CHAPTER 43: "Roots and Ruin"
"Not all things buried are dead. Some are waiting."
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Scene 1: The Descent
The Crew ; Jakku, Gift, Maiku and Matthew quietly leave the forest and go back to base set up and leave for the descent into.....
THE BLOOM NEST.
Silence, but not peace. Only the hum of something alive beneath their feet.
They enter the Bloom Nest.
A cathedral with no god—only hunger. The walls pulse like flesh. Light spills in colors that don't exist. Root-tubes stretch across the ceiling like veins. The floor twitches.
They step into it anyway.
Maiku(mutters) : "This place isn't dead. It's dreaming."
As they move deeper, memories flicker. The Nest reads them. Replays them.
Matthew: sees his Kaguya. Eyes missing. Voice sweet.
Kaguya :"Come with me."
Maiku: glimpses himself as a Bloomed General. Black eyes. Empty smile.
Gift: hears Reen whispering her name in a voice not entirely hers.
Jakku: sees nothing. Feels nothing. Because there's nothing left.
Matthew(breathing heavily) : "The walls remember us… and they're building something."
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Scene 2: Crown's Calculation
Cold black silence. Crown stands alone inside her own neural cathedral.
But she isn't alone.
The Root Avatar breaches into her system—a glitch wrapped in vines.
Root Avatar: "My form completes. My roots dig deeper."
Crown (smiling): "Good. My piece is inside you now. We bloom together."
The Avatar Awakening begins. It spawns into reality.
Her goal revealed:
Not to erase Reen.
But to use her. To merge her soul with the Root. Make her the core. Turn memory into a weapon. Emotion into code. Love into a trigger.
Crown: "You won't be born, little Root. You will return."
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Scene 3: Reen Reaches Out
Static. Screaming. A tremor inside the Nest.
Gift collapses mid-step. Blood drips from her nose. Hands to ears.
Fragmented signal:
"G–G–Gift—don't—go—deeper—he—knows—he sees—."
Reen : "He's watching."
Gift screams. The signal severs.
But in her blood, she knows:
Reen is alive.
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Scene 4: The Nest Awakens
The Nest opens its eyes. The hatching begins.
Pods split. Fluids leak. Screams echo.
Half-born Bloomed crawl out—some still fused to root and machine. They don't understand what they are. They only feel pain.
Maiku (quietly): "These aren't soldiers. They're victims."
Too late.
Jiro and his squad tear through with Cursed Ground—his footsteps blacken the floor, and vines slice through flesh like barbed whips.
Jiro: "Mercy is for the living."
One command—vines lash out. Jakku. Gift. Maiku. Matthew. All ensnared.
Florin(mockingly,laughing) : "Rest. We'll deal with the Avatar."
Jiro and squad vanish into the womb's heart.
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Scene 5: The First Root's Avatar Emerges
Cocoon. A structure made from Reen's broken memories.
It pulses like it's breathing.
In there something's wrong.
Not human. Not alien. Something before both. It wears Reen's voice like skin. Her memories stitched into its movements. Her love twisted into its stare.
Gift (whispers): "We're too late. That thing is wearing her like armor."
It smiles.
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Scene 6: Death Is the Solution
Jakku decides the only way to pass through is DEATH. For his friend.
Jakku's blade flashes.
Cuts his bonds.
Irogi notices. Too slow.
FLASH!!!
One strike to each knee.
Two to the chest.
Three to the hands.
Six to the ribs.
One final life ending strike to the throat.
Irogi collapses. Fizzing. Buzzing. Dying.
He dies with confusion in his eyes.
He didn't know mercy could bleed so fast.
Irogi(pleading) : "How? How can mercy deteriorate so fast."
His life flashes before his eyes.
He sees his life before the Bloom.
Life after the Bloom.
The time when he betrayed the resistance till the time he joined Jiro and Florin.
Irogi pleads for mercy from the God.
Irogi : "Why was I even born..."
DEAD…
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Scene 7: Kidnapped
Maiku erupts. Sky-Fire Ascendancy Mode engaged. Wings of ember. Bones of light.
He dives through Jiro's squad, burning with fury and grief, and lands a blow so clean to the Root Avatar falters and his armor breaks.
Then—
CRACK!
He strikes Crown from behind. Pressure points. Precision. Rage in form.
Crown collapses. Unconscious. The impossible, done.
They grab her.
They run.
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Scene 8: Mourning
Jiro returns. Finds Irogi's body. Still warm. Still sparking.
He kneels. Doesn't speak. Just breathes.
Florin beside him.
Both say nothing.
The room hums with silence.
No grief. Just debt.
Jiro (softly): "Jakku dies next."
They leave.
Behind them: the true body. Still dormant.
And the Root Avatar, staring at its reflection in broken glass.
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Final Lines:
"And far beneath the rot and ruin… Reen screamed—but the world did not hear her."
"In this cruel world… death is the only solution to one's problem. And Jiro…
he saw it first hand."
Narrator Commentary – CHAPTER 43: "Roots and Ruin"
In the heart of horror, Chapter 43 delivers what few stories dare: a descent not just into darkness—but into the living memory of suffering itself.
The Bloom Nest is no mere location. It's a psychological organism—a parasitic cathedral fed by trauma and warped truth. As Jakku, Maiku, Gift, and Matthew descend, so too do we, layer by layer, into a dream sculpted from dread. The Nest doesn't just attack with monsters—it attacks with memories. It uses love, fear, and guilt as its claws.
Maiku's haunted reflection. Matthew's phantom lover. Gift's bleeding connection to Reen. Each vision tightens the grip of the Nest—and reminds us: the past is not buried. It is weaponized.
But the heart of the chapter? Jiro.
No longer the warrior we knew—now the harbinger. Cursed Ground and Necromantic Decay are not just powers. They are pronouncements. With every step, he rots the world he once swore to save. His line—"Mercy is for the living"—is not villainy. It is surrender to inevitability. A death knight in bloom.
And yet—Jakku.
With cold resolve, he kills not for revenge, not for glory, but for necessity. The death of Irogi is brutal, poetic. A man whose treachery bloomed too late, cut down not by hate—but by precision. Jakku becomes the blade reality demands.
Then—hope.
Maiku. Sky-Fire Ascendancy Mode. Wrath and light embodied. A strike that nearly topples fate itself. Crown captured. Not dead. Captured. A crack in the tyrant's skin. A twist in the war.
But the price?
Reen.
Still inside. Still screaming. Still unheard.
This chapter doesn't just raise stakes—it reveals that the true enemy may not be the Root or the Bloom… but time. And the silence it gives to pain.
> "Not all things buried are dead."
No. Some are growing.
Some are remembering.
And some—are returning.
"Roots and Ruin" is not a chapter. It is a warning.