"You want me to what?"
Jack's voice cracked halfway through the sentence. It was not how a Captain of the Capital Guards was supposed to sound in front of an Elder.
The room was small and plain, much plainer than anyone would expect from one of the five most powerful people in the kingdom. A low table, two cushions, and a pot of tea that had gone cold hours ago. Across from Jack sat Elder Gaja, an old elephant-man whose wrinkled skin had faded to the color of river stone. His huge ears moved slowly, like sleeping fans. His small eyes did not.
"I want you to walk into the Temple of Life," Gaja said, "and look at what it does not want us to see."
"Sneak. You want me to sneak." Jack pointed at his own chest. "Old man, do you know me? I can't sneak into my own kitchen without knocking something over."
"That is exactly why they will not suspect you." Gaja sipped the cold tea without complaint. "Nobody expects the lazy wolf to do anything useful. And I cannot go myself. If an Elder is caught doubting the Temple, the Temple will turn it into a sermon, and the people will believe the sermon."
The grin slid off Jack's face. It took a lot to do that, and the old man's tone was managing it.
"What happened?"
"Nothing happened. That is what troubles me." Gaja set the cup down. "Two years ago, the black trees began to appear. The Temple says the cause is unknown. It said the same last year, and the year before. Yet this is the same Temple that knows every birth and every death in the kingdom, that knows when a flower blooms out of season. It cannot tell us where a tree that kills our soldiers comes from?" His ears went still. "Then there is the prophecy, which grows shorter every time they recite it. And this week they have sealed the lower levels for 'renovation' while the whole city is looking at the arena."
"Maybe they just really like renovating."
"Jack."
"…Fine. Fine." Jack dragged a hand down his muzzle. "But if I get caught, I'm telling them it was your idea."
"I would expect nothing less."
...
The Temple of Life was nearly empty.
Every priest who could be spared was at the arena, and the white halls felt hollow without them. The roar of the crowd drifted in from far away, rolling through the corridors like waves on a distant shore.
Jack crept along the wall in a stolen white robe that stopped halfway down his shins. His tail stuck out the back like a flag.
"Smooth," he whispered to himself. "Nobody will notice a thing."
Footsteps. A priest turned the corner with a broom. Jack dove behind a marble statue of the Deer Mother, tail sticking out on one side and ears on the other.
The priest swept past, humming. His eyes slid across the tail, paused for half a heartbeat, and moved on.
Jack waited until the humming faded. "…I love this city," he breathed. "Nobody cares about anything."
The way down was behind the great mural of Creation in the east wing, the one showing a single seed splitting open into a tree. A wooden board hung from the door beside it: UNDER RENOVATION. Jack looked at the board. Then he looked at the floor in front of it, where the dust had been swept away in a neat arc by boots, many of them, again and again.
"Renovation," he muttered. "Sure."
The lock was solid iron. Jack slid a thin sliver of aura into it, wincing at every click, until it finally gave. He slipped through and eased the door shut behind him.
The stairs descended into the cold. Jack counted them, lost count at two hundred, and kept going. The air changed from stone-dry to damp earth, and under it was something metallic, like old blood.
BOOM.
The whole tunnel shuddered. Dust trickled from the ceiling, and Jack flattened himself against the wall with his heart in his throat.
Silence. Then, faintly, through the rock above, a wave of cheering.
Jack let out a long breath. "…Just a match."
But he did not move. He was thinking about the stairs. Two hundred steps down, and then the tunnel had run straight, far past where any Temple basement should have ended, heading toward the center of the capital. And every cheer was louder than the last.
"Oh," he whispered. "Oh, you sneaky bastards. I'm under the arena."
He moved faster after that. The walls here were lined with stone pillars, each carved with faint glowing symbols and arranged in a wide ring, as if something was being prepared for later. Jack did not recognize the marks. He did not like them.
Light flickered ahead, and with it a low chanting, many voices murmuring in unison.
The tunnel opened into a vast, round cavern, and Jack stopped at the edge of it.
Lanterns burned blue-black around the walls. In the center, a dozen figures in black robes knelt in a circle with their hoods up, chanting. They had left the white robes of the Temple upstairs. Down here, there was no need to pretend.
And in the middle of the circle, rooted in a basin of cracked stone, stood a tree.
It was small, hardly higher than Jack's waist. Its bark was black and glossy, with thin green veins pulsing under the surface like poison. In the center of the trunk, where a heart would be, a gem was embedded in the wood, glowing a slow, sick blue. It pulsed in rhythm with the chanting.
Jack's fur stood on end. The air pressed on him, heavy and cold. Even from this far away, he could feel it tugging at his aura, gently, the way a tide tugs at a swimmer's ankles.
A black tree. He had burned six like it in the past two years. He had carried soldiers' bodies away from three of them.
His eyes slid to the wall beside him. Rows of wooden trays sat on a long stone table, each filled with dark soil and tiny black sprouts, and each marked with a neat, careful label.
Western Gate, Ferrodon — discovered. Retry.
Eastern Marsh — rooted. Feeding.
Forestia Ferra, south — guardians formed. Stable.
Ashfall Reach — failed. Soil too poor.
Jack stared at the labels, and the blood drained from his face.
Two years. Soldiers who never came home. Monsters that grew where no monsters should. Villages in the marsh that had gone silent.
"Experiments," he whispered. "It was never nature. You planted them. All of them."
He started backing away, one slow step at a time. The old man had to hear this. Everyone had to hear this.
"Captain Jack."
The voice came from behind him, calm and pleasant. Jack froze.
A priest stood at the mouth of the tunnel, blocking the only way out. He was a thin man with gentle eyes, wearing the silver pendant of the Temple of Life. Jack knew him. This was the priest who had healed Leo's leg last winter, who had accepted a drink at the Roaring Bull and politely refused a second.
"Brother Kabir," Jack said slowly. "Funny meeting you here."
"The lower levels are closed, Captain."
"Yeah, I got lost. Looking for the toilet. Big building."
Kabir smiled as if he had been told a charming joke. "For two hundred stairs?"
"…I really needed the toilet."
Somewhere behind Jack, the chanting stopped. A dozen hooded heads turned toward him.
"You have seen the trees," Kabir said. "Then you understand this was never cruelty. We needed to learn how a seed grows in different soils, and how much aura it needs before it gives birth to guardians. Your soldiers were very helpful."
Jack's claws slid out. "They were people."
"They were food. And the seed was grateful." Kabir said it gently, without malice, which was worse. "Listen to me, Captain. The Temple teaches the people that this world is all there is. It is not. Beyond it lies the true world, and the seed is its key. But a key must be turned, and it takes a great deal of strength to turn it."
He stepped forward, hands open.
"You are a mid-level user, one in ten thousand. The captain whom soldiers follow without being asked. Strength like yours is wasted guarding gates against monsters we made ourselves. Join us. Lend your strength to the seed, and when our lord wakes, you will stand beside us in the true world instead of beneath it."
The cavern was quiet. Somewhere above, the crowd roared again, muffled by stone.
Jack looked at the dozen hooded figures. He looked at the little black tree with its sick blue heart. He looked at Kabir, and for the first time since he had walked into that cold room with the old elephant, Jack was not smiling.
"I joined a book club once," he said. "Just for the snacks. I left after one meeting. It had rules."
Kabir blinked.
"I don't do clubs," Jack said. "And I definitely don't do yours."
He moved.
Blue aura exploded around him, bright and hot, and his claws lengthened into gleaming blades. The nearest cultist raised his hands, but Jack's claws were already through his guard, and the man crumpled with a gasp. A second lunged. Jack spun, slammed him into a pillar, and ducked a dark burst of aura that scorched the wall where his head had been.
"Come on!" he roared. "Is that all you—"
Three more rushed him together. He hit one, kicked another, and the third's dark aura clipped his shoulder, burning. He snarled and kept going, cutting a path toward the tunnel, toward the stairs, toward the light. Four down. Five. The ring of black robes broke apart around him.
Kabir did not move. He simply stood at the entrance and watched, and when Jack charged him, he stepped aside as though inviting him to leave.
Too easy.
Jack's foot hit the first stair, and the gem pulsed.
It felt like someone had pulled a plug. His aura tore out of him, streaming from his claws, from his chest, from every inch of his fur in thin ribbons of blue, all of it racing back across the cavern toward the little tree. His legs buckled. The blades on his hands flickered and died.
"No… no, no, no—"
"I did warn you," Kabir said softly. "You were within its reach the moment you stepped through the door. Strong ones always are."
Jack dropped to one knee. His fingers had gone gray. The color crept up his wrists, hard and cold and spreading, and he could not feel his hands.
BOOOOM.
The cavern lurched. The ceiling cracked, and dust poured down in great sheets as the whole chamber shook, harder than before. Several cultists threw themselves flat. Pebbles rained into the basin.
Far above them, a human boy had just driven his fist into the arena floor.
Kabir glanced upward, unbothered. "The children are playing rough. Let them. A few more days, and the arena above will be ours."
Jack barely heard him. The stone had reached his shoulders. He thought of Leo, who would be furious. He thought of the kid, who would win a match and not know what he was walking into. He thought of Ishita, who would find him—
She's going to kill me.
A weak, stupid, wolfish grin tugged at his mouth.
Sorry, old man. You were right.
The gray reached his chin. The blue light drained from his eyes.
The tunnel went quiet.
Kabir walked to the statue that had been the Captain of the Capital Guards, wolf head raised, claws half-drawn, jaw still locked in a snarl, and rested a palm on its cold shoulder.
"Strong," he murmured. "He will do nicely when the day comes."
Above them, the crowd roared for the winner of the match. Nobody in the arena noticed that Jack was late.
For the first time in his life, he wasn't going to make it.