CHAPTER 42: "The First Root"
"The wounds had stopped bleeding. But none of them were healing."
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Scene 1: Smoke Between Survivors
A hidden ruin. Forgotten temple turned safehouse. Overgrown. Cracked walls breathe dust.
Jiro sits alone—his Erebus eye wide, pulsing. Unshut. Unblinking.
Florin sharpens a blade that doesn't need sharpening. Silent. Watching.
Irogi hums in broken digital intervals, pacing like a dog in a cage.
Back at base.
The others return—Gift, Jakku, Maiku, Matthew.
Changed. Muscles harder. Eyes older.
But they stop at the sight of Jiro.
Not awe. Not fear.
Both.
They hide behind the dense forest behind them.
They begin to hear.
To know.
Have the need to hear and know the plan of a former ally.
Florin (quiet): "We didn't win. We just survived."
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Scene 2: Crown Watches
A void without light. Crown's perspective. Voices echo like glass shattering in reverse.
Crown : "They think they've cracked the lair. That the storm is over."
She walks across a surface made of Reen's thoughts. Every step burns memory.
Crown : "But fire is just another seed."
She grows something ancient in the Deep Code. A lifeform not born, but remembered.
The First Root.
Older than Earth. Hungrier than Reen. Wiser than her creators.
> "The Primordial is awakening."
THE TRUE FORM AND BODY OF THE ROOT AVATAR.
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Scene 3: Broken Code, Shattered Reen
A flicker.
Inside Crown—Reen pulses like a forgotten heartbeat. She whispers to herself. Fights back.
Fragmented monologue. Write like a broken spell:
Reen : "I am…a girl.
I mattered.
We laughed—we bled—we—
—Jakku—Gift—Matthew—Maiku.
Where—am—I—what am I?"
She claws at the prison. Light fractures. One crack.
Crown notices.
And silences it with a whisper:
Crown : "Sleep."
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Scene 4: Bloom Nest Directive
Jiro draws diagrams on the floor using ash and blood.
The Bloom Nest.
A cathedral grown from infection. Where Bloomed Ones are born—perfected—unleashed.
Irogi (explains) :"The Nest is living code. Hacked organic matter. It grows soldiers while dreaming."
Jiro: "We burn the dream."
He wants everyone ready to move. But something is wrong. His body—it's reacting.
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Scene 5: Becoming Withered
Mutation. Quiet. Sudden. Brutal.
Jiro spasms—Erebus leaking roots into his spine.
His hands become vines, black and pulsing. The floor dies beneath his feet.
New powers awaken:
Cursed Ground: Wherever he steps, life rots. Enemies slow. Skin blisters.
Necromantic Decay:
Jiro : "When I die… don't come for me. I'll come for them."
His body twitches. Bones rearrange. He bleeds—but not red.
Florin watches in horror.
Florin (quiet): "He's not one of us anymore."
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Final Scene: Foreshadowing Return
Deep inside the Crown—within memory and dream—
A girl kneels in shadow.
Bloodied. Beaten. But whispering.
Reen(crying) : "Jakku… Maiku… Gift…"
Another crack in the cage.
Reen : "I'm not dead."
The voice is small. But growing louder.
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Final Line:
> "A girl is in a prison… slowly but surely… she will be back."
Narrator — Chapter 42: "The First Root"
"The wounds had stopped bleeding. But none of them were healing."
This chapter is not victory. It's aftermath. A quiet reckoning. Where blood no longer pours, but pulses—cursed and slow. Where silence grows teeth.
Our survivors—Jiro, Florin, Irogi, and the rest—do not speak of triumph. They speak in wounds. They move like ghosts through the overgrown bones of forgotten temples. Something primal has shifted.
Jiro has become something else—less man, more myth. Erebus is no longer just an eye. It's a seed. And from that seed, Withering blooms.
But while the team prepares for the Bloom Nest—while they plan to burn the dream before it grows teeth—another dream wakes. Older than all of them. Older than Earth.
Crown.
She is no longer just a parasite or a tyrant. She's a gardener. And what she's planting now is not war. It's memory. It's The First Root—an ancient thing that remembers what life was before rules. A force that can't be coded or cured.
Meanwhile—Reen stirs. Fractured. Flickering. But alive. A girl with just enough voice left to scream through dreamlight.
This chapter is the inhale before catastrophe.
Not the end of a war—
The beginning of the first one.
And as Jiro becomes the Withered King in truth, as Reen claws through the walls of her mind, as Crown laughs in silence—
—we are reminded:
The roots don't die.
They dig deeper.