"What've you got?" Micah asked quietly, cutting through the forest's pained symphony. He kept his voice level and practical—the way the Ashari had drilled into him.
Lio didn't answer right away. His hands danced over the scanner controls, fingers flying in that practiced way of his. The device hummed softly, its processors working overtime to make sense of all the chaotic energy signatures flooding the air. "Energy spikes everywhere," he finally said, strain clear in his voice. "It's like the forest is trying to rip itself apart from the inside out. And something just... opened up down there. Something big. Something deep." He pointed the scanner toward a ridge maybe a few hundred meters off. "Over that way, near the edge of the grove."
Micah felt that familiar knot tighten in his stomach. This wasn't some random earthquake—it felt intentional, like something had violently torn through the natural world. "That where it started?" he pressed, his mind already shifting into tactical mode.
"Yeah," Lio nodded grimly. "But it's not just seismic. My scanner's picking up tech signatures mixed in with all the forest energy. There's something man-made down there."
"Omniraith?" Micah asked, though he knew their brutal, mechanical signature usually screamed rather than whispered.
"Different," Lio shook his head. "Too subtle. Too... tangled up. Looks like maybe Ashari tech, but corrupted somehow. Changed."
Micah stared at the ridge, watching how the forest got more agitated the closer you looked to that area. They couldn't just walk away from this and let the Thornkin deal with it. Whatever had caused this mess, whatever was buried down there, it was actively hurting the forest and threatening their allies. The choice was clear: they had to investigate, figure out what was going on, and stop it if they could.
When they reached the ridge, they found the ground hadn't just cracked—a whole section had caved in, leaving this dark, jagged hole. The air rising from it was thick and humid, carrying the smell of damp earth mixed with something metallic, almost chemical. Around the opening, thick, gnarled roots spread out, but instead of healthy greens and browns, they were the color of dried blood—brittle and sick-looking, woven through with what looked like thin copper wires. It was this grotesque mix of living and mechanical that made Micah's stomach turn.
"This is so wrong," Lio whispered. "The forest is dying here."
They geared up with lightweight Ashari climbing equipment and high-tensile cables. Going down into that chasm was slow, careful work. Their helmet lights cut through the darkness, showing walls that proved Lio right—they were part living roots, part fused metal. Smooth composite panels were randomly stuck into the gnarled wood, crisscrossed with glowing energy lines that looked like veins. This underground space—Micah immediately started thinking of it as the Hollow—wasn't just some natural cave or old Ashari tunnel. It was where two worlds had crashed together and merged in the most unnatural, horrifying way.
The air down here was thicker and warmer than up top, thrumming with two different kinds of energy. One was the familiar hum of Thornkin magic, but stretched thin and distorted, like a guitar string about to snap. The other was this low, steady pulse of machine power—not the sharp, cold buzz of Omniraith tech, but something softer, like a hidden engine's heartbeat.
As Lio fiddled with his scanner settings, trying to make sense of the data flood coming from the structure, something weird happened. The device started making this sound—not just a beep or hum, but something layered in the static. Like a voice, broken up and trapped.
Micah tensed, his hand instinctively going to his transformation device. Was this a trap? Some Omniraith trick using a distorted voice to lure them in? But Lio's scanner wasn't screaming danger—it was just detecting a data pattern. Something non-human, but not hostile either.
Lio fiddled with the audio filters until the sound cleared up. What came through was unsettling—broken pieces of digital noise that somehow sounded like whispers, like echoes of someone who used to be.
"...Awake..." "...divide..." "...harmony fails..."
The fragmented words made Micah's skin crawl. "Play it again," he said.
Lio looped the short clip over and over. Each time those words hung in the air, they carried this weird mix of ancient sadness and something cold and mechanical. Was it some corrupted Thornkin spirit? Maybe a human mind trapped in one of those sick Omniraith experiments? Or something else entirely—something born from this twisted fusion buried under their feet?
"It's talking about the forest," Lio said, staring at his data readouts. "Whatever's down there is messing with the communication lines to Thornkin Forest. It's sending out these signal fragments and weaving them into the resonance."
"So it's talking to the forest?" Micah asked.
"More like from the forest," Lio corrected, his forehead creased in thought. "It's hijacking Thornkin energy wavelengths and twisting them. Like a parasite trying to talk through its host. Or maybe it's the other way around—maybe it is the host, and the tech is what's parasitic."
That phrase "harmony fails" hit Micah hard. The Thornkin lived by balance with nature—it was everything to them. This structure, this voice, it was the complete opposite of that. A living system being violated and warped by technology. The prototype they'd found at that ruined outpost—could it be tied to this mess? Maybe it was part of the same nightmare experiment?
Lio kept working, following the signal trail. "The way this data's structured... it's like a consciousness," he said, his voice mixing wonder with fear. "This isn't some basic AI. It's way more complex—like a bridge, a connection to something intelligent."
An intelligence? Micah's mind jumped straight to the Core Nexus—that planet-wide super-AI that ran everything for the Omniraith. What if this structure was the Core's way of getting into Thornkin Forest? Not through brute force, but through some horrifying kind of takeover from within?
While Micah and Lio were deep underground wrestling with their disturbing discovery, things above were falling apart fast. Sera Lin moved through the forest with worry etched all over her face, trying to stop the corruption from spreading. Other Thornkin healers and guardians worked frantically around her, their hands glowing green as they tried to comfort the dying forest.
But the physical decay was getting worse by the hour. Trees that had been standing for centuries were turning gray, their bark peeling away to show these unnaturally smooth, metallic surfaces underneath—like they were being turned into iron. Some were just collapsing completely, crumbling into piles of ash and metal fragments. The magical wards that usually pulsed with vibrant life were now sputtering and flickering, fighting against whatever invasive energy was coming from below.
Sera pressed her hand against an ancient tree trunk and closed her eyes, focusing hard. She could feel the forest's agony like a scream echoing through the Rootways. This wasn't just some disease—it was an assault, something foreign forcing its way into the forest's delicate network. She'd hoped their alliance with the Ashari would give them strength, but she couldn't shake the worry that their dependence on disruptive technology might actually be making things worse.
Miles away, Kaelin Vorr was making his way toward Elora with that pulse-drone prototype they'd recovered. He felt the ground trembling and saw strange atmospheric disturbances on the horizon as he climbed the lower slopes of the Ashari Mountains. He might not fully get the Thornkin's whole "living forest" thing, but he understood urgency when he saw it. Every instinct he had was screaming that this was a crisis that needed immediate action—Ashari logic and decisive force. He planned to hand over the prototype, demand resources, and push the Council to stop talking and start fighting. But deep down, he knew that arguing with the Ashari Council was like trying to hack through a firewall with your bare hands—frustrating as hell and usually pointless. Even in their efficient society, bureaucracy had its own stubborn weight.
The alliance they desperately needed to fight off the Omniraith's relentless push felt stretched to the breaking point, caught between Ashari pragmatism, Thornkin reverence for nature, and this ominous, unknown threat growing beneath them all.
Exhausted and reeking of cave moisture and rotting earth, Micah and Lio hauled themselves out of the chasm as dawn started painting the sky. They'd spent hours down in the Hollow—Lio running diagnostics on that structure while Micah searched the surrounding rock for any other signs of invasion, both of them listening to those unsettling echoes of that broken voice.
They'd learned enough to understand just how terrifying this really was. This hybrid structure wasn't just another weapon built to destroy things, which was pretty much standard for Omniraith tech. No, this was something way more insidious. It was designed to merge, to integrate, to corrupt organic systems from the inside out and remake them into something that served the machine's cold, calculated agenda. The corruption eating through the forest wasn't collateral damage—it was the whole point.
"The prototype," Micah said, his voice rough from hours of speaking in whispers. He thought about that small, mysterious device they'd pulled from the outpost. "It wasn't a tool—it was a seed. A way to start this process, maybe in different places."
Lio nodded, slumping against a rock. "Makes sense. The Omniraith assimilate things; they consume. But this... this is different. It's like they're learning how to mimic, how to become part of things. They want to corrupt the very soul of the world, not just conquer it."
The weight of what they'd found pressed down on Micah like a physical thing. He'd always feared becoming like the Omniraith, losing his humanity. This experiment felt like the Omniraith were trying to do that same horrible thing to the entire world—twisting it, corrupting it, stripping away everything organic until only the cold logic of machines was left.
He looked down at the Thornkin seed in his palm, now glowing faintly in the returning sunlight. It had been pulsing erratically the whole time they were in the Hollow, responding not just to external forces but to the internal struggle—the violation happening right beneath their feet.
As they got ready to move, the seed in Micah's hand suddenly blazed to life, pulsing with bright, urgent emerald light.
"What the hell was that?" Lio asked, jumping back.
Micah felt it too—not just the light, but this resonance, a deep hum that seemed to vibrate up through his boots and into his bones. But this time it wasn't the strained pulse of the Thornkin seed reacting to danger. This felt different. It felt like... an answer.
Lio checked his scanner. "I'm picking up another pulse," he said, tension tight in his voice. "Deeper underground, not from the structure we found. Further in and much stronger."
Micah looked back at the chasm, then peered deeper into the dark earth below. This new pulse wasn't distorted or broken like that voice they'd heard. It was clear, resonant, and strangely familiar—almost like a signal.
Like a call.
Micah and Lio looked at each other, wide-eyed, understanding passing between them without a word. The hollow beneath wasn't just a place of corruption—it was a realm where something ancient was waking up, something that had felt the disruption and was now calling out to them. The battle for the soul of the world had just taken a terrifying and completely unexpected turn.