The cavern screamed as it died.
Kael dragged Eris through the tunnel's jagged throat, the walls shuddering around them like a beast in its death throes. Behind them, the Hollow King's lair collapsed in a symphony of splintering bone and hissing silver sap. The air reeked of scorched metal and something older—wet soil and rotting lilies, the Garden's dying breath.
Eris stumbled, her boot catching on a half-buried ribcage. Kael hauled her upright, his fingers brushing the brand beneath her torn shirt. Even through leather and linen, the heat of it seared his palm.
She wrenched away with a snarl, but the flicker in her eyes betrayed her. The corruption wasn't paused. It was learning.
Mercy trembled in Kael's other hand, the sword's usual hungry hum replaced by a low, warning keen. The silver veins threading its blade pulsed in time with the roots chasing them—closer, always closer.
A crack split the ceiling. Kael barely yanked Eris aside as a stalactite of fused bone speared the ground where she'd stood. Black water gushed from the rupture, carrying with it—
Gods.
Faces. Dozens of them, pressed against the current like drowned ghosts. Mouths stretched in silent screams, eyes hollow pits of green fire. The Hollow King's larder of failed Scythes.
"Move!" Eris drove her shoulder into Kael's ribs, shoving him forward as the flood surged. They ran, the water clawing at their ankles, whispering in voices that weren't voices:
"The roots remember..."
Then—light.
They burst onto the surface, gasping, only to freeze.
The Ashen Wastes were no longer dead.
Before them, the gray earth had split like rotten fruit, veins of glowing silver pulsing beneath the cracks. And the roots—gods, the roots—they moved. Not blindly, but with purpose. Coiling around rocks. Slithering toward the distant spires of Solarae.
Mercy's voice slithered through Kael's mind, colder than the wind howling across the wastes:
"You killed the gardener. But the Garden? It's just waking up."
Eris bent double, coughing blood onto the cracked earth. Where it struck, the silver veins recoiled—then twisted toward her, drawn like hounds to scent.
Kael's grip on Mercy tightened. "We need to go. Now."
But where? The Syndicate wanted them dead. The Order was ashes. And the roots—
A guttural cry cut the air.
To their left, a figure lurched from behind a boulder—a man, or what was left of one. His skin had split like overripe fruit, silver tendrils bursting from his joints. His eyes were pure black, his mouth a ruin of broken teeth and thorned vines.
"P-prune the weak..." he gurgled, lurching forward. "F-for the new G-garden..."
Eris's dagger took him through the throat before he finished. The body collapsed, the roots inside it withering to ash.
She wiped her blade on her pants, her face grim. "They're faster now. The King's death didn't stop it. It sped it up."
Kael stared at the corpse. The man wore the tattered remains of an Order initiate's uniform.
Just like Jeren. Like Lorin.
Mercy vibrated in his hand, not with hunger, but something worse—recognition.
---
They found the patrol at dusk.
Six Syndicate enforcers, their bodies arranged in a grotesque circle around a spike of blackened bone. Their armor had been peeled open like fruit rinds, their chests hollowed out and filled with—
"Aetherium," Eris breathed, crouching beside the nearest corpse.
Glowing blue filaments pulsed where the man's heart should've been, woven through with silver roots. The combination emitted a low, discordant hum that made Kael's teeth ache.
"They were experimenting," he muttered.
Eris poked the Aetherium with her dagger. The roots twitched. "More like feeding."
A groan came from the circle's center.
The last enforcer lived. Barely. His legs were gone below the knees, the stumps crusted with blackened blood and those same silver threads. His eyes rolled wildly as Kael approached, his cracked lips parting:
"T-the Architect... said it would... make us strong..."
Kael knelt. "Who's the Architect?"
The man's laugh bubbled with blood. "H-he found the old ways. The f-first Scythe. Said we'd... g-grow our own Garden..." His hand shot out, clutching Kael's wrist with surprising strength. "Y-you're him. The f-failed one. The one who r-ran."
Kael recoiled, but the man's grip was iron. His other hand scrabbled at his belt, pulling free a small metal orb—a Syndicate beacon.
"N-no more running," he wheezed, slamming the device into his own chest.
The explosion blew Kael backward, the world fracturing into white heat and screaming metal. When his vision cleared, the enforcer was gone—along with half the patrol's remains. The rest burned with eerie blue flames.
Eris hauled him up, her mouth moving, but the ringing in Kael's ears drowned her out. Then—
Pain. White-hot and sudden, lancing through his skull. The Resonator's remnant energy in his veins ignited, and for one terrible moment, he saw:
A lab. Cold steel. A figure floating in an Aetherium tank, their skin threaded with silver—
Seth.
His brother's eyes snapped open. Not green. Not black.
Blue.
Then the vision shattered, and Kael was on his knees, vomiting onto the ashen soil.
Eris's hands were on his shoulders, her voice cutting through the tinnitus: "—the hells was that?"
Kael spat bile. "Seth. The Syndicate has him. And they're using him."
Mercy hummed against his hip, the sound almost like... approval.
---
The ambush came at moonrise.
One moment, the wastes were still but for the whispering roots. The next, figures erupted from the ash—hooded, their faces wrapped in strips of gray cloth, their weapons crude but deadly.
Kael barely got Mercy up in time to block the first strike. The sword screamed as it met a rusted axe, the impact jarring his bones.
"Wait!" Eris barked, dodging a spear thrust. "We're not—"
A knife grazed her ribs. She snarled, disarming the attacker with a twist of her wrist—then froze.
The attacker's wrappings had slipped, revealing a face mapped with scars eerily similar to Eris's brand. But where hers pulsed with corruption, these were old. Deliberate.
"You're marked," the attacker rasped, her good eye wide. "But you're not one of us."
A whistle cut the air. The attackers retreated as swiftly as they'd come, melting back into the wastes—all but one.
A tall figure stepped forward, lowering his hood. His face was a patchwork of burn scars and ink-black tattoos, but his eyes were sharp, calculating. A faded Order insignia was branded over his heart.
"Veyra," he said by way of greeting. "Last captain of the Black Hollow's guard. Now leader of the Rootless." His gaze flicked to Eris's brand. "You're dying."
Eris bared her teeth. "I've been dying for years."
Veyra's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Not like this." He turned, gesturing for them to follow. "Walk with me. Or don't. But if you want to live long enough to find your brother, thief, you'll listen."
Kael exchanged a glance with Eris. After a moment, she nodded.
They followed.
---
The Rootless camp was a maze of tunnels beneath a derelict watchtower. Dozens of hollow-eyed survivors huddled around smokeless fires, their bodies marked with the same scarred brands.
Veyra led them to a makeshift map scratched into the tower wall. "The Architect's work," he said, tapping a cluster of marks near Solarae's underbelly. "He's grafting roots to Aetherium. Making hybrids."
"Why?" Kael demanded.
"Power," Veyra said simply. "The Syndicate always wanted the Garden's strength without its price. Now they've found a way." His gaze slid to Eris. "But it's unstable. That's why you're rotting."
Eris stiffened. "What do you know about it?"
Veyra rolled up his sleeve, revealing a brand identical to hers—but dead, scarred over. "I was like you. Until we burned a root-node." He leaned in. "Help us torch another, and I'll show you how to stall the rot."
Kael's fingers twitched toward Mercy. "Where?"
Veyra's grin was all teeth. "Where else? The Syndicate's front door."
He pointed to the map's center—a fortified complex labeled Helix Facility Gamma.
Right beneath Solarae.
Where Seth was being held.
Mercy's hum deepened, vibrating in Kael's bones like a second heartbeat. The sword knew this place.
And it was hungry.