The rain fell in silver sheets, each droplet hissing as it struck Lysandra's flickering form. Seraphina watched, numb, as her sister's edges dissolved into the storm—first her fingertips, then her hands, the luminous glow of her transformed body scattering like dandelion seeds in the wind.
Riven stood motionless beside the golden sapling, his root-woven hair lashing in the rising gale. The rain slid down his face like tears, glistening against the vine-like patterns now etched into his skin.
"It's time," he said softly.
Lysandra turned her fading face toward Seraphina. The dagger, still fused to her arm, pulsed once—a final, desperate beat.
Then she moved.
Faster than the rain, faster than thought, her blade-arm flashed out—not toward Riven, but toward the sapling itself. The dagger's edge bit deep into the tender golden bark, and the world screamed.
The sapling bled.
Not sap, but blood—rich and crimson and shockingly human. It arced through the air in a graceful curve, splattering across Riven's chest, Seraphina's hands, and the hungry earth below.
The effect was instantaneous.
The sapling exploded into growth, its trunk thickening, branches shooting skyward with a sound like cracking bone. Golden leaves unfurled by the hundreds, each one edged with delicate crimson veins. And at its base, where Lysandra's dagger still lodged in the bark, something impossible began to bloom—a flower the size of a human heart, its petals the exact silver-blue of Lysandra's eyes.
Riven staggered back, his hands pressed to the blood staining his tunic. "No," he gasped. "This wasn't—"
The ground beneath them heaved.
Seraphina barely had time to register the movement before roots erupted around them—not blackened, not golden, but a living tapestry of both, their surfaces pulsing with intertwined light and shadow. They wove together in a frenzied dance, forming a throne-like structure at the base of the now-massive tree.
And upon that throne—
Lysandra.
Or what remained of her.
Her body was no longer flesh, nor root, but something in between—a being of woven light and living wood, her features recognisable yet utterly transformed. The dagger was gone, absorbed completely, leaving her arms bare and gleaming with the same strange beauty as the tree's bark.
When she spoke, her voice was the whisper of leaves in the wind, the creak of ancient boughs, the sigh of deep earth after rain.
"The roots remember," she said. "But so do I."
The flower at the tree's base pulsed, its petals peeling back to reveal a single, perfect fruit—golden and gleaming, its surface etched with faint silver lines that mirrored Lysandra's branching scar.
Riven's breath caught. "The first harvest."
A shadow passed over the courtyard, though the storm had cleared. Seraphina looked up to see the sky darkening unnaturally, the clouds twisting into shapes that made her eyes ache.
Lysandra's luminous gaze followed hers. "They feel it too," she murmured. "The old hungers. The ones that never slept."
The fruit trembled on its stem, ready to fall.
The golden fruit hung suspended from its stem, its surface catching the unnatural light filtering through the twisted clouds. Each faint pulse of its silver veins sent ripples through the air, vibrations that hummed against Seraphina's skin like the plucked string of some enormous, unseen instrument.
Riven took an unsteady step forward, his root-woven hair twitching as if sensing danger. "We need to take it before—"
A thunderclap split the sky—not the sharp crack of natural lightning, but a deep, rolling boom that shook the ground beneath their feet. The clouds above swirled violently, their dark masses coalescing into shapes that teased the edges of recognition before dissolving again.
Seraphina's breath caught. "They're watching."
Lysandra—or the being that had been Lysandra—rose from the root-woven throne. Her movements were no longer human, but something more fluid, more plantlike, as if she were swaying to a breeze only she could feel. The glow beneath her bark-like skin intensified as she reached toward the trembling fruit.
"It's not just for us," she murmured. Her voice had taken on a new resonance, layered with whispers that didn't match her lips' movements. "It's for them too."
The moment her fingers brushed the fruit's surface, the visions struck—
*A vast network of roots stretching beneath the earth, far beyond the confines of the ruined kingdom. Some were healthy, glowing gold and silver. Others pulsed with familiar corruption. And at the edges, where the roots grew thin and frail, something else stirred—ancient shapes moving in the deep dark, drawn by the fruit's awakening call._
The vision shattered as the fruit came loose in Lysandra's hand with a sound like a sigh. The stem where it had been attached wept crimson, the droplets sizzling as they struck the throne's roots.
Riven's hand shot out, gripping Seraphina's wrist hard enough to bruise. "We need to leave. Now."
But it was too late.
The fruit split of its own accord, its golden skin peeling back to reveal flesh the colour of a fresh wound. The scent that poured forth was overwhelming—cloyingly sweet, with an undercurrent of something metallic and primal that made Seraphina's mouth water against her will.
Lysandra's luminous eyes widened. "It's ripening too fast."
The first petal fell from the great tree above them, drifting lazily downward. Then another. And another. Except—
Seraphina's stomach lurched.
They weren't petals.
They were teeth.
Small and sharp, glistening with something wet as they rained down around them. One grazed Riven's cheek, leaving a thin red line in its wake. Another buried itself in the soil at Seraphina's feet, the earth around it blackening instantly.
The sky darkened further, the swirling clouds now shot through with veins of pulsing red. A pressure built in the air, thick and suffocating, pressing against Seraphina's eardrums until they popped.
Lysandra clutched the split fruit tighter, its juices running down her arm in sticky rivulets. "They're coming," she whispered.
The ground trembled in response—not the localised shudder of roots moving, but the deep, seismic groan of something vast stirring beneath the earth.
Something hungry.