The air in the access tunnel tasted like rust and spoiled meat. Kael pressed his back against the dripping wall, Mercy a cold weight against his thigh. The sword had been restless since they'd entered Solarae's underbelly, its usual hum replaced by a low, insistent thrum that vibrated through his bones.
Eris crouched beside him, her breath coming in short, controlled bursts. The brand beneath her ribs pulsed in time with the faint glow of the roots threading through the ceiling above them. She'd stopped trying to hide the pain hours ago.
Veyra signaled from up ahead, his scarred face barely visible in the sickly green light of the bioluminescent fungus clinging to the pipes.
"Facility's just beyond that bulkhead," he murmured. "Guards are grafted. Don't go for the chest — their hearts aren't where they should be anymore."
Kael nodded. He'd seen the Syndicate's handiwork before. The enforcers they'd encountered in the wastes had been twisted things, their bodies reshaped to accommodate the pulsing symbiosis of Aetherium and root.
The bulkhead groaned as they forced it open. The smell hit first — antiseptic and rotting flowers, the same stench that had clung to the Hollow King's lair. Then the light.
Kael blinked against the glare of the laboratory. The walls weren't metal — they were living tissue, veined with glowing blue Aetherium and threaded through with silver roots that pulsed like slow, steady heartbeats. Tables lined the room, each bearing a body in varying states of transformation. Some still screamed.
At the center of the room stood the Architect.
Dr. Lirya Voss turned from her workbench, her stained lab coat hanging open to reveal the truth beneath. Her torso was a latticework of roots and flesh, pulsing in unnatural harmony. Her left arm ended in a cluster of writhing tendrils, her right held a cleaver of tarnished metal that dripped silver sap.
"Kael of the Black Hollow," she said, her voice layered with something that wasn't human. "I wondered when you'd come to see my masterpiece."
Then she stepped aside, revealing the tank behind her.
Seth floated in viscous blue fluid, his body a grotesque tapestry of flesh and root. His ribs had split open to accommodate the thick central tendril that connected him to the machine above, his fingers elongated into thorn-like claws. But his eyes — when they opened — one burned Aetherium blue, the other Hollow King green.
"Brother," Seth whispered, his voice echoing from the walls, from the roots, from inside Kael's skull. "You're too late."
Mercy screamed in Kael's hand, the blade twisting toward the tank with such force it nearly wrenched his arm from its socket. The roots along the walls trembled in response, their glow intensifying.
Dr. Voss smiled, her teeth too sharp, her gums black with rot.
"The First Scythe remembers its sibling," she crooned. "Shall we reunite them?"
Eris's dagger was in her hand before Kael could react.
"Where's the node?" she demanded, her voice rough with pain.
The Architect laughed, a sound like breaking glass.
"Oh child, you're standing in it." She spread her grafted arms wide. "This entire facility is the node. And you..." — her gaze dropped to Eris's brand — "you're already part of the Garden."
Kael barely registered the movement before Seth's tank exploded.
Shards of glass and sprays of blue fluid rained down as Seth stepped forward, his movements jerky, unnatural. The roots followed him, slithering across the floor like serpents. His mismatched eyes locked on Kael.
"Mercy," Seth breathed, and the sword answered, its scream rising to a deafening pitch.
Then the walls began to bleed.
The tissue-veined surfaces split open, birthing limbs of fused bone and silver. Tendrils lashed outward, seizing machinery, corpses, anything not already part of the node. Kael flung himself forward, dragging Eris with him as the lab collapsed into a living storm.
Seth moved through the chaos untouched, his feet trailing roots that drilled into the floor, anchoring him deeper with every step. His voice echoed from the pulsing walls, the glowing ceiling, the blood-soaked floor.
"You left me in the dark, Kael. Now I am the dark."
Kael raised Mercy, but the blade trembled—not from fear, but from recognition. It didn't want to fight Seth. It wanted to rejoin him.
"No," Kael growled, tightening his grip. "You're not him. Not anymore."
Seth's smile split his face like a wound.
"Then kill me, brother. But know this—what I am can't die. I'm not the Garden's servant."
He raised both arms, and the roots screamed.
"I'm its seed."
A tendril struck Kael like a whip, hurling him against the far wall. Pain flared white-hot in his ribs. Eris lunged, driving her dagger into the nearest root—but it melted into the floor, re-forming around her ankle like a noose.
Kael staggered to his feet. Mercy screamed again, the sound slicing through the chaos like a blade through bone. The silver in its veins flared bright, then... cracked.
A web of fractures ran down the blade's length.
No...
Mercy's voice rang in Kael's mind, clear and terrified.
"If he takes me, he becomes the King."
Kael's blood ran cold.
Seth raised a hand. The roots behind him twisted together into a throne of bark and bone, its crown already forming from the corpses of the failed. Above him, the ceiling split open, revealing a core of glowing silver Aetherium.
"This was always your place, Kael. Your throne. But since you won't take it..."
He closed his fist—and Mercy tore from Kael's hand.
The blade spun toward Seth, screaming, shaking, resisting—but slowing.
Kael reached. So did Seth.
One brother, bloodied but free.
One, broken but ascendant.
And Mercy—caught between.
Time froze.
Eris's scream shattered it.
She threw herself forward, brand blazing, and tackled Kael out of the roots' reach just as they lunged like spears toward his chest.
The sword chose.
It snapped back to Kael's hand, slamming into his palm hard enough to crack bone.
The glow in Seth's eyes faltered.
"So be it," he whispered.
The ceiling gave way.
Silver light drowned the chamber as the node ruptured, and Kael and Eris fell, dragged through a chasm of howling roots and boiling light.