The Rootless moved like ghosts.
Kael followed them through the narrow canyon paths east of Solarae, his boots barely whispering against the ash-packed soil. Overhead, the stars looked blurred, smeared by the low-hanging haze of smoke and airborne spores. Somewhere to the south, the Garden's roots were breaching the ground again. He could feel it in his teeth. In his bones.
Mercy pulsed lightly at his side, not in warning, but in expectation.
Eris walked beside him, face pale under the faint moonlight. The black streaks around her brand had thickened overnight. The veins had begun to spread to her left shoulder, snaking upward like vines looking for sunlight.
She caught him staring. "Say something and I'll gut you."
Kael smirked, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I wasn't going to."
"Good."
They walked on in silence.
Ahead, Veyra led the Rootless scouts in a staggered V-formation, whispering orders Kael couldn't make out. The captain hadn't said much since briefing them—only that Helix Gamma sat beneath a Syndicate processing vault, and that it pulsed with both Aetherium and roots now. It had been sealed after the war. They'd opened it back up last week.
They weren't just experimenting anymore.
They were producing.
"We'll enter at dawn," Veyra said as the path narrowed, his voice low and even. "The vents will be closed to external surveillance for maintenance. That's our window."
"What about interior guards?" Eris asked, adjusting the grip on her stolen Syndicate blade.
Veyra pointed to the scorched ridge behind them. "Root-walkers cleared most of the outside last night. Burned the rest."
Eris's eyes narrowed. "Meaning?"
"Meaning the facility is mostly empty now. No guards. Just... workers. Test subjects. Hybrid overseers."
Kael stepped closer. "Hybrids?"
"Like your brother," Veyra said.
Kael didn't flinch. "How many?"
Veyra hesitated.
"Too many."
They reached the base of the ravine an hour before sunrise. The entrance to Helix Gamma loomed ahead, camouflaged behind jagged black stone, nearly invisible in the gloom. The air around it pulsed with faint humidity, like breath held too long.
Veyra raised a hand. "We breach on my mark. Once inside, we split: Team One heads for the main node chamber. Team Two sabotages the Aetherium cores and data vaults."
Kael looked to Eris. "We're with Team One."
"Damn right we are."
Veyra nodded, then turned to the rest of the Rootless. "No speeches. No second chances. Burn the roots. Kill the hybrids. Don't look back."
The breach was silent.
Veyra's scouts used a solvent-soaked cloth to dissolve the outer seal, slipping through the service hatch like shadows. Inside, the air was sterile and wrong—too clean, too cold. It stank of old blood masked by industrial scrubbers.
Kael moved down the hall with Mercy drawn low. The sword was still cracked from the encounter with Seth, but its edge remained impossibly sharp. It vibrated faintly, more alert than before. It knew this place.
Eris flanked him, eyes sharp, her breathing slow but heavy.
The corridors twisted like a serpent's spine—tight, angular, lined with vents and dull red lighting. They passed rooms filled with surgical gear, empty tanks, and charred remains Kael didn't want to inspect too closely. The facility had already begun to digest itself.
"This isn't research anymore," Eris muttered. "It's manufacturing."
He nodded. "Weapons?"
She shook her head. "Replacements."
They reached a central lift shaft. Veyra's second, a wiry scout named Ysen, checked the control panel and whistled softly.
"Power grid's still running. Deep core signature's active."
"How deep?" Kael asked.
Ysen gave him a grim smile. "Past the sublevels. Past maintenance. Root-deep."
Kael stepped into the lift.
The shaft was silent on descent. No humming machinery. No creaking metal.
Just the faint hiss of breath, and the wet sound of something moving in the walls.
The air grew warmer the deeper they went. Kael's knuckles whitened around Mercy's hilt. Beside him, Eris's skin glistened with sweat, her brand now pulsing visibly through her armor.
When the lift stopped, the doors opened to a hallway flooded in dim blue light.
The walls were no longer clean. Roots had broken through the paneling, laced with threads of Aetherium. Patches of the floor had gone soft, spongy. Living.
Kael stepped forward, boots sinking slightly.
Mercy growled.
Ahead, a scream echoed through the hallway.
They ran.
The first thing Kael saw in the node chamber was Seth.
He was standing at the center of the room, surrounded by a lattice of silver roots and glowing blue wires. His body had changed again. His skin was now polished like metal, but cracked in places, revealing slow-moving fluid beneath. His arms had elongated, split at the elbows like insect legs. His face was still his—but distant. Hollowed. The human eye was gone.
Only the green remained.
"Brother," Seth said.
Kael stopped short.
"You've come."
Around them, the chamber pulsed. The walls were alive. Test subjects hung in tanks along the perimeter, fused to the root-network, their mouths sealed shut with veins. Some twitched. Others burned slowly from within, Aetherium fire licking out from their chests.
"Why?" Kael whispered. "Why do this?"
Seth tilted his head. "Because it's inevitable. You see it now. Mercy showed you."
Kael didn't answer.
"I've become the Garden's voice. And its vessel. And its seed."
"You're a slave."
"I'm free."
Kael stepped forward.
Eris moved to follow, but stopped—roots had begun growing up from the floor, wrapping her ankles.
Seth raised a hand. The growth paused.
"I won't kill you," he said. "But I will offer you what the King once offered me."
"What?"
"A place in the roots. Beside me. Beside all the others who chose growth over death."
Kael tightened his grip on Mercy. "You always wanted to be more than just a Hollow soldier. And they used you. But this? This is worse."
Seth frowned. "You still think the Garden is a parasite. But it's a memory. A pattern. It preserves what matters."
"Then why burn everything else?"
"Because that's what memory does, Kael. It forgets what it doesn't need."
Kael stepped into striking range.
Mercy screamed.
The fight was instant.
Seth's speed was inhuman.
He moved like water under pressure, flowing around Kael's first strike and driving a bladed arm toward his ribs. Kael barely turned in time—Mercy's edge intercepted the blow, sparks hissing as metal screamed against metal.
The impact knocked him back.
Eris lunged from the side, dagger drawn, targeting the root bundle beneath Seth's shoulder—but tendrils shot from the wall, catching her midair and slamming her to the ground.
"Don't make me kill her," Seth said, calm as winter wind.
Kael spat blood. "You already are."
He rose to his feet.
Mercy's hum grew deeper.
The roots reacted, convulsing, as if recognizing the blade again. Seth stepped back, suddenly wary.
"You still carry that broken thing," he muttered.
"She remembers you," Kael said.
Then he attacked.
The clash was brutal.
Kael didn't fight to win—he fought to cut. To wound. He slashed low, high, fast, using every trick he'd learned in the Gauntlet, every dirty move Draven had beaten into him.
And Seth? Seth fought like something that had forgotten what pain was. He bled silver. He roared with every wound but didn't stop.
Eris broke free, carving through the roots pinning her with sheer will. Her body trembled, her breath ragged—but her eyes were wild.
She dove onto Seth's back, plunging her dagger into the crack in his spine.
He screamed.
Kael drove Mercy through his chest.
The explosion knocked all three of them backward.
The node surged, releasing a shockwave of heat and sound that shattered the tanks lining the walls. Fluid poured out. So did bodies.
Kael landed hard, ears ringing.
Seth was on the floor, twitching. The roots around him spasmed. He reached toward Kael, blood leaking from his mouth.
"You don't understand," he coughed. "This isn't death. It's... re-rooting."
Then he convulsed once, and stilled.
Kael stood.
The chamber groaned.
The walls began to collapse inward.
Eris grabbed him. "We have to go."
He hauled her upright. Together they stumbled through the burning hallways, passing dead hybrids, shattered consoles, and melting tanks. The facility was dying.
Behind them, the node screamed.
When they reached the lift, it was gone—crushed by falling debris.
They climbed.
Hand over hand. Through smoke, blood, and memory.
They emerged into sunlight just as the facility collapsed behind them in a spray of dirt and root ash. The canyon rumbled, then fell silent.
Kael collapsed to his knees, Mercy still humming faintly in his grip.
Eris knelt beside him, panting. Her brand glowed red-hot. She didn't speak.
Neither did he.
They just watched the smoke rise.